Robin, Robout
SPOILER ALERT!!!!! This hasn’t happened in comics yet, but it’s all over newsarama.com: Damian Wayne is dead. Gotta say, I did NOT see that one coming.
This will probably come as happy news to some. At least a couple of my fellow bloggers were not fans of Damian Wayne as Robin. He never really bothered me, but I can see why he would. First, his conception doesn’t really make sense in the New 52 timeline. If Bruce Wayne has only been Batman for 5 years and Damian is 12, that means Ra’s al Ghul decided Bruce Wayne was worthy to mate with his daughter a good 8 years before he ever put on the cowl, when Bruce was barely into his 20s. Second, Damian’s a whiny little kid. Nobody likes a whiny kid.
But my immediate thought when I heard the news was “so who’s the new Robin?” There’s got to be a new Robin, doesn’t there? There’s always been a Robin, hasn’t there? Turns out, there has.
Jason Todd was actually introduced in the Batman comics while Dick Grayson was still wearing the green short shorts. As soon as Dick became Nightwing, Jason was there to step into his booties. Tim Drake debuted a year after comic readers voted to kill Jason Todd and became Robin after 5 months. Except for Stephanie Brown’s short stint (which may or may not have still happened), Tim was Robin until he became Red Robin, specifically so Damian could become the new Robin.
But in New 52, Tim Drake was never Robin. So Batman had Dick (who turned out all right), then Jason (who was beaten to death with a crowbar by popular vote), possibly Stephanie (who was tortured to death), and Damian (who is murdered by his clone…no, seriously). So maybe there won’t be a new Robin? That’s really not a very good track record. If I was Batman, I’d be having second (fourth?) thoughts about bringing another tweener into the game.
But get real, there’s got to be a new Robin. And it’s got to be someone the fans already know. So let’s speculate!
Tim Drake
Why not just go back to what worked? (more…)