REVIEW: Red Robin #26 by Niceza & To

Reviews, Top Story

Being a young comic fan, there’s one really big fact of life for older fans that I’ve never really understood. I don’t know what it felt to have to watch Earth 2 die in the Crisis and see years of stories wiped away.

I don’t know what it was like when Barry Allen died and Wally West became the Flash. Or when Connor Hawke replaced Oliver Queen. Or when Kyle Rayner replaced Hal Jordan.

I’ve been blessed to read comics in an age where the new and nostalgic live side by side. I’ve seen three generations of Flashes race against the machinations of Professor Zoom. For years I enjoyed Connor Hawke’s adventures alongside his father. And when it comes to the GL’s, DC’s done a pretty damn good job at making sure fans of any of the Earth based lanterns are kept satiated with one of the most fleshed out lines in the DCU.

But now things are getting rebooted, relaunched and retweaked and it wasn’t until the final issues of a lot of the books I love started rolling out did I realize that I’m am going to miss some of these characters.

Today I realized I’m going to miss Tim Drake.

I know, I know, I know, Tim Drake is alive and well in the DCnU. He’s got a brand spanking new (awful) costume as Red Robin and he gets to be a Titan all over again for the very first time. And while none of us really know the depths to which character histories are getting carried over, part of me, the selfish, fanboyish part, reads Red Robin #26, the last issue of the series, and doesn’t want to see this Tim Drake go.

It’s a lot like that scene at the end of David Tennant’s run as the Doctor before he regenerates into Matt Smith.

The thing that made Tim Drake special as Robin, special as a member of the Bat-family, was always the fact that he hadn’t been touched by trauma. He became Robin because he deduced the secret identities of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson and realized that a Batman without a Robin just didn’t work. He was always the least emotionally damaged member of the Bat-clan. There seemed to be this air about him that one day he’d hang up the cape, go to college, get a “real” job, and figure out how to save the world without wearing a domino mask and tights.

Then they started adding the grim and gritty to his life.

First his friend and ally, Leslie Thompkins helped his friend and love interest, Stephanie Brown, fake her death to teach Batman a lesson. Then he visited a future where he became a Batman that executed his rogues gallery using the same gun that killed the Waynes. Then his father was killed during Identity Crisis. Then Captain Boomerang killed his father as a result of an insane scheme by Jean Loring to win back Ray Palmer. Then his best friend, Superboy, died saving the multi-verse. Then Bruce Wayne “died” and Dick Grayson made, Damian Wayne (a boy who had tried to kill Tim) his Robin when he became Batman.

All those terrible things really began to weigh Tim down. When he finally took on the identity of Red Robin, in his obsessive quest to prove that Bruce wasn’t really dead, we began to see him doing things Tim Drake never would’ve done before. Working alongside assassins. Creating huge public farces to protect his identity and throw people off his trail. Obsessive-compulsive planning that would make that Batman who built Brother-Eye look well-adjusted.

It’s no surprise that the final issue of his adventures as Red Robin showed us the some total of how far he was willing to go to get justice. Or of how possible it was for him to become the gun-wielding Batman he rebuked.

He created an intricate plan. One that would lure Digger Harkness, the recently resurrected Captain Boomerang exactly where he needed him to be. A series of false trails and lies leading Digger to a supposed canister containing black lantern energy, then back to Gotham, then the edge of the rooftop…

Tim planned it meticulously. Sometimes villains fall to their deaths. Sometimes you’re not fast enough to save them. All Tim had to do was say he wasn’t fast enough.

But he saves him. And while the implication given in-story is that it wouldn’t have been satisfying enough, that it wouldn’t have made up for what he did to his father, the real truth of the matter is that Tim knew Dick and Damian were watching him from the shadows. Moreso than that, he knew Bruce was lurking about too.

His plan wouldn’t have worked with an audience.

I know that come September I’ll be able to pick up Teen Titans and read about Tim Drake. He’ll probably even pop into some of the Bat-books too. But I wonder…how much like the Tim Drake I’ve been reading for the last few years? How much like that young hero, still maturing, teetering at the edge of an obsession he’d always denied himself, a cold, calculating nature that’s more reminiscent of a villain than a hero, at least, not the kind of hero Tim ever seemed to want to be.

Final score: 5/5

This issue is the perfect send off to one of the Bat-universes more well-executed concepts. While we’ve seen Dick Grayson mature over the years, in the end, he’ll always be that performer, that circus kid who can banish the darkness with the light of his smile. With Tim Drake, however, we’ve seen a dimming of that inner-light, one that I’d love to see a writer take to it’s ultimate conclusion but, given the events affecting the entire line, this’ll have to do.