Red Robin #1
Written by Chris Yost
Art by Ramon Bachs
The Grail part one
Just as many of us predicted, Red Robin ended up being Tim Drake’s new book, and as one can expect given the circumstance, Tim is….moody now.
Moody as in he was replaced as Robin with his semi-rival Damian Wayne, the biological son of the Bat who shows no respect for the adopted one. Moody as in Dick Grayson is Batman, Damian is Robin, and Tim is…..what does he have? Being Robin was a huge part of who he was, and being stripped of the job he made his own is just insulting to him. This is made worse by the portrayal of Dick Grayson as a Bat-Jerk level asshole.
A big deal to Tim right now is that, despite everything, Bruce adopted him. Bruce made him family. So it’s not just that he’s not Robin, or that Dick is Batman, it’s that he is now Tim Wayne and he has nothing left of his mentor and father figure. Not the man, not the home, not even the job. He finds himself in a place where he has nothing left.
So Tim goes a tiny bit insane, puts on the Red Robin suit, and goes to Europe to hunt down Bruce because he’s positive that Bruce is still alive, and that when he finds him things will go back to normal. Batman and Robin, Bruce and Tim.
It’s a goal that you can respect, given the sheer quantity of trauma that poor Tim has gone through the past few years; starting with his dad dieing in Identity Crisis, continuing with the death of his girlfriend Spoiler in War Games, and then his best friend Superboy in Infinite Crisis. He lost close friend Bart Allen to the Rogues shortly after, and not to mention having to deal with the existence of Damian, and the attempt by Ra’s Al Ghul to sway him away from the Bat. Oh, and then Bruce gets killed by a God. Sure; Kon, Steph, and Bart are all back, but you have to look at the level of tradjedy that Tim has experienced and figure that maybe, somewhere along the line, he lost it.
Because in this book he’s written as borderline insane. And if you can’t understand why, then it’s going to seem even more out of character. He’s got more of a one track mind then Bruce! At his worst!
The art is never spectacular, but it does seem fitting for the mood of the book. Maybe at times it feels a bit…..I dunno, it never really grabbed me. Tim looks good as Red Robin, but he looks terrible as Tim Drake. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Tim looks more like Trauma from Initiative then like Tim Drake. Hopefully Bachs grows into the role of artist on this book, or they move someone else on it, because I don’t know how well I could stand this book if it continues to look like this…..alright, so I’d probably still read it, but the art could be better!
It’s not like when Dick Grayson went solo as Nightwing, which felt like a logical extension of the character. To give him his own identity, his own city, let him be his own version of the Bat. I mean, it’s similar, but at the same time Dick was moving away from the mantle of the Bat and becoming his own man, while Tim is left to spend time as Red Robin hoping to bring back Bruce so he can go back to his status quo as the back half of “Batman and”
This was not a bad first issue, though it was hardly anything special. Chris Yost blatantly went with trying to set up his status quo, and while he accomplishes that to a degree, the most interesting part of the entire issue is the last page bad guy reveal. Because that at least keeps us wondering and guessing. Not to mention it’s really the main reason I have to want to read the next issue.
6/10
