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01/12/2004: Robin III background reading...
Now that the team on Robin changed I actually read the latest Robin issue instead of getting it for my "to read eventually pile" -- which btw is not meant as a comment on the quality of the previous team, I just haven't gotten around to them. My pile of comics to read is ever growing, not just with superhero stuff, I also still collect European comics and US indies after all, so for now those Robin issues are in good company with many others ranging from historical fiction comics about the Paris commune to funny animals comics.
Anyway, I used the change of teams as a jumping on point, and I figured that this would also be a good opportunity to do some background reading on the current Robin, a.k.a. Tim Drake. I had already read A Lonely Place of Dying, which introduced Tim, and now I read Rite of Passage, i.e. Detective Comics #618-#621 written by Alan Grant, pencils by Norm Breyfogle, inks by Steve Mitchell, in which Tim's mother dies, and his father ends up paralyzed and in a coma (apparently Jack Drake will get better eventually, at least I recall seeing him with his second wife in a Gotham Knights issue and he was neither paralyzed nor dead, but I don't know yet when/how that recovery happens).
I really liked the psychological parts of the story, the insights into Tim's mind, and his relationship with Bruce/Batman -- the evil Voodoo priest plot parts, um, not so much. I liked how ambiguous and complicated Tim's feelings, especially about Batman and becoming Robin, are. It's 'survivor's guilt' in a way, but with a twist, because Tim wonders whether the death of his parents might be the necessary "rite of passage" he has to go through before he can finally become Robin (something which at least at the beginning he wants very much), just like it was with the other Robins. Of course when Tim voices this thought to Alfred at the end of #619, Alfred is rebukes that, and some part of Tim also knows that his desire to be Robin didn't cause his parents misfortune, but the feeling is still there. And at the end of #621 he wonders whether his association with Batman will suck him into "a lifetime in hell," thoughts that are mirrored by Bruce who is feeling guilty for not saving Tim's parents and feels like "The night-monster. The man who taints the lives of all around him." and fears that by allowing Tim to become Robin, he'd cause Tim to become like himself. Also I really like how the sequence in #621 (from page 18 to the first half of page 21) illustrates those feelings, especially the transition from Bruce giving comfort to Tim seeing him as threatening Batman, and then the POV shift to Batman's thoughts. And that even though the facial expressions of grief aren't drawn that great. Okay, so the bat-shadow effect isn't original, but IMO it works here. (If you haven't read them and want to take a look at those four pages, I've uploaded images of about 100k each, the smallest size where the text was still somewhat recognizable, for you to look at: p. 18, p. 19, p. 20, and p. 21.)
I look forward to read how those issues will be followed up in the Identity Crisis story line and the Robin mini-series, i.e. the issues which have been reprinted in the Robin: A Hero Reborn TPB (though I intend to get them as single issues if possible).
BTW, when I sometimes talk about specific pages or panels in my entries, do you (i.e. whoever reads this) like it when I put up scans of the pages and link to those? Or doesn't it matter and you skip checking out the images as a waste of bandwidth? Then I wouldn't bother in the future, but I thought that maybe sometimes it could be helpful.
