First Impressions: Robin

A couple years back I did a post about the history of the Robin character(s) and how more than most in comics he’s always represented providing different generations of fans with what they both want and need; here’s how I found my way with the Boy/Teen Wonder.

My first remembrance of Robin is Burt Ward hamming it up on the 1960’s Batman live action series which I saw via syndication, which truth be told is how I came to know Batman period, as I watched that before I was a regular comics reader and don’t think I saw any of the movies in the theaters until “Batman Forever.” However, while a general cultural awareness probably fueled as much by Tim Burton as anything else clued me in that Batman himself was a far darker and more serious character than Adam West portrayed him at a fairly young age, Dick Grayson remained to me the smiling kid who made the ridiculous quips, as opposed to the emerging adult Marv Wolfman and George Perez were evolving him into in New Teen Titans at the time I was growing up.

The first Batman comic I consciously remember reading was Batman #425 (I think this is either Chris Sims’ first or favorite Batman comic if I recall correctly). I got it randomly as I did all comics when I was young (six in this case), so I was experiencing it pretty much in a vacuum, not knowing until years later that it was the last issue before “Death in the Family” (or what “Death in the Family” was). All I knew was that in this story, decisively darker than the TV show Batman I knew or any other I’d experienced, Robin was kind of a nutjob, having apparently let a bad guy fall to his death in the previous issue (shown in flashback) and having to be essentially pulled off another one here by Batman. This Robin was angry, didn’t make jokes, and seemed on a hair trigger to say the least.

Now I of course know this was Jason Todd, originally a Dick Grayson clone but by this point a soon-to-be-aborted attempt at creating a more edgy Robin for the post-Frank Miller Batman. However, at the time, given that visually he looked identical to the comic book interpretation of Robin I’d always been familiar with, I just assumed they were the same character, and over time something had made him snap (I don’t think I even knew then that Robin was an orphan, as his and Batman’s origins were never really addressed on the kid-friendly TV show, for obvious reasons).

I was the rare comic book-reading kid who had no real interest in Batman. I honestly never bought a run of any of his titles regularly until Grant Morrison came onboard. I checked in for stuff like Knightfall and whatnot, but never stuck around. I’ve since gone back and read a lot of the classics in trade, but to this day, I don’t really consider Batman one of “my” characters, for whatever that’s worth (not much, I’d presume).

The point being that I didn’t try to untangle the knot of how Burt Ward/Dick Grayson Robin became Jason Todd Robin in my mind and really never gave it much thought until one of the covers from the Robin II: The Joker’s Wild series (the first issue, I think) caught my eye at the shop and I grabbed it. I was intrigued enough to snap up Robin III: Cry of the Huntress as it came out and then go back to collect what I’d missed of Joker’s Wild, along the way getting to know Tim Drake, who would become very much my Robin of choice.

I think I’m cribbing a bit from my own aforementioned history of Robin here, but while Dick Grayson was created for the rough and tumble young men of the Golden Age and Jason Todd was meant to reflect the hardening youth of the 80’s, Tim Drake was less and imposing physical specimen and more of a thinking lad’s Robin, intended to appeal to a generation increasingly captivated by video games over athletics and a society where brains had gained value over brawn. I was definitely one of those kids who was ok at sports but better at being clever, so Tim Drake was a Robin I could get behind.

Indeed, Tim Drake seemed very much like a wish fulfillment character to me and likely many other slightly nerdy boys in Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle’s excellent Robin III. This kid, not the biggest or baddest dude on the block by any means, uses his wits to take down the guy who essentially is just that—KGBeast—and along the way gets the nice teen girl, spends time with and outwits to a degree a hot adult lady (The Huntress), and kicks butt, all while both his birth father and adopted mentor are “out of town” or otherwise occupied; he’s Ferris Bueller with hacking skills!

I followed Tim Drake into Dixon and Tom Grummett’s Robin ongoing series, where I really started to understand for the first time the chronology of the character as I was also broadening my grasp of overall DC mythology at the time. The Zero Hour crossover issue of Robin gave me the chance to actually see Tim team with young Dick with even a mention of Jason thrown in to really drive it all home. From there, I swung over to Zero Hour proper for my first significant exposure to Dick as Nightwing with an actual awareness that this was the original Robin all grown up.

While Tim Drake was the Robin I could most relate to as being like me (still is), I developed a separate kind of affection for Dick Grayson both in his original incarnation and more over as Nightwing in a way that emphasized my aspiration. He actually reminded me of my cousins.

My aunt on my mother’s side has six kids who were all born at least 10-15 years before me, so as a result, when I was young and went to holidays, I was surrounded by these teenagers and twentysomethings who were the coolest and almost most intimidating people in the world to me. In particular, my male cousins, two of whom were (and remain) twins, were the guys I dreamed of growing up to be; while I was still nerdy and awkward, they were all athletic, wise cracking and popular. All three of my aunt’s sons wrestled in high school, which played no small part in leading me to do the same.

Anyhow, I saw the relationship and dynamic between Tim and Dick as being very much how I idealized the one I had with my cousins: the smart and eager younger kid learning from but remaining fairly in awe and the shadow of his impossibly cool “big brother.” Like Tim, I was (and still am) pretty satisfied with the person I’ve grown into, but I’d be lying if there wasn’t some small part that still wanted to be Nightwing someday.

Following my hiatus from and return to comics, Robin wasn’t a going concern for me anymore as a solo character. I followed Tim Drake via Young Justice and Dick Grayson via back issues of New Teen Titans and both grew to be among my favorite characters—Dick more than Tim, probably due to Superboy fandom—I had no interest in either of their solo books.

By the time Damian Wayne came into the picture, I was pretty far past my period of Robin being a point of view character for me and more into appreciating the concept over whoever was behind the domino mask (worth noting, I was not paying any attention during Stephanie Brown’s stint, so I’m not omitting her out of disrespect so much as ignorance; please don’t come to my house crazy Stephanie Brown fans, I dug her as Spoiler and Batgirl). Robin has come very much to be the tail end of “Batman and” for me, even not being an avid Batman guy. I suppose just as I’ve never been attached to Bruce Wayne but as a fan of comics am intrigued by Batman as a concept and archetype, I’m interested in what Robin adds to the mythos as a counterbalance, whether Dick as the light to the darkness, Jason as the rededication to the stagnation, Tim as the deliberate thinker to the ask-questions-later figure of vengeance, and even Damian as the unruly child to the reluctant adult.

Robin has always forced Batman to do or be something he’s not naturally (lighten up, hold back, stop and think, be a father) and thus made him a more interesting character. I rather like that every few decades we get a new one and indeed look forward to seeing who we get next.

I also wonder if some kid is confused that Damian doesn’t look or act like the guy from the Teen Titans cartoon.

Who Digs Teen Super Heroes?

The short answer to that question is me—it’s the more in-depth version I’m interested in trying to figure out, and will attempt to do so with a little impromptu history lesson wherein the facts will hopefully be at least close to accurate given the minimal research I plan on doing.

As we all know—right?—the first major young character in comics was the original Robin, Dick Grayson, introduced in 1940 to be the boy/teen sidekick to Batman. Bucky, Speedy, Toro, etc. and a horde of other pre-pubescent tagalongs were created throughout the 40’s to accompany the hordes of hit or miss super heroes the industry was churning out at a feverish pace. The idea was that since a lot of kids and teenagers read comics, they’d like to have a character they could imagine themselves as; they could hero worship Batman and Captain America, but they could actually be Robin or Bucky.

Robin and other young boys hanging out with strapping men in spandex of course became a major target of Fredric Wertham in the mid-1950’s, so a lot of them went away over the course of that decade, as did super heroes comics as a genre in large part. This was likely just as well, since the kids who grew up in the 40’s were now hitting the cusp of adulthood and didn’t feel like identifying with a cheeky circus performer in pixie boots or precocious army mascot in a domino mask, preferring the edgier EC Comics-type fare you’d expect twentysomethings to cotton to. The only teen heroes who really thrived to any degree in the 50’s were Superboy because he was just Superman as a kid and Robin because he was mostly an accessory to Batman. The exception to the rule would be the Legion of Super-Heroes, introduced in 1958, but I attribute the fact that they had a unique gimmick—that whole being from the future thing—as offsetting a malaise in young protagonists at the time.

The game changed again in 1962 with Spider-Man, not just another teen character but a full-on leading (young) man with angst and depth his predecessors of 20 years earlier never came close to demonstrating. With Spidey, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko invented not just a hero their younger readers could fantasize about being, but in Peter Parker an alter ego who wasn’t all that far off from how they actually were real life, mixing the tried concept of a wish fulfillment character with an identifiable protagonist. It no doubt helped that the Wertham storm had been weathered and there were actual young readers to appreciate the effort again.

Whether because of Spider-Man, the return of teen fans, just because or a combination of them all, DC brought back their younger heroes in full force, grouping Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Speedy together as the Teen Titans while also giving the Legion their own ongoing series in Adventure Comics. At Marvel, the X-Men were created perhaps in least in part with the idea that if one awkward kid did well, five would do even better, while Rick Jones became a fixture in Incredible Hulk, Avengers and later Captain America and other titles.

While the late 60’s did not bring the return of Frederic Wertham, there was the inevitable aging of another audience and ensuing lack of interest in teen heroes that killed off both Teen Titans and X-Men for a good bit. However, rather than go gently into that good night, the folks responsible for Spider-Man and the Legion came up with the novel solution to simply age their charges ever so slightly, meaning as their fans were going off to college, so was Peter Parker; as the readers were discovering romance, the Legionnaires were hooking up. Rather than lose that young audience who found Iron Man too old but were over the youthful adventures of Supergirl, a middle ground of hip characters in their early-mid 20’s were established, with many tenured leads being subtly slid back towards that demographic as well.

Once you buzz past the early 70’s and get toward the end of that decade on into the 80’s, things get interesting as far as teen and just-past-teen super heroes. The three most commercially successful ongoing series of the period for quite some time were Uncanny X-Men, New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes.

In the case of the X-Men, a cast certainly not fit to be attending high school shot the book to popularity in the middle of the 70’s—Wolverine has never been a teen hero—but the ultimate entry level character for kids in Kitty Pryde cemented it’s spot as in many ways it became about the one kid being your access point to hanging out with the coolest group of older friends you could imagine.

New Teen Titans showcased a mix of high school and college age characters that all happened to be extremely physically attractive—but in distinct and thus more believable ways thanks to the talent of George Perez—having incredible adventures and also exploring their friendship and sexuality. Legion of Super-Heroes was a similar set-up but in the far-flung and awesome 30th century. Whereas Robin and Bucky had been endearing but fairly goofy wish fulfillment fantasies to kids in the 40’s, the Titans, Legion and X-Men were far sexier versions who were able to hold the attention of their audience regardless of age—young readers wanted to spend time with them, slightly older fans wanted to be them, and those who had been following along since the 60’s saw their glory days. As a result, these books stayed on top for most of the 80’s.

As the 90’s dawned, for whatever reason, the 70’s backlash of disinterest in teen heroes seemed to resurface and the answer of the comics community was to take the previous solution of aging their young characters even further. The X-Men—the presence of Jubilee aside—became comprised more or less entirely of adults, and ones with a hard edge at that. The Teen Titans became the New Titans, ditching the optimism of youth for a seemingly endless wave of tragedy (see Donna Troy’s life). The Legion jumped ahead five years and became grown-ups in a now dystopian future. Even the New Mutants, who remained among Marvel’s younger characters, transitioned into the paramilitary X-Force, with gray-haired Cable at the helm and as the focal point.

In spite of this, there were a lot of great teen books and characters in the 90’s—I should know since it’s when I started reading comics. You had my beloved New Warriors, Tim Drake as Robin and the new Superboy, not to mention a wave of would-be Spider-Man surrogates who went on to various levels of success like Darkhawk and Sleepwalker. Even A-listers like Green Lantern and Flash became part of the youth movement, with Kyle Rayner and Wally West taking the mantles, plus good stuff outside of Marvel like Harbinger at Valiant or Prime at Malibu.

Of course there were also simply so many comics in the early 90’s that the “throw everything at the wall” approach to publishing was guaranteed to yield at least a bit of quality in every category across the board including with teen heroes.

Give or take 10-15 years or so that brings us to today. We’ll leave out the bit where the market collapses and nothing is doing well because it’s not really relevant to any points I’m trying to make or explore.

The comic industry has rebounded from the abyss with vigor over the last decade, experiencing rebirth in publishing as well expansion into other mediums like film and television. There’s a whole component about the indys and how coming of age graphic novels and standalone stuff about growing up has surged of late, but again, not really what I’m talking about here, so we’ll stick to super heroes.

If there’s been any knock on mainstream super hero comics in the 00’s—and there has been more than one, but this is a biggie—it’s that kids don’t read them anymore. If that is the case—and for the sake of the argument we’ll assume it is—then the original reasons why we had Robin in the 40’s, Spider-Man in the 60’s and Kitty Pryde and the Titans in the 80’s has evaporated somewhat in that the median age older reader probably doesn’t want to self-project as a younger character, particularly when the big guns are perpetually situated around the late-20’s/early-30’s age range most fans find themselves at or wish to get back to already.

Indeed, these days the rules that apply to an “adult” book like Avengers or Green Lantern carry over to “teen” books—or to put it more simply: It doesn’t matter how old the hero is, if it’s a good comic, it will succeed. Thus even with a dearth of younger readers, quality stuff like Ultimate Spider-Man or Young Avengers continues to experience success. Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans or Brian K. Vaughan’s didn’t so much do well because they spoke to a younger generation; they did well because they were kid. On the flipside, I don’t think Blue Beetle or Young Allies had trouble because they starred teenagers; they had trouble because it’s a tough market to launch new books in period (which sucks because those were some quality comics).

So coming full circle, what is I like about teen super heroes? It may have started out as an “Ooh, I could be Superboy!” or “Ooh, I want to hang out with the New Warriors!” thing back in the 90’s, but at this point I’m 28 and comics starring the younger set like Avengers Academy or the latest iteration of Teen Titans still tend to grab my interest.

For me, I think it’s that I’m an unabashed fan of the soap opera element of comic books just like I am of television or movies, so I’ll naturally gravitate to stuff starring teens or young adults where that is dialed up to 11 (I love Gossip Girl, but my parents have been on me for months and I still haven’t given The Good Wife a shot). If I’m going to get lost in a world of pathos, angst, romance and heroics, I want my escapism writ large and to the extreme, the way teenagers tend to view life (and the way me and most of my friends do too, since we’re largely in a collective state of arrested development). There’s something about every new crush being the love of your life, every test you face (written or super villainous) being the most devastating ever, and this group of friends being the one you’ll keep forever that appeals greatly to me.

Do I love teen super heroes because I’m a romantic? Because I’m a drama queen? Both? Does it matter? I don’t think it does.

I do hope more kids read comics again someday for lots of reasons—health of the industry, good way to learn to read, etc.—but for sure one is so that teen super heroes get another shot and another generation gets to see how cool they are.

And I’ll still be reading too.

The Definitives: Dick Grayson

A couple months back, I wrote about the evolution of the Robin character, in the course of doing so hitting largely on the progression of Dick Grayson, the original Boy Wonder as a character.

Whether as Robin, Nightwing or currently Batman, Grayson has always been one of my favorite comic book heroes. This is a bit a departure for me as I’m generally more beholden to the snarky rebel types as my touchstones, but there’s also that well-concealed nice guy side of me who really roots for the true blue Heroes with a capital “H” of comics. With Dick Grayson, he’s a guy who represents both sides of my fandom there, as he’s certainly among the more wholesome good guys even in the virtuous DC Universe—particularly when you consider his mentor—but also has that devil-may-care swashbuckler attitude born of the carnival.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Dick Grayson is that in addition to his longevity, he’s probably been successful in more diverse identities than any other major character in comics as noted above. Sure lots of heroes and villains undergo the occasional name or costume change, but Dick has full-on reinvented everything about himself twice now and not really missed a beat as far as remaining at the forefront of the DCU as one of its most popular leading men.

Given that Dick Grayson has a history stretching back to 1940, I certainly make no claim to have read anywhere near even a majority representation of his appearances—I haven’t really read any Batman comics pre-dating the 80’s, including the crazy Silver Age stuff and really good 70’s stuff—but even so, I’ve got quite a few stories that spring to mind when thinking about why I dig comics’ original sidekick.

ROBIN: YEAR ONE
Few writers of the modern era have more familiarity with Dick Grayson than Chuck Dixon, who spent over five years writing him on the Nightwing ongoing title. Here, Dixon teams with co-writer Scott Beatty and artist Javier Pulido not to re-tell Robin’s origin story, but to flesh out his earliest days with Batman. Pulido’s art is perfect here, as he nails the brightly-clad figure of the Boy Wonder but drags him into the slightly darker situations Dixon and Beatty have concocted without dimming his luster. This is a great coming-of-age story that sees young Dick Grayson attempting to prove himself worthy of the responsibility given him by Batman—your basic father-son dynamic cranked up to superheroic proportions—by taking on way more than he probably should be on his own and coming up against Two-Face, foreshadowing later feuds between the two characters across various identities. Dixon and Beatty also show Robin’s nascent relationship with Batgirl and emotionally explore his connection with Alfred, the series’ narrator.

“The Murder Machine” (NEW TEEN TITANS ANNUAL #2)
The climax to the simmering storyline that introduced Adrian Chase into his costumed role as Vigilante is also an extremely important chapter in the life of Dick Grayson, as he reaches his final days as Robin. Having grown distant from Batman, the now-Teen Wonder finds himself partnering with Chase for a harder-edged war on crime and searching his soul for what kind of man he wants to be as he draws closer to true adulthood, seeing both positive and negative reflections of himself in his new ally. This extra-sized tale by the superlative Titans team of Marv Wolfman and George Perez sees the crew team with Vigilante against an army of assassins in an action-packed thrill ride, but more importantly it is for all intents and purposes one of the last true Robin stories as far as Dick Grayson is concerned and key reading if you’re looking to understand the character.

“The Judas Contract” (TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #42-44, ANNUAL #3)
Maybe Wolfman and Perez’s greatest Titans opus—and that’s saying something—this one has it all, from the origin of Deathstroke to Terra’s betrayal to Jericho’s introduction and much more, but for our purposes, no aspect of the story is more important than Dick Grayson’s dynamic debut as Nightwing. Even before putting on his new disco-collared duds, the former Robin proves the only Titans capable of eluding The Terminator, an impressive feat when one considers his teammates, but also a reminder of what makes the character so special. Again, a crucial stage in the larger Dick Grayson tapestry, not to mention of the best comic stories of all-time, so call this a win all around.

“Nightwing: Year One” (NIGHTWING #101-106)
Wrote a whole entry on this one.

“Wings Over Gotham” (ROBIN #13)
The conclusion of “Prodigal,” the 1995 storyline that saw Bruce Wayne temporarily hand over the role of Batman to Dick Grayson while recovering from a prior ordeal that saw Jean-Paul Valley sullying the mantel. This issue, written again by Dixon, has Bruce returning, ready to be Batman again, but Dick not quite ready to give up the cowl until they have a conversation years in the making that has been building ever since he abandoned the Robin persona. It’s another big growth moment for Dick as he stands up for himself against his father figure and asserts not only his independence, but calls Bruce out on his lapses in judgment; for his own part, the original Batman stands his ground, but admits he has sold his protégé short more than once. It’s a watershed encounter that re-establishes the Nightwing-Batman relationship more as one between equals and alters their dynamic moving forward (also, Tim Drake fights a bad guy, but that’s pretty secondary).

“A Knight in Bludhaven” (NIGHTWING #1-8)
Dixon and Scott McDaniel’s kickoff to their lengthy run on Dick Grayson’s first ongoing series and they hit the ground running, creating a brand new playground for Nightwing to establish himself in Bludhaven, a sort of mini-Gotham that’s even more gruesome than the original in some ways. For the next several years, Bludhaven would serve a key role in giving Dick Grayson his own identity separate from Batman or the Titans, complete with his own rogues gallery, supporting cast and unique locales, but especially establishing him as the sole guardian of a place that needed him, not just a stand-in or supporting player. The first eight issues have Nightwing setting up shop and declaring war on Blockbuster, the bulky and brilliant mastermind who would become the Kingpin to his Daredevil, so to say. My personal highlight from this initial run is “The Visitor” from issue #6, in which Tim Drake drops by and the two “brothers” spend a night talking over Dick’s latest adventures as they hop across rooftops and moving trains, really giving McDaniel a chance to show off.

“Till Death Do Us Part” (NIGHTWING ANNUAL #2)
You could argue all day whether Dick Grayson’s true destined love is Starfire or Barbara Gordon, but Marc Andreyko and Joe Bennett make a pretty heartfelt case for the latter in this touching, sweet and often heart-wrenching one-shot covering the “missing year” from after Infinite Crisis and what became of Nightwing’s marriage proposal to Oracle. As the star-crossed duo recovers from the latest upheaval and mull over what’s next for them, Andreyko revisits the high and low points of their lengthy courtship in great detail. That Robin-Batgirl kid crush that became something more is something I feel like is almost woven into culture beyond just the DC Universe, and it’s certainly one I feel like I can relate to, so to see it so thoroughly dissected here and ushered into adulthood not only makes for a good story, but feels integral to who Dick Grayson is. The creative team here does an excellent job showing why this may be DC’s best couple, and at the same time why they can probably never be together for too long.

“Batman Reborn” (BATMAN AND ROBIN #1-3)
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s first arc in this brave and bold new era of Batman showed once and for all that Dick Grayson was more than fit to wear the cowl, but also that he’d be a very different kind of Dark Knight—and that’s a good thing. I remember being really impressed with how Morrison acknowledged every stage of Dick’s past, from jubilant sidekick to defiant young hero, and made this very much the logical destination for the character. Quitely’s art is dynamic and the creative duo usher in wonderfully creepy new villains and a nicely refined status quo for the latest Dynamic Duo.

The History of Robin

When the original Robin the Boy Wonder was introduced way way back in 1940, he was meant to be “our” character, the one fans could relate to. At the time, it was a largely youthful audience who read comics, so the idea was that while you could look up to and admire Batman, you could actually be Robin, and that was your ticket to hanging out with the cool adults who had planes and fought crime.

So followed Bucky and a slew of other teenage heroes of the Golden Age and beyond, but best I know (and please correct me actual comic book historians), Robin came first.

What’s interesting to me is that over the seven decades Robin has existed as a concept, I do believe no major character has seen as much turnover as far as the fellow wearing the mask (and again, please correct me—but Green Lantern doesn’t count). Also of note is that the original Robin, Dick Grayson, is one of those rare comic book characters who has actually aged significantly during his existence, starting out as a young teenager and these days sitting comfortably in his mid-20’s; his successor, Jason Todd, also seems to be at least a good five years or so older than he was when he was introduced.

I think the turnover rate of Robin as well as the aging of the mantle’s former holders all ties back to this idea of the original fan service character and how creators have been quite diligent in evolving him as the audience has grown, changed, regressed and done it all over again. Let’s take a closer look…

DICK GRAYSON – V1
As covered above, the original Robin was created to be an audience identification character, and in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, said audience consisted largely of children or younger teens. To dig even deeper, this was a generation of young people who did not have video games or even widespread television to occupy their time, and were thus generally more active, physical kids. It’s easy to see why Dick Grayson, with his acrobatic flips and grinning wisecracks, was exactly the hero this audience aspired to be like. He was an incredibly physical character whose aerial exploits were the natural though extremely heightened extension of what the youngsters who read about him did for fun; his cavalier attitude and wide-eyed heroism was the type this generation looked up to, not largely having discovered cynicism despite hard times, as they were trained to overcome adversity with positivity, not by cutting it down. The brightly-garbed, kinetic inaugural Boy Wonder was the perfect representation of at least three decades worth of young comic book readers.

DICK GRAYSON – V2
In 1969, Robin is sent off to college, now a Teen Wonder, and separated in large part from Batman by the creative team of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, the same guys who had just dragged Green Arrow into social relevance in the pages of Green Lantern. As the 70’s dawned, an audience that had for years consisted mostly of kids was beginning to expand to the enlightened college crowd, who welcomed fringe forms of culture like comic books onto their campuses and into their lives. This more mature era and more adult audience called for Robin to grow up in order for them still to use him as an entryway to the DC Universe (across the street at Marvel, the same thing was happening with Peter Parker, who slowly shed his bookworm image for the slicker ladies man of his college days and beyond). Pursuing more solo adventures, Dick Grayson relied less on acrobatics and more on the detective skills he had inherited from his mentor, also discovering his sexuality and engaging in more romantic entanglements along the way. Around this same time, O’Neil was influencing much of the DC line, returning Batman to his roots as a grim avenger, reducing Superman’s power set to make him more relatable, and setting up Green Lantern and Green Arrow as a buddy team in search of the American dream; all of the characters were intriguing adults whom teenage and college readers were eager to learn more about, but Robin remain the one hero whose pixie boots they could conceivably inhabit, Dick Grayson having softly come of age to allow such a fantasy to remain intact.

JASON TODD – V1/DICK GRAYSON – V3
For a time in the mid-80’s, DC attempted to have their cake and eat it too, so to say. They still wanted to give older teens and college age readers their gateway character in Dick Grayson, but also wanted to recapture some of the younger audience they had lost over the 70’s and who weren’t as taken with Kid Flash or Aqualad. The elegant solution: keep the “new” Grayson around albeit in a new identity, and at the same time reintroduce the “old” Grayson with a new name and make him Robin. So it came to be we had Dick Grayson—at this point one of comics’ most popular characters as a principal in New Teen Titans and ensconced in an extremely mature physical relationship with Starfire—as Nightwing, plus Jason Todd, who originally had pretty much the exact same personality as his predecessor’s youthful incarnation, as the new Robin. The Nightwing half of the equation worked nicely, but the Robin side still needed a bit of tinkering…

JASON TODD – V2
In 1986, following Crisis On Infinite Earths, Frank Miller changed Batman—and comics—forever with The Dark Knight Returns. A year later, he hammered home the point with Batman: Year One. For better or worse, the “grim and gritty” era of comics had begun, an age tailor-made for the hope-battered pessimists who had grown out of 80’s excess. This was a world that had no place for a Robin who bounced about while dispensing quips, but yet there Jason Todd was, so he was retooled to try and serve as the identification character for a new generation of young readers. Jason became a young hoodlum from a broken home whom Batman was attempting to rehabilitate through crime-fighting. This new Robin had a mean streak, fought dirty, treaded the line between justice and vengeance with not always so much regard—and was not well-liked at all. Young readers had no desire to imagine themselves as a jerk with violent tendencies, no matter how grim the world may have become, while slightly older readers still preferred the more three-dimensional Nightwing as their avatar of choice. In short: comic book readers in the late 80’s did not want a Robin (or maybe they wanted Carrie Kelly, but they never got her, so it was a moot point). In 1988, Jason Todd was (allegedly) murdered by The Joker who served as stand-in for an audience who voted Robin dead via a 900 number.

TIM DRAKE
It only took about a year for DC to give it another shot with a new Robin following the demise of Jason Todd, but as the 90’s appeared on the horizon, a lot more thought was put into the creation of Tim Drake. Another comics boom was just around the corner, and with the “Batman” movie having hit big in 1989, a burgeoning group of young readers was descending upon the industry and the character. However, the kids of the 90’s were a different breed from their 1940’s counterparts who fueled Robin’s initial birth (and I can speak from experience here): with the increased emphasis on things like television and movies plus a superior education system and the early onset of the Internet among another advancements in computers and technology, a child raised in the 90’s tended to be generally less physically orientated and more cerebral. This was taken into account with Tim Drake, a character who in many ways resembled a young Peter Parker more closely than he did Dick Grayson, stumbling into a place in the Batman family due to impressive powers of deduction and a knack for cracking computer codes. Tim was a nice, likable kid, but also far more down-to-earth than circus performer Dick or car thief Jason; he still had a living parent, he was ok but not great with girls, and he had to learn to fight rather than just taking to it intuitively. Basically, even if Tim Drake as Robin wasn’t necessarily a role kids in the 90’s and beyond felt they could aspire to, he still seemed like a guy you’d want to hang out with. In his own way, Tim connected with the audience just as Dick had originally done half a century earlier, and perhaps even more successively as DC was able to parlay his solo adventures into an ongoing title that ran well over 150 issues and continues in spirit today as Red Robin. The success of Tim Drake as Robin demonstrates clearly that the character can remain viable so long as it changes with the times to fit the broadest audience.

DAMIAN WAYNE
And that brings us to maybe the most intriguing Robin of them all: Damien Wayne, the quite possibly sociopathic son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul who has wrapped his hands firmly around the neck of the Boy Wonder legacy and squeezed. So is Damian’s ascension to the role of Robin a sign that the kids of today can relate to a pint-sized nut job who likes to mouth off to Alfred and cut bad guys’ heads off? Hardly. I think Damian—and the dimension he’s brought to his role in a relatively short time—is indicative of the fact that these days comics does in large part play to an older audience, and there aren’t a lot of kids who need Robin to be their “way in” to Batman comics. For one thing, Tim Drake is still around as Red Robin and functions much the same as he has the past 20 years for younger readers who need somebody to relate to. For another thing, I think readers of today, even kids, don’t have that stigma of not being able to put themselves in Batman’s shoes that was there in the 40’s; they’re a generation who has been raised to dream big and thus they’re not going to settle for being the sidekick when they can be the hero.

And of course to finish, the richly ironic fact is that the current Batman is one the average reader can relate to probably a lot easier than they could Bruce Wayne, because, coming full circle, the Dark Knight of today is none other than…Dick Grayson. The more things change, eh?

Five Comics Worth Reading - Feb. 2010

In the nascent days of this blog, I used to do a weekly feature called Five Comics Worth Reading, where I picked out some books I enjoyed and gave little capsule reviews. It wasn’t long for this world because I’m really not great at reviews and didn’t like having that mandate hanging over my head every week, taking away a bit from the pure joy of just reading my comics (kudos to those who can do it; you’re better than me).

However, every now and again I read a comic and am just like “Wow, this book is sick,” but don’t always have more than a few sentences to say about it, let alone a whole post. To that end, with no ambitions whatsoever of any sort of regular schedule, I am gonna bring back 5CWR periodically to babbly about books I’m really digging.

Books like these.

DAYTRIPPER
I read the first issue of this series just because Ryan said so and was pretty well blown away not even knowing what the high concept was, just digging the writing and art. The twin brother team of Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon deliver a pretty standard “day-in-the-life” story about an average thirty-something going about his day, but I mean “standard” only in the sense that the events of the issue were (until the end) ostensibly mundane; however, despite the average nature of what’s going on, Ba and Moon have a way with their words of investing you in this man’s life and making the end of the issue all the more poignant.

I apologize for the vagueness here as I know it must be more than a bit frustrating, but I had no idea what this book was about going in, and that totally helped me enjoy it all the more, so if there is anybody out there who’s in the position I was, I want you to take a leap of faith and have a similar experience. The ending is key to what the whole series is about, and to give it away would be to spoil issues two and three as well, both of which also have that same quality of being beautiful in their take on the ordinary, but also begin bringing in a more sweeping sense of romance and grandeur.

The art—also a collaboration between the brothers—is gorgeous, with every person and every scene bursting with detail and unconventional beauty, as anybody who has followed their work on Umbrella Academy or Casanova would expect.

I wanna say more, but seriously, just trust me on this one and go find the first three issues.

IRREDEEMABLE
Yes, the whole “What if Superman went bad?” motif has been done to death a zillion times since the dawn of time, but for whatever reason, I’m totally into Irredeemable in a way I wasn’t with all those others.

It may be because Mark Waid is such a fan of Superman and the whole heroic ideal that he really takes care when toying with it; there’s no sadistic glee you find in most of those pastiches (ok, maybe a little), but rather a great deal of care taken and a sense of “yeah, that’s how it would happen,” that comes from knowing Waid has absolutely thought this through. The motivations and fallout are meticulously thought out and add up (to the degree such things can in a book about super-powered demigods in spandex).

Peter Krause’s art has a sorta Dan Jurgens vibe going for it that fits the story well. He infuses the really horrific stuff Waid is putting out there with a sense of innocence gone horribly awry that twists your stomach in the right ways.

Beyond the initial shock factor of seeing the world’s greatest hero annihilating continents with his heat vision, there are also mysteries and tangential threads being laid out like mines by Waid and I enjoy seeing them go off with the precision he intended while I struggle to figure out who I’m supposed to be rooting for; good stuff here.

THE PUNISHER
I’m sure there were plenty of folks out there who didn’t think turning The Punisher into a Frankenstein monster and having him hang out with Morbius and Werewolf By Night was a good idea (probably right here on this very Internet).

They were right; it was not a good idea.

It was a great idea!

Punisher is such a hugely entertaining comic right now it’s insane, and this is coming from somebody who has never been able to get into the character. Rick Remender has done a complete 360 in that he took a concept so wonderfully entertaining in its utter ridiculousness and then brought it full circle into a story that is completely compelling and perfectly fitting for the character.

I love that Remender is doing all this crazy shit but at the end of the day, in the context it is put in, IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE! Yes, if The Punisher went up against an entire team of ruthless super villains with the kind of power and carte blanche the Dark Avengers have, the son of Wolverine would totally end him. And yes, because he lives in a world where radiation doesn’t kill you but gives you fantastic or horrible powers and giant guys in purple suits try to eat or planet, it is not inconceivable in the least that a group of monsters would patch him up and turn him into a Frankenstein because they need a strategic mind to save their asses.

The latest issue—in which Dan Brereton illustrated the hell out of a flashback sequence telling the origin of Hellsgaard—was another quantum leap of awesome as we realize the bad guy Punisher is going after is basically him but replacing the figurative monsters who killed Frank Castle’s family with literal monsters who killed his own. The fact that this doesn’t even faze Frank as he prepares to go to war is a juicy little morsel that I’m interested to see get picked up down the road either as an Achilles heel or further evidence that The Punisher is so far gone a parallel like that means jack to him.

It’s also worth noting that Tony Moore draws not only the best vampires and werewolves in comics, but also does crazy fight scenes like nobody’s business. I love the liberties he’s not afraid to take with established characters and really hope he gets to draw more of them.

RED ROBIN
I forget sometimes how much I like the character of Tim Drake because a lot of the time he just gets written as “Robin” with folks forgetting that behind the mask he is so far removed from Dick Grayson, Jason Todd and particularly Bruce Wayne. He’ll never be the fighter that Bruce or Dick were, but he makes up for that with his brains and the fact that he’s probably the best natural detective out of the bunch. He’s also the happy medium between Dick’s carefree swashbuckler and Bruce’s grim and hopeless creature of the night.

Chris Yost totally understands this and is making me remember more and more in every issue of Red Robin why this character rocks.

As Red Robin, Tim is refreshingly human, making mistakes but working through them and being driven by faith in his own inherent belief more than any sacred vow or thirst for vengeance. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and it bites him in the ass more than a couple times, but he has an incredible skill set and ability to think on his feet that Yost is extremely apt at showcasing.

I’m also quite a fan thus far of Yost’s new potential love interest for Tim, Tam Fox, as she’s got a good bit of her own capability but also enough damsel in distress in her to keep things interesting; her being Lucius Fox’s daughter is a neat and clever spin as well.

But I honestly realized how much I am getting out of this comic in the latest issue where Tim has both an awesome fight with Killer Moth and then a great emotional hugging scene with Superboy where he breaks down in tears of joy over his best friend being alive that felt so sincere; Yost is so good not just at writing convincing young adults, but also at positioning action and emotion in perfect harmony with one another.

X-FACTOR
I know there’s a school of thought that Peter David’s writing on ongoing series tends to be too dense for new readers to navigate in easily, and maybe it’s true, but at the same time if you invest the time in his stories, you’re pretty much always guaranteed one helluva return.

I really respect how long PAD sticks around on books, be it a decade on Incredible Hulk, five uninterrupted years on Young Justice, or so forth. I love that he lays out long-term plans, commits to them, changes on the fly if necessary, but generally tries to stay the course on the big characters arcs he’s mapped out and epic stories he’s lad the tracks for. I enjoy the in jokes rewarding folks who have read the book for awhile and the pay-offs that are a long time coming but worth it.

Such is the case with X-Factor, where David has been hard at work for five years, building an impressive cast, imbuing them with great personalities, weaving a tangled web of interpersonal dynamics, and just having a good time.

He just wrapped a year-long time travel story he’d been building for some time before that, and now we’ve got the incredible eclectic cast of Jamie Madrox, Strong Guy, Siryn, Rictor, Monet, Darwin, Longshot, Shatterstar and Layla Miller going in a bunch of different directions that include diffusing an international incident, trying to locate the missing Invisible Woman, and moping in Ireland.

Honestly, the incredible mix of 80’s, 90’s and today B and C-listers I just rifled off as a team roster should have piqued your curiosity enough, but if you come for that, stay for the wit, the well-spun mysteries, the crazy twists, the heartfelt dysfunctional family, etc.

A Semi-Rant About the Secret Identity

I've been thinking a lot about secret identities lately for some reason. I know I'm not the only one, because double lives have been the subject of a lot of thought-provoking works of fiction, both in and out of comics (but mostly in).

During the Golden Age and particularly in the Silver Age, the secret identity was more of a gimmick or storytelling tool than something that drove real drama. It was a way to keep the heroes out of (presumably) dull committed relationships (the classic Superman-Lois Lane-Clark Kent love triangle model) and also provide goofy gags as mysterious absences needed to be explained in "hilarious" fashion. Rather than facilitate any interesting conflict, it seems like the early secret identities sidestepped that as heroes never needed to face the consequences of their actions.

This all changed with the advent of the Fantastic Four and then Spider-Man. With the FF, you had to the best of my knowledge the first high profile super heroes whose identities were public (and please correct me in the comments if I'm wrong on that score). Spider-Man took the Clark Kent idea to the next level with Peter Parker, who was every bit the wallflower, and a guy the average comic reader was supposed to be able to relate to better than a larger-than-life dude in tights. Clark Kent was mild-mannered and all, so he was relatable to a degree, but he was also an alien and a grown man; Peter Parker was close to the median age of readers and, spider powers aside, a normal dude.

I wasn't exactly raised on Spider-Man comics, but I've always recognized the historical significane of the character as far as being a trendsetter, and his secret identity was no exception there. Peter Parker didn't smile and wink at the end of a story because he had fooled Betty Brant into thinking he wasn't Spider-Man, he agonized because he had an alter ego where he was powerful, bold and charismatic--and he couldn't tell anybody about it. He had to pretend to keep being a dweeb when he knew there was a special person inside.

That's why secret identities are so powerful in comics (and elsewhere): We've all got something inside us we want the world to know about, but for whatever reason, we don't get to share it. I think in a most cases people imagine themselves as somebody else, be it somebody more famous, stronger, smarter, or whatever; in our dreams, these are the secret identities we can't reveal to the world. Folks who like to escape in the world of fiction are especially indicative of these feelings, so it's no wonder these double lives so fascinate and captivate us.

Like I said, I didn't read much Spider-Man as a kid, and by the time I did, Peter Parker was married with a wife with whom he could confide how special he really was. Infact, in a lot of the comics I grew up reading, the secret identity was de-emphasized to a large degree because a lot of the characters who traditionally kept secret lives had married or at least were in committed relationships where their significant others knew what they did (Superman had married Lois Lane, after all). A lot of other characters like Wally West had gone the public identity route. And then there were the X-Men who never really seemed to need secret IDs.

It was actually the third Robin, Tim Drake, who I read the best secret identity stories about. Chuck Dixon did some really interesting stuff with Tim being unable to have a healthy relationship with either his girlfriend or his father because of the secrets he was keeping. It created great drama that was only enhanced by the fact that Batman just didn't seem to get it. It's often said with Batman that he is the true identity and Bruce Wayne is the mask, so it was (and still is) interesting to see the smartest guy in the DC Universe unable to puzzle out something like why a teenage kid would want to tell the hot chick he's dating that he doesn't get all those black eyes from getting his ass kicked, he's actually out fighting crime every night.

I guess I've always found the secret identities that suck to be more interesting than the ones that are actually pretty sweet (not to keep harping on poor Superman, but outside of the brilliant movies by Richard Donner, I never bought that Clark Kent's schlubby existence was that bad). I'm not saying I've had a terrible life by any means, but I could certainly relate to wanting girls to know how secretly cool I was and feeling sometimes like I was trapped by an insecurity I knew I could release if only I had a snug pair of red and green tights.

Uh, belay that last part.

It also made the super heroes who were able to share their identities with other seem that much cooler. Superboy got to be Superboy 24/7 and his life rocked. Nova had to keep his secret from the general public, but his family knew, he had rad friends with similar issues in the New Warriors, and he had a hot super hero girlfriend in Namorita. Years later when Geoff Johns puts the genie of Wally West's life as the Flash back in the bottle, his connection to Linda only seemed that much more impressive because she shared his burden.

Given that those were the characters I really dug growing up, I never really took much stock in the secret identity. I didn't think it was a big deal. Sure there were those great Robin stories that I mentioned, but in the 90's they were more th exception than the rule.

Ironically enough, it was the Spider-Man movies that taught me the value of the secret identity in dramatic storytelling. I got to see in digestible two-hour drops all those classic, tragic Spidey stories where he went through so much agony by shouldering the pain of his struggles alone. When he told Mary Jane the truth at the end of the second flick, I got it. All the crap he went through sweetened the payoff. Of course it also eliminated all that great tension, but you always have to find that next story...

Ultimately, I think there's room for characters with secret identities, with public identities, with identities only their loved ones know, and for the X-Men too. It's all part of that beautiful tapestry that is comics. On some level, I like being able to relate to the struggles of Spider-Man and Robin as they have to let romance fall by the wayside to do their duty. I also want to escape with Superboy and Nova into a world where being rad is a way of life and all your friends come along for the ride. It's all good.

I'm not sure how much I really said in the course of writing a lot, but like I said, I've been thinking a lot about secret identities lately for some reason, so there you go.