Red Robin 1-12: a love letter to continuity
a.k.a. I could footnote this entire run and that’s so much of what I love about it
This is an incredibly minor one-off moment with intense awareness of what’s going on in other comics, done with a thoroughness that is 1) totally unnecessary because 99% of readers will never notice, and therefore 2) SO GREAT
References!!! So many references!!!
(This is a really long post because there are just SO MANY references; I’m so sorry; I’m just very enthusiastic; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!)
Okay! So I like a lot of things about Red Robin 1-12 (such as DICK and TIM), but one of the things I like most about it is pretty low-key: it’s very grounded in continuity, and it really rewards people who’ve read a lot of comics. Chris Yost - who wrote the 12-issue arc that culminates in a fight with Ra’s - is really careful about keeping track of recent events and crossovers and who-knows-what and who’s-friends-with-who, and he brings in characters from Tim’s solo and his team books and past Batman crossovers.
Among other things, Yost explicitly references a ton of characters and events from the final issues of Robin, including:
Tim’s high school friends Zo and Ives, and his contacts Harper and Bard
Tim’s final battle with Shiva in R 183
the new Anarchy killing his siblings in R 182
Dick and Tim’s final encounter in R 183
Tim’s go-to fake name “Alvin Draper” (a deep dive going all the way back to the 90s, when Tim uses the alias in Robin, Young Justice, and issues like Detective Comics 697)
Tim telling Steph to stop wearing the Spoiler costume in R 182 after he finds out she hired someone to attack him in R 177 (…it’s complicated, but look, none of this is Yost’s fault)
Tim worrying that Batman was going crazy in R 176
Tim breaking Jason out of prison in R 182
Yost’s also careful to keep track of and reference events from other comic books around this time, including:
Jason’s murder spree in Battle for the Cowl (and we even get Tim having the logical emotional response of blaming himself for freeing Jason),
Hush replacing Bruce in Batman: Streets of Gotham (and Ra’s tries to figure out what’s going on!),
Superman being the one who (apparently) brings back Bruce’s body in Final Crisis,
the attack of the Justifiers with the Anti-Life Equation in Final Crisis,
Tim and Cassie grieving Conner in Teen Titans,
Tim and Cassie’s goodbye in Teen Titans,
Tim’s meeting with Conner in Adventure Comics (and Tim muses on what Conner deduced about his costume),
Tim’s meetup with Dick in Batman: Blackest Night (and Tim second-guesses not telling Dick about his evidence),
Dick and Damian moving to the Penthouse in Batman, and Steph and Babs moving to the Batcave in Batgirl (when Tim heads to the Batcave, he’s startled to run into Steph instead of Dick, and when Babs calls Dick later, she also calls from there)
But that’s not all! Yost’s also really interested in older comics!
The entire plot of RR is a follow-up on Ra’s’ interest in recruiting Tim from all the way back in the Resurrection of Ra’s al-Ghul crossover!!
plus Yost creates a League character who specifically remembers and references Resurrection,
plus Tim notices that the current White Ghost is different from the old White Ghost,
plus Tim talks to Bruce’s gravestone, much like he talks to his parents’ gravestones in Robin,
plus Cassie mentions Tim’s Batman needs a Robin catchphrase from all the way back in Lonely Place of Dying,
plus in one of Dick and Tim’s fights, Dick says Tim should get therapy in Metropolis, which is a very in-character thing for Dick to think of because Dick himself seeks therapy from a Dr. Parker in New Teen Titans and kinda low-key tries to get informal therapy from Clancy in Brothers in Blood, plus I’m 90% sure that this refers specifically to Dr. Claire Foster, a Metropolis psychologist and minor Superman character (who Yost has Donna suggest that Kory see in the Titans issue he wrote),
plus Dick and Tim have a fight when Tim’s heading to the airport, and the fight starts when Dick tries to grab Tim and hold him back, and Tim throws him off, which is exactly how their fight over the Lazarus Pit in Resurrection starts too,
plus Tim only wins his physical fight with Dick because Dick has second thoughts and backs off and lets him win, rather than actually losing, which—again—is basically how their fight went in Resurrection,
plus Dick’s “Tim’s my equal, Damian’s my responsibility” line is a nice shorthand that’s very in-character and true to how Dick thinks of them in other comics (Dick has a high opinion of Tim and generally thinks of him as an equal or even better than Dick at things in New Titans and Nightwing; Alfred just told Dick that Damian is his “responsibility” in Batman and their relationship will continue to be ‘guardian and child’ in Batman and Robin),
plus RR 1 has some clever visual and verbal parallels to Batman 416, and just generally I love the idea of low-key replaying the Bruce-Dick-Jason / Bruce-Dick-Azrael dustups with a new Dick-Tim-Damian dustup which is both completely different and extremely similar,
plus, Yost adds some fun original characters (Tam and the assassin trio), but without introducing them at the expense of Tim’s previous relationships - Tam and the assassins aren’t the focus in the big finale, and Tim’s traditional friends and allies are,
and Yost neatly introduces the new characters by fitting them into existing mythology (you already know Lucius’s daughter Tiffany, now meet her younger sister; you already know Ra’s has assassins, now learn some of their names).
But wait! I’m not done! There are even more continuity references! Consider how RR keeps track of—and references—what’s going on with non-Batfamily characters:
The Wild Huntsman, an incredibly minor character from Justice League: Europe, shows up to try to stop Tim from stealing from a museum in Germany.
Tim runs into a new Killer Moth and mentions that he’s hard to identify because “the costume and the man” change regularly, and Killer Moth panics and asks if Tim’s with the Atom, which is a reference to the Atom fighting Killer Moth and torturing people in Cry for Justice (and Tim has “no idea” what Killer Moth’s talking about, as indeed he wouldn’t!)
In order to kidnap Hush, Ra’s and his group of assassins have to knock out Katana, because she’s one of the former Outsiders that Dick asked to start guarding Hush in Batman: Streets of Gotham,
The montage of Ra’s’ targets and Tim’s allies spotlights a bunch of lesser-known Batfamily allies and Bruce Wayne love interests from Batman/Batfamily comics through the years!! Man-Bat!! Huntress!!
I’M STILL NOT DONE. Consider how careful Red Robin is about names:
When one of the assassins says, “Flash,” Tim guesses that they probably don’t mean “Wally” or “Mister Allen,” which is a short-and-sweet way of clearly distinguishing between Tim’s relationship to Wally (part of Dick’s generation, someone he’s worked with before) and Barry Allen (older, Tim never met him).
Ra’s al-Ghul calls Tim “Timothy,” just like he does in Resurrection, and Tim remembers that Ra’s usually calls Bruce “Detective,” which nicely sets up the coming-of-age moment when Tim does something clever and Ra’s calls him “Detective”
When Tim says the name “Hush,” Steph misunderstands and thinks he’s telling her to be quiet, because Steph was presumed dead during Batman: Hush so—unlike a lot of the other characters—she has no reason to recognize the name.
Tim’s inner monologue refers to himself as Robin and then he has to course-correct as he tries to figure out what he should call himself (and just in general Tim’s identity-crisis inner monologues where he distinguishes between himself as “Tim Drake” or “Tim Wayne” or “Robin” or someone else are straight from similar musings throughout Robin)
Havey Bullock thinks Tim is Dr. Mid-Nite because their costumes look similar.
Relatedly, Red Robin is careful about keeping track of who-knows-what and which characters have relationships to which other characters. Thus for example:
Alfred doesn’t know that Tim’s taken off until he goes upstairs and finds that his bedroom is empty,
Dick finds out about Tim’s theory that Bruce is alive because Tim tells Cassie and she calls Dick,
Nobody knows Tim’s new codename unless they ask him and he tells them,
Tim doesn’t know that Dick and Damian are now in the Penthouse instead of the Cave (and that Babs and Steph are now in the Cave), because that move happened while he was gone,
Dick finds out that Tim’s in Gotham because Babs calls him to let him know, and Babs knows because Steph got in touch with her when she ran into Tim,
Damian and Prudence recognize each other from Damian’s days in the League.
Also, I am a connoisseur of character flaws and weaknesses and insecurities and mayyyybe less-than-ideal coping mechanisms, and Red Robin is ON POINT. Among other things:
The specific Brucequest plan of “run away from home on an impulsive quest without telling anyone where I’m going” is SUCH a classic Tim Drake response to personal problems I CANNOT TELL YOU. There was the time he ran away to Paris without leaving a note in Robin (while in a guilt-spiral), or the time he ran away from Central City, or the time he snuck into NML, or the time he quit Robin and didn’t tell his teammates, I COULD GO ON,
plus Tim’s insecurities about his place in the family (and the ways he ties that place and his identity to the Robin costume) are straight out of Robin and Nightwing and Damian’s first appearance in Batman and Resurrection, and ditto feeling threatened by Damian and being super-hostile toward him as a result, plus Tim’s idea of Robin both as something you earn and as a symbol of love (and as something that’s Dick’s to give and take) goes all the way back to his origin story,
plus the “I’m fine” line, and lying, and not confiding anything in anyone, and just generally responding to a personal crisis by getting super-involved in crimefighting and pretending he’s totally fine are all Peak Tim Drake, and very reminiscent of how Tim responds to the aftermath of Darla’s death in War Games and the aftermath of his dad’s death in Teen Titans and the aftermath of Dodge’s death in Robin (in Tim’s defense, his role models are Bruce and Dick, so…yeah),
plus in RR 12 Tim’s—not trying to die, he’s trying to win, but he’s also extremely willing to risk or sacrifice his life in ways that the people who love him might be understandably unnerved by, and that feels very true to some moments in Teen Titans,
And this is kind of fuzzier, but one thing that I really, really love about RR is that even though it’s very much a Tim story, it’s got a lot of love for the supporting cast.
Lucius Fox is the one who realizes Hush needs to be stopped and that he can use a legal trick involving Tim to do it, and the reason why he has the authority to pull it off is because that’s how much Bruce trusts him, which is a very nice way of honoring how important Lucius is to Wayne Enterprises and the Batfamily
Bruce is the one who trusted Lucius and trusted Tim in return and that’s why they’re able to pull it off;
Tim only saves the day in the end because he calls on a bunch of Batfamily and Titans allies;
In the finale, Tim loses his physical fight with Ra’s!!! I will never be over how great this is. Tim wins the protect-everyone battle that matters to him, via cleverness and trickery and allies and friends and figuring out what Ra’s is up to and asking the right people for help, but he loses the physical fight, because Ra’s is a fantastic fighter and there’s no possible way for Tim to beat him. How many superhero comics end in a triumph where the character knows he’s gonna lose the physical fight and then does indeed lose it and you’re still cheering for him and understand why it’s a victory? Not a lot.
Ra’s doesn’t lose the battle of wits because he’s an idiot—he loses because he doesn’t anticipate Tim calling on allies, which is a very reasonable assumption because Tim hasn’t been doing that;
plus an after-fight scene tells us that Ra’s wasn’t trying his hardest because this was mostly a test for Tim;
We end not with Tim saving someone but with Dick saving him.
Like. It’s a great Tim showcase that still saves some key BAMF moments for other characters, and it lets Tim have conflict with other people while still keeping the other people understandable and sympathetic, and it does all this while still giving Tim his own genuinely satisfying victories: his hunch that Bruce is alive is right, and his evidence will save Bruce; the final confrontation with Ra’s is enormously fun.
There are also just a bunch of ways the story feels right on a thematic level!
The whole storyline starts with a fight with Dick and ends with a reconciliation with Dick AS IT SHOULD because Tim’s relationship with Dick is at the CORE OF HIS CHARACTER okay i might be a little biased here but I am also RIGHT
Tim figures out that Bruce is alive via a split-second instinctive visual recognition, followed by a bunch of actual detective work to confirm the split-second insight, which is a PERFECT way for Tim in particular to make the deduction because that’s exactly how Tim figures out Dick’s secret identity in Lonely Place of Dying,
Tim’s big issue 12 finale involves him declaring, “I’m not Batman—I have friends,” which is a version of things that Tim says repeatedly in Young Justice and Teen Titans, but more broadly, the importance of “nobody works alone, we have to lean on each other and ask for help” is, like, the Ur-Tim-Drake-thematic thing, the core insight at the heart of Batman needs a Robin,
plus it’s an insight that Tim consistently struggles to apply to himself in Robin and Teen Titans, so Tim forgetting this and relearning it again is a great thematic arc for the whole twelve-issue story
And of course, the big finale ends with Dick CATCHING Tim while he’s FALLING, which is the most thematically appropriate thing you could possibly have happen for those two characters IN PARTICULAR.
And Red Robin works with the other comics and the history of the DC universe and relies on them, as opposed to being its own self-contained solo act that warps everything around it, so on a meta level it’s enacting the same in-universe moral that Tim uses to defeat Ra’s.
IT’S JUST SO GOOD YOU GUYS
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