What's Wrong With Robin?

The obvious first answer is that Bill Willingham is just killing time. You can tell from the series of seemingly pointless fight issues, that he's been told "don't do anything major with the character, just leave him for the new creative team coming on at One Year Later".

While for me personally, the artwork has been a stumbling block (Scott McDaniel is a nice upgrade over Damion Scott, whose fight scenes were almost incomprehensible at times, but McDaniel's style seems too blocky, I guess), the stories themselves haven't grabbed me and for that, the blame falls to the writer.

Two things: First, Bill Willingham seems to be a pretty good writer. I mean, it's hard to find a blog that doesn't sing his praises for Fables, so clearly we're talking about someone with talent, not Chuck Austen (damn, there goes my resolution to stop taking shots at Chuck Austen). Second, as I've said before, I feel like the book's been hamstrung by the deaths of Jack Drake and Stephanie Brown, and I don't know how much control WIllingham had over that. It may have been something he had no choice about, but it may have been something he thought was a great idea. If that's the case, he's an idiot. Still the loss of those two characters highlights what I think is the major missing component in the book, especially since War Games.

Tim Drake.

I'll admit this is a bias of mine. I think that Robin, like Spider-Man, is most effective as a character when having to balance super-hero and civilian activities. But since Tim moved to Bludhaven, how much of that have we seen? We saw him go to public school, not react well to what was admittedly some pretty insensitive questions from the other students, and that was pretty much it. 'Uncle Eddie' shows up and pulls Tim from the school, and that's the end of that. We don't see Tim trying to deal with the fact he's made himself highly unpopular, and so maybe he tries to make some friends.

Heck, Tim's stepmom is in a mental health facility, and he hasn't visited her once. Not once! Alfred has been there at least twice that we've seen.

The closest we came to Tim Drake moments was when Darla Aquisita showed up again. That's cool, she had been very interested in Tim before she got shot, and Tim and Stephanie had been drifting a bit, so there was a human element there. Of course now Darla is 'Warlock's Daughter' and she's here to kill Robin, so Tim has a bit of a conundrum. And that was actually a nice issue. Both parts of his life conflict, but it's the exception.

Here's why this bothers me. Tim has said, on more than one occasion, he doesn't want to be Batman, and he certainly doesn't want to be the gun-toting version of himself he saw in the future. I think. He's made some comments about wanting to shoot criminals and only maybe being joking, plus all the time he spends with these military folks. . . Anyway, so supposedly Tim wants to be a great crimefighter/detective, but not a closed off, no life person like the Batman. And Tim does still have friends, and he does still have fun. . . with the Titans. As Robin. But when your whole life is what you do when you have that mask on, and there isn't anything else to you, then I think you're pretty close to becoming Batman. I mean let's face it: Bruce Wayne might as well be a holographic image for as real as he is right now, and Tim Drake seems to be in danger of going the same route.

Or maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe it's just a phase, and the new creative team will get Tim back into more 'real people' stuff. If DC really plans to go in a lighter direction, then that would make sense.