We Are Dead Robins?

In DC’s current continuity, there have been four official Robins, and three of them have been dead for times ranging from a few minutes to maybe a year or so. (The second Tim Drake is the one who’s never died, even a little. Yet.)

But for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Sensational Character Find of 1940, the publisher has unleashed a big crop of wannabe Robins in a magazine called We Are Robin. That provides lots of young people to die heroically before their time. Indeed, one character died in the first story arc, and the current crossover is titled “The Robin War,” so there will be more casualties.

The first few issues of We Are Robin reminded me most of the opening issues of Runaways, a series that Brian K. Vaughn and Adrian Alphona created for Marvel Comics back in 2003. Both stories follow a band of teenagers with a wide range of ethnicities, class backgrounds, personal looks, and speaking styles. So far, however, none of these Robins has grown on me, and that’s kind of important if I’m going to care about whether they’ll die.

I do like the idea of ”Robin” as not simply an individual or a job, but an ideal.

Inspiration for the Last Man on Earth

Earlier in the week I posted a couple of panels from Y: The Last Man, an adventure (but not superhero) comic series from Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra.

The premise of Y: The Last Man is that a global plague has killed all the men on Earth save one: a slacker escape artist named Yorick. When I described this to my mother, she said that only men would come up with this scenario. And indeed, when Bill Haley and the Comets sang of the same premise in the song "Thirteen Women," it was clearly male fantasy.

But in the comic, Yorick doesn't enjoy the new world much. Not only does he want to remain true to his girlfriend, who was on the other side of the world when the plague struck, but the female survivors are divided on what to do with him. Not a small number want to turn him into a sex slave, kill him, or dissect him for his Y chromosome.

But Yorick, with the help of a female government agent, a female scientist, his pet monkey, and other helpful folks, keeps chugging along. What in his childhood prepared him for such perseverance? What could inspire him to keep going? One clue might appear in this flashback panel of little Yorick with his big sister, Hero.
And a close-up.
I'm just saying.