The Return of Red Robin Reviewed

The great strength of scripter Christopher Yost’s twelve issues of Red Robin, as I discussed in the last weekly Robin, arises from how they fit into DC’s larger story for Tim Drake over the last several years.

That integration into the larger DC Universe also creates the biggest hole in Yost’s story, now collected in volumes subtitled The Grail and Collision.

As usual, there were crossovers between this magazine and others. Collision includes a necessary issue of Batgirl, and reads better if you also know the Superboy tale in Adventure Comics, #3. Between the two Red Robin volumes came DC’s “Blackest Night” saga, which doesn’t affect Tim’s story, despite all the times he refers to it.

But the big hole opened up because of a non-crossover. Red Robin has to fit into DC’s main storyline for Batman. For the last several years the person driving that bus has been scripter Grant Morrison. He came up with the ideas for Damian Wayne as a new Robin, Bruce Wayne being cast back in time, Dick Grayson taking over as Batman, Bruce coming back, and more. And it’s only fair that Morrison’s gotten to tell that big story.

Morrison doesn’t show much of a feel or feeling for Tim Drake, however. He’s been drawing inspiration from pre-1971 Batman stories and from friendly rivalry with highly touted tales by Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Mike W. Barr, and others. As for Tim, introduced in 1989 and not appearing in those graphic novels, Morrison has hardly used him at all.

Certain traits set Tim off from other Robins: computer savvy, detective skills, earnestness, particular friends. Some Batman stories feature Tim without showing any of those characteristics. Batman: City of Crime, for example, is a thought-provoking story of Gotham with a generic Robin in Tim’s costume. (The artist Ramon Bachs worked both on that book and some issues of Red Robin.)

The few times Grant Morrison has used Tim in his Batman tales fit that pattern. Morrison’s character fulfills several of the “Reasons for Robin” storytelling needs—sounding board, boy hostage, emotionally open contrast—but he’s not individuated. It’s been up to other writers to carry Tim Drake’s story along.

In Red Robin, #1, Yost shows Tim becoming convinced that Bruce Wayne isn’t dead, but the magazine doesn’t—can’t—show us why. We readers have to trust that Tim’s relying on clues, not wishful thinking. In issue #4, he comes across hard physical evidence that Bruce has been cast back in time. Those tidbits provide a motivation for Tim’s quest in Eurasia, and provided DC’s readers timely hints about how Bruce would return.

That beginning sets up Red Robin as a quest to find Bruce Wayne through detective work and rooftop combat, but Yost couldn’t follow through. Morrison was writing the main story of solving the mystery and retrieving the victim over in Batman and Robin and The Return of Bruce Wayne.

The result includes some awkward storytelling. Throughout Collision Tim’s narrative voice talks about not telling Dick of the evidence he’s found in the Mesopotamian desert, about how the knowledge that Bruce is stuck in time might die with him. Tim’s illogical silence was necessary to keep the mystery going in Batman and Robin.

In Red Robin, #12, on reuniting with Dick for the third time, Tim finally announces: “Bruce is alive. He’s lost in time, and I can prove it.” To which Dick answers, “...Okay. We’ve got a lot to talk about.” Because he’s already made the same discoveries, just a few months after Tim. One page at the end of that magazine confirms that back in issue #1 Tim saw the same clue Dick spotted in Batman and Robin, #10.

And by then the hole is wide open. Tim sets out on a quest, and never gets to fulfill it. Instead, he’s knocked off course by a collision with villain Ra’s al Ghul. In this twelve-issue saga, Tim succeeds in saving the lives of the people closest to Bruce, and Bruce’s fortune, but he doesn’t save Bruce, or even play a major role in doing so. There’s a gap between the story’s satisfying internal arc of character growth and change and its more constricted external arc.

That said, in follow-up magazines Tim plays a more important role in Bruce Wayne’s actual return, marshaling fellow heroes to help. And after taking over Red Robin, scripter Fabian Nicieza and artist Marcus To were free to show the moment when Tim welcomed back his adopted father.

Red Robin Reviewed

Back when DC Comics was launching its Red Robin magazine, the company arranged for scripter Christopher Yost to speak to Comic Book Resources.

The result was a curious interview since Yost not only couldn’t talk about his own storytelling surprises, but he also couldn’t even confirm that he was writing about Tim Drake. The oversold Battle for the Cowl was still going on, and DC didn’t want to confirm that Dick Grayson would soon be Batman and Tim would be Red Robin—as if anyone had any doubt.

Yost did drop one name in that interview, however—the name of Jason Bourne. He compared his protagonist to that amnesiac former agent:

This character is a very motivated person. And they’re looking for something. And that quest is going to take them all over the world. I guess if we had a model, it would be the something like “The Bourne Identity.” It’s got that kind of action and that kind of international feel to it.

That allusion seems casual in a studied way, but it became clear that the Bourne movies were the model for these Red Robin issues when the first series penciler, Ramon Bachs, also spoke to CBR after the first issues had come out:

“Everything in this book reminds me (and I hope the reader) of spy movies. As Chris said, everything is going to have a similar flavor to the one of the ‘Bourne’ movies.”

And why shouldn’t DC try to create its own Jason Bourne? Those movies are a successful thinking-man’s action franchise, managing to provide traditional espionage thrills in an ultra-connected age.

Yost’s Red Robin adventures, now collected in volumes subtitled The Grail and Collision, offer several variations on the Bourne movies formula. Young man alone on a quest across Eurasia? Check. Furious hand-to-hand battles on exotic rooftops? Check. Young woman caught up in this mess and in need of rescuing? Check. Seemingly infinite supply of killers for hire? Check. Character on cell phone revealed to be speaking from a nearby building instead of far away? Check. Mystery that the hero solves by returning the home he fled? Well, more about that next week.

To make Tim a loner, Yost had to show him breaking ties with all the people he loves in Gotham and the Titans. Of course, Yost also needed to get the story rolling with lots of action and mystery. He therefore broke up those interpersonal confrontations and goodbyes over several issues, which all jump back and forth in time from “Before” to “Now.”

The second volume continues in the same manner for a while, except that most of its “Before” bits show the creation of the Council of Spiders, a group of murderers intent on taking down the League of Assassins. (There are also the Seven Men of Death. As I said, seemingly infinite supply of killers.)

While that “Before/Now” structure provides some confusing moments, especially for readers also trying to fit these episodes with the concurrent Batman happenings, I think it ends up being part of the books’ appeal. The structure becomes a puzzle for us to piece together, like the overall arc. Tim Drake is a cerebral character, and Yost shows us his immediate tactical thoughts but not his long-term strategic thinking. Is he really working with the villainous Ra’s al Ghul? Will he find Bruce Wayne? (More about that next week.)

By the end of the book, Tim has executed the all-important Turn Toward Home (an idea I plan to develop in my workshop on plotting for next spring’s SCBWI New England conference). He’s back in Gotham. He’s started to mend relationships, especially with Stephanie Brown (ex-Spoiler, ex-Robin, now Batgirl) and Dick Grayson (ex-Robin, ex-Nightwing, now Batman). He’s out of the “bad place” where DC’s editorial plans left him in 2004. There are some fine moments in Yost’s final issues, satisfying both within this adventure and within Tim Drake’s overall history.

NEXT WEEK: But there’s also a big hole in this story arc.

Red Robin’s Sales

Back in 2008, when DC Comics leaked their plans to “kill” Bruce Wayne, have Dick Grayson take over as Batman, and end the runs of the Nightwing and Robin magazines, I posted a sales analysis to analyze why the company was ready to make such a gamble.

The Robin magazine had appeared monthly since 1993. But in the most recent year its sales through the Diamond distributor were stuck at about 26,000 copies a month (except for two issues that were part of heavily promoted crossovers with the Batman stories).

In the following two years, the character of Tim Drake took up a new costume and identity as Red Robin, and a magazine of that name was launched. Twelve issues have now appeared—inaugural writer Chris Yost’s complete run—and the first collection is in stores. We can now evaluate how successful DC’s gamble was.

This graph compares the sales of the first eleven issues of Red Robin (those for which the Comics Chronicles has calculated sales) with the equivalent eleven issues of Robin before DC announced its big plan. There were big sales for the #1 issue, as to be expected, and a drop-off as readers made up their minds about the book. Red Robin sales have now leveled off at a little over 36,000, or more than a third better than Robin. And that’s without the benefit of crossovers, since the point of that first run was Tim Drake being off on his own.

It’s no wonder that Batman group editor Mike Marts told the CBR site in a publicity interview:

“Red Robin” I think was far and away the book that not only met our expectations quickly, but exceeded our expectations. We knew that we had great ideas from Chris Yost. We knew we’d have solid artwork from Ramon Bachs and Marcus To. But the book really took off with the readers, and they embraced it very quickly. I think that book was a surprise within the “Batman Reborn” titles.

Fabian Nicieza has now taken over writing Red Robin from Chris Yost. I thought Nicieza’s closing innings on Robin showed the strains of taking over suddenly, catching up to deadlines, and having to fit into the company’s larger plans. But his fondness for and understanding of the character is clear, and now he has space to spread his wings.