Im Sure Someone Has Made This List Before. But Ive Recently Reread The Robin (1993-2009) Comics And Realised

i’m sure someone has made this list before. but i’ve recently reread the robin (1993-2009) comics and realised how Batshit Crazy tim’s time as robin was. here’s a list of major events that happened during his tenure:

obeah man???: still not clear on exactly what happened here, but his parents are both poisoned, resulting in his mom’s death and his dad’s long-term coma.

knightfall/knightquest/knightsend: the iconic arc when bane breaks bruce’s back and azrael (derogatory) temporarily becomes batman then quickly goes off the rails and tries to kill tim, forcing him to go solo and work with huntress (hashtag girlboss) before bruce returns and handles azrael

contagion: the incurable Apocalypse Virus™ threatens to wipe out gotham city and tim naturally catches it and nearly dies before bruce returns with The Cure

the final night: a sun-eater tries to Eat The Sun. tim meets impulse! robin and spoiler defend gotham city on their own during the crisis! tim’s girlfriend’s crazy mafia uncle tries to kill him after finding them in bed together (not doing the sexy. but it looked like they were gonna do it.)

cataclysm: a massive earthquake levels half of gotham, throwing the city into crisis and causing some problems in tim’s personal life as his father relocates them to keystone briefly before tim’s misery convinces him to move them back to gotham

no man’s land (a personal favourite): gotham’s post-earthquake crisis worsens and the government decides that the best solution is to declare it no man’s land. shockingly, this causes Even More Problems. there’s a whole thing where tim’s dad realises tim snuck off into the city, and the news about it makes people sympathetic enough to gotham’s (cough a rich white family’s) plight that the government decides to actually help. cass becomes batgirl!

young justice/teen titans drama!: so much went on here. i don’t even know where to begin. the whole imperiex/our worlds at war apocalyptic crisis. tim quits young justice after the thing where the justice league discovers batman’s Super Paranoid Contingency Plans™ causes the team to distrust him. he returns to the team, which is disbanded after a team-up with the titans goes badly. the teen titans is formed. general fuckery involving tim’s civilian life!

unmasked: tim’s dad finds out he’s robin, confronts batman in the batcave with a gun and forces tim to quit. steph becomes robin and cuts off contact with tim. superboy tries to convince tim to come back to teen titans, but tim insists that he’s Totally Happy Just Being A Civilian, Kon. Really. He’s Less Stressed Now That He’s Not Dealing With Constant Crises! (lying)

war games: oh god. we all know this one. gang war! gotham in peril! steph dies! tim meets evil!future batman!tim who murdered the entire rogue gallery with the gun that killed bruce’s parents. tim seriously considers killing himself to prevent this future.

identity crisis: a Mysterious Villain begins targeting families of the justice league. because tim is not allowed to have anything remotely nice, his dad is murdered (by captain boomerang, which is frankly adding insult to injury). tim invents an uncle to avoid getting adopted by bruce (really, kid? really?). bruce finds out and helps him solidify the fake uncle’s identity (bruce no)

robin: to kill a bird: jason todd returns all crazy and nearly kills tim at titans’ tower (dressed in a version of his robin costume) and signs his name in tim’s blood. theatre kid much, jason?

infinite crisis: c’mon dc, you’ve done like four world-ending crises in the last decade. chill your goddamn tits. the teen titans, doom patrol, and justice society of america team up to take down superboy prime. normal superboy dies due to the fight, despite tim’s desperate attempt to find a cure. also bludhaven got nuked and tim’s stepmother gets a traumatic brain injury and is permanently hospitalised. then bruce, tim, and dick go on vacation and tim accepts bruce’s offer to adopt him! yay!

one year later: cass is briefly evil! the league of assassins tries to recruit tim, who barely escapes with his life after turning them down. then he goes a little crazy with grief, tries to clone kon, and has a brief relationship with extreme violence before deciding to break it off.

the resurrection of ra’s al ghul: damian arrives in gotham! and tries to kill tim multiple times! ra’s tries to seduce tim to the Dark Side with the promise of resurrecting his parents! tim refuses! ra’s tries to force bruce to sacrifice either tim or damian to become his new host body! tim tries to sacrifice himself but is convinced by dick to Not Do That at the last minute!

batman r.i.p.: bruce dies, but not really! fun times!

battle for the cowl: i like to pretend this doesn’t exist, because it is Stupid As Fuck. jason nearly kills tim again, but damian (!) rescues him.

red robin: dick makes damian robin. the end!

but not really

and then of course the whole red robin series (which i love) is just like. tim is passively suicidal! tim loses an entire important organ while working with the loa! tim becomes ceo of wayne enterprises then blows up the loa and ra’s almost kills him! tim is nearly raped by one of ra’s’ daughters because ra’s really wants tim’s babies! this is not dealt with at all!!! love that for him

You know what?  I’m not picking a side in this because I get where each of these characters is coming from.  None of them are right and none of them are wrong. Tim has had his entire life burned down again, so many people he loved are dead, and it feels like this is salt in the wound, that he’s being stripped of Robin when he needs it most. Damian is a child who is saying viciously hurtful things, but he thinks he has to fight for his place in anything, he thinks he has to destroy anyone who might come for what he has, he has to destroy Drake to secure a place for himself, because that’s what he’s been taught.  Dick is the only person who has shown him anything stable in this place, of course he’s going to fight with everything he has, he’ll cut open anyone who comes at him, because that’s what’s been hammered into him since he was born. And Dick’s coming at this from his own experiences–he says right there that Tim is his ally, his equal, Dick’s not his mentor.  Dick is asking for someone to help him, not be someone else he has to take care of, because when is it Dick’s turn to mourn his father’s loss, too?  When is it Dick’s turn to mourn that he’s been forced to put on the cape and cowl that he hates wearing?  When is it Dick’s turn to have someone acknowledge that he had to give up his entire life to pick up Bruce’s?  And what is he supposed to do, when he’s trying to hold everything together because everyone else is pulling things apart? Tim’s at the age (and possibly older) than when Dick knew he himself needed to become his own person, to step up into a role that was uniquely his–and I don’t think he’s wrong about Tim being ready for that, either.  Tim is traveling around the world as Red Robin here, he’s doing his own thing, he’s doing his own investigations, Tim is ready to be his own superhero, not the role of Robin. Tim’s holding onto this for what feels like less because he needs the role of Robin specifically, Batman’s protege, and more because he wants to hold onto something familiar.  I keep thinking of that scene in Adventure Comics where he tells Kon about how he tried to clone him, that he knew it wouldn’t be his Kon, but at least it would have been something.  This feels similar, in a lot of ways. Tim wants the familiar, he feels like he’s losing everything he loved, and he just wants something, regardless of whether or not it was the true thing that he was actually longing for.  That’s why he can’t have any sympathy for an eleven year old child who needs a lifeline.  That’s why he can’t see that Dick needs help, rather than help from Dick.  Because Tim’s losses are mounting too fast and too high and it’s ripping him apart. They’re all just barely holding on by their fingertips and have so little left over to give each other, Dick doesn’t have time to be gentle with Tim, Damian doesn’t have the emotional tools to be gentle with anyone, Tim doesn’t have the emotional resources to do more than just make it through the day, they’re all a mess, they’re all not right and they’re all not wrong.

Image: comic page, conversation between Bruce and Alfred: Bruce: Former mayor Armand Krol is dead. Alfred: After escaping the threat of the Apocalypse Virus? Bruce: He didn’t quite escape it. The symptoms of the clench recurred in him. But this attack was was more virulent. It killed him within hours. Alfred: But Master Tim was afflicted– Bruce: I know, Alfred. I know.

Tim’s voice from off-page: You won’t believe who I met tonight, guys–

Final panel is Tim in front of Jason Todd’s memorial case, alarmed. Tim: What is it? Why’re you looking at me like that?

Found it! On the subject of Jason’s memorial case as narrative device, noted in tags that the case is also used visually to indicate that Tim is in danger: no matter how improbable with the layout of the cave, they show it behind him when it turns out the Clench can be recurring.

Wanted to find it for reference. It’s the end page of Robin 1993 issue 31, the one where Tim & Ariana go to a car show and meet Ted Grant (Wildcat).

…oh huh skimmed through the issue looking for this and found this panel

Image: comic panel of part of a conversation between Wildcat and Tim: Wildcat: Call the cops? I thought you and the Bat jumped in where angels feared to tread and all that. Tim: Only when there’s no alternative. I got the job for my sense of caution…

They’re chasing car thieves who made off with a Waynetech prototype. After this Tim winds up jumping into danger anyway ‘cause Wildcat took the lead, but it’s interesting that Tim gets this line when the issue is going to end with a reminder of Jason’s death, and the virus Tim was exposed to while on the job as Robin.

Is Jason actually good with kids, or is that fanon?

Oh, that's definitely a canon thing. Jason has always cared deeply about children and taken great efforts to protect them. Hell, the first comic he showed up in as Red Hood showed him taking control of Gotham's drug dealers and telling them that if they dealed to kids, they'd be swiftly and painfully murdered.

Batman #635

It can be assumed that the reason Jason's so passionate about protecting children and teenagers is because he himself had a crappy childhood. He had to take care of his drug addict mom, then lived on the streets, and then became a child soldier who died before his sixteenth birthday. Jason knows what it's like to have your childhood taken away, so he does what he can to protect the kids of Gotham. It’s like what Selina said about Bruce that one time: “When you take away the cape and the cowl and the capital ‘T’ in ‘The Batman’...he’s all about protecting the innocent.” Bruce and Jason have this in common. 

Batman: Urban Legends #1

Batman: Urban Legends #2

Batman: Urban Legends #6

DCeased: Unkillables #1

Batman Eternal #18

Red Hood: Outlaw Annual #3

Grayson #15

Then there's Jason's relationship with Duela Dent, which I’ve always loved. Jason was the only person who always believed in Duela and genuinely tried to help her, even when she screwed up or seemed "unfixable". No matter how many times she stumbled, he never gave up on her because he has personal experience with needing second, third, and fourth chances. And it worked in the end; Duela gave up the life and went back home to try being a normal girl again.

Red Hood/Arsenal #6

Red Hood/Arsenal #6

Red Hood/Arsenal #9

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #50

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #50

Jason has a similar relationship with Bizarro, treating him with respect and understanding even when everyone else saw him as a monster. Jason saw Bizarro for who he was: a creature with a childlike mentality who deserved his own life, rather than the weapon everyone else thought he was.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #3

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #4

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #7

(The only exception is Damian, who Jason is not afraid to bodyslam into the ground lmao.)

Batman and Robin (2011) #11

Teen Titans (2016) Annual #1

Tim tries to bond with Damaian by going to an art museum and immediately gets arrested as alvin draper

Whumptember 2023 Prompts

rules | alternate prompts | tags and posting | ask box

1. “Did I do good?

Mentor whumper | Young hero | Blood loss

2. “Let me do this for you.”

Sacrifice | Guilt | Caretaker turned whumpee

3. “This can’t be it”

Betrayal | Left to die | Running away

4. “Where are they?”

Kidnapped | Left behind | Desperation 

5. “What do you want me to do?”

Owed a favor | Whispered conversation | Sneaking around

6. “I didn’t do this”

Framed | Bloody clothes | Behind bars

7. “No one will believe you”

Behind closed doors | Fake smiles | Touch aversion 

8. “Don’t come back”

Kicked out | Saying goodbye for the last time | Lashing out 

9. “This was always going to happen”

Doomed relationship | Opposing sides | Fatal wound 

10. “What are you doing to them?”

Brainwashed | Hanging from their wrists | Phone call 

11. “There’s nothing else I can do”

Last resort | Character death | Medical whump

12. “I can’t leave again”

Homecoming | Multiple responsibilities | Failed rescue 

13. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Finally free | Open arms | Clothes that don’t fit

14. “I’m on my way. Just hold on a little longer”

Bleeding out | In and out of consciousness  | Voice cracking

15. “I thought you were dead”

Faked death | Under the radar | Trail of blood

16. “Can I go home now?”

Young whumpee | Captive | Chains around the wrists

17. “Can you come pick me up?”

Sensory overload | Feeling like someone’s watching | Bad luck

18. “You said I’d be safe here”

Ambushed | Paranoia | Being watched

19. “You are not a hero. You’re a child playing dress up. Now take off that silly mask and go home.”

Villain mentor | In over their head | Trembling 

20. “We can’t all win”

Failure | City in ruin | Boot on throat 

21. “Take me with you”

Failed escape | Stumbling | Too weak to move

22. “I’m getting bored”

Captive whumpee | New whumper | Electrocution 

23. “Is that blood?”

Passing out | Hyperventilating | New scars

24. “You have to promise I’ll come back”

Muffled screams | Returning home | Uncommon restraints

25. “I won’t leave you here”

Desperate measures | Fireman’s carry | Head lolling

26. “You aren’t supposed to be here! You have to leave now”

Unexpected visitor | Explosion | Caretaker turned (accidental) whumper

27. “I thought you, of all people, would understand why I did what I did.”

Reluctant villain | Old friends | Cornered 

28. “I never should have let it come this far”

Failed hero | Hospital stay | Begging for help

29. “You told me this was the right thing”

Mislead | Blood on hands | Too late 

30. “You were in my way”

Stabbed in the back | Whimpering | Chained to a wall