That's the gist of what happened a few weeks ago. After I immediately binged the first two seasons of Young Justice (And got my heart fucking shattered for my trouble) on DC Universe, I started planning on what I wanted to read from their immense catalogue of comics. After a brief foray into the original Suicide Squad run, recommended to me by a friend (thanks Brian! Watching the Squad fight white nationalists in the 1980s was fucking great), I turned to the part of DC I wanted to know the most.
Dick I love cause he's the eldest, the acrobat, the Titan's leader
Barbara I love cause she's intelligent, has er hands in the system at all times
Jason I love because of his riteous fury and his deep core desire to just be wanted
Damian
And then there was Tim. I knew like...next to nothing about Tim a few weeks ago. I knew he was the third Robin...aaaaand really that's all. He was partially the driving force behind my project to read as much Bat Family stuff as possible.
(Fun aside. In my research for this post and the project in general, the "Bat Family" consists of anyone who works in a semi-regular occurrence with the Batman, not just the Robins and Batgirls/women)
I needed to figure out where I was starting. There's 80 years of Batman to cover and my knowledge of the Bat only reaches about as far as the original DCAU goes. Tim Drake starred in his own series that started in 1993 and ran until 2009 so I figured that'd be a good backbone to start with. I figured I'd pick up Nightwing and Birds of Prey as I went along. I never planned to actually read any Batman this whole time if we're being honest. I just wanted to read the stories of the people around him...
The 90s weren't gonna let me do that. Not by a long shot.
Apparently the taste du jour of the 90s Batman was that everything needs to be part of a goddamn crossover event. From Robin Issue one to where I've stopped today on issue 32, I've read four separate multi-comic run arcs that had me darting all across the fucking website trying to follow the story. I only really stopped cause my friend Brian of Suicide Squad fame wanted to possibly catch up to me and join me in my escapades. So I wanted to take the respite in my crossover journeys to start logging exactly what I've read and continue to talk about what I'm reading. So, this is definitely gonna be a more informal rant than my future posts cause I'm going real quick off the top of my head, but...I hope you enjoy my ramblings here? This is more posterity than me thinking anyone will read this. But in case you're reading this in the future, this is where I started.
