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.
Go Forth, Young Man (Robin, Volume 4)
This Robin run starts shortly after the events of Knightfall, which, if you don't know...well...
The overarching theme of the Robin run is focusing on Tim Drake's struggles to balance his life as a crime fighter and his life as a civilian. More interestingly, there seems to be a budding dynamic in the boy wonder involving some level of anxiety over being Robin itself. He feels pressure trying to follow up a perfect "son" like Dick, while having the specter of what the ultimate price could be with Jason. This is something I didn't really know about Tim. Like I said above, I really didn't know much about him before I started this odyssey, so getting this kind of development is great. Development like that and the fact he's apparently a stud.
The blonde bombshell here is Stephanie Brown. Daughter of third rate Gotham villain Cluemaster, her name on the vigilante street is The Spoiler. She's gonna be showing up a lot in the future for me, so it's a good thing I like her. She's also not Tim's girlfriend. He's currently dating a Russian...immigrant? I think? But I don't think Arianna is long for this comic world.
I'm enjoying the romp through Robin stuff so far. But the specific issues I'd recommend are #s 3-5, 15-16, and 25-26. Yes, they all have Spoiler in it. No, that's mostly coincidence.
That Batman's Got a Fucking Flamethrower (Knight's End Crossover)
So Bruce Wayne comes back from his paraplegic European adventures where he gets healed by voodoo (I don't really know I skimmed the summery of Knightsquest and really didn't absorb any of it. I'll go back and read Knightfall and Knightquest at some point.) Bruce can walk now but he's not 100%. He needs to re-learn how to fight. He must relearn the ways of the ninja. I don't....I don't want to spoil it too hard, because how Bruce relearns the martial arts is goddamn ridiculous and explaining it won't do the circumstances justice. But, once he's relearned the ways of Batman, he must fight Azrael for the right to the Cowl. Azrael, on the other hand, basically fucked up Batman's reputation by mowing people down without remorse.All while being tortured by visions of his father and a dead saint. It's neat, plus the last three or four issues of the arc are a prolonged, multi venue fight between Bruce and Paul. Eventually, Bruce (spoilers) wins and send Paul on his way to be dazed and confused. Which leads directly into...
Dick and Tim's Excellent Adventure (Prodigal Crossover)
Two-Face is released from Prison in the stupidest way I've seen in any comic book. He was waiting for his parole hearing, where I assume
the judge would take one look at him and say "fuck off" and send him
back to prison, when some bumblefuck Officer Donuts calls for Harvey Kent to sign his papers and be released. Two-Face, keeping his face at half profile the entire time, walks out of the fucking courthouse. At the start of this arc, Bruce temporarily gives up the Cowl...again...to Dick so that he can...do something, this time not in Europe. So Dick's Batman, but the entire time he has doubts that he can really do this. He reveals to Tim that one time in his tenure as Robin, he failed to save someone from Two-Face doing his 50/50 gimmick, Tim having his own reservations with Two-Face. This whole arc deals with both men's insecurities over being crime fighters and being involved in Gotham's Bat life. We did get some great interactions between the two and eventually with Bruce, giving us the first moments of the Bat Family calling Bruce "Dad", which is my favorite thing. Of all the stuff I've read in the past few weeks, this arc would be the material I definitely recommend. (At the end of this arc, Batman modifies the Bat suit to look more like the Michael Keaton Kevlar armor aesthetic, which is definitely an improvement. This is something of a signal for the modern age truly arriving in my head.)Not The Time KGBeast is Sealed in a Wall (Troika Crossover)
Russians invade Gotham and try to take over the crime world. It went...not great, they're beaten in four issues. The KGBeast comes to be the best part of the whole ordeal, being this affable, Ivan Drago speaking lug who gets his hands on a nuclear bomb the size of a baseball. I will blow it up so you can read what the KGBeast says in all it's glory.
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| Why do people keep trying to blow Robin up? -My friend Zach on seeing this panel |
There's Ninja's on the Fucking Lawn (War of The Dragons Crossover)
A new Crime lord takes over what I believe is a made up Asian country, deciding that he needs to kill the guy in charge of Gotham's Kung-fu rackets or something, who's white and blind. Hijinks ensue as Batman, Robin, Nightwing (!) and Huntress (?!) get caught in the middle of a ninja gang war. It's alright, it was only three issues so it breezed by.
So, I should take a brake to talk about who's all been here in the past few issues. Also, cause I've really got nothing left to say about Ninjas on the Lawn.
Tim Drake's obviously been in every issue so far.
Bruce Wayne's been in most of the issues but not necessarily all of them.
Dick Grayson was in a lot of the issues, but less than Batman, but we're about to be getting into his own solo run, so those numbers are about to be pumped up.
Barbara Gordon was in a few issues as Oracle, but it was never for sustained periods of time.
Helena Bertinelli, Huntress, was in a few issues. Usually she was dealing with gangsters.
Selina Kyle showed up for one issue, and we haven't seen her again since.
Dick Grayson, International Man of Mystery (Nightwing: Alfred's Return)
Alfred has been gone since Jean Paul took over the role as Batman, but Dick misses his grandfather so he tracks him down to England, where he finds him just hanging out with an old girlfriend. All that changes however, when the pair stumble into a conspiracy to blow up the Chunnel so that he and his nationalist friends can rule Great Britain. I am not making this up. They want to like...I don't know, I might be an MBA student but I don't understand money, like sell billions of GBP and somehow control the country. Obviously it's stopped, but it was a wacky adventure that unfortunately was the highlight of an awkward feeling One shot. But it lead to...
Pickles the Goddamn Clown (Nightwing Volume 1)
In issue one, Nightwing gives up. He strips on a rooftop and gives the suit to Batman. But, I don't blame him. you seen his original pair of uniforms?
I'd drop that shit for Bruce to put in the trophy case, too. Thankfully, in the next issue he gets the suit he wears basically today. But the crux of the plot is that Dick wants to live a normal life for once. He wants to eat normal pancakes, watch normal TV, and be in normal boring relationships. And then, he finds a letter. Reading thus,
If you say anything about what you saw, they will kill you and your whole family.
Be warned!
Pickles the Clown
So Dick does the reasonable thing, by crossing the Atlantic Ocean into a fascist maniacal country that's currently going through an ethnic genocide, this just being the backdrop of why Dick is here. In all honestly, the four issue run sums up to nothing at all. No one other than Tom Zucco killed Dick's parents, he crossed into a war torn nation and almost eaten by rats (yep) for nothing, other than to test the waters and see if the comic reading world would accept Nightwing as a solo act. Apparently they would, since we're getting a solo Nightwing run coming up on my timeline! I'm so excited!
As much fun as these comics were to read, it was almost as fun to recap here. I think I'm gonna keep doing this in smaller bursts as I go. I'm just gonna keep pressing forward in the Batman timeline to see what I can find. I hope you'll join me on this bizarre journey, let me know what you think of my recaps and if there's anything you definitely think I should read. See you next time I get around to writing!
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