Tim's Past as Robin Retconned out of the new Teen Titans Trades

[espanolbot]

Panel as it appeared in the issue,



And then in the trade,



And again, here is the panel from the issue,



While in the trade the last three captions, mentioning previous incarnations of the Teen Titans, have been removed entirely.


Censorship is fun! ^^

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/09/16/retconning-robin-out-of-teen-titans-1/

Comments

[silverhammerman]

Setting aside my hate for DC's stupid retcons and lack of any clear plan for their history, I'm baffled by the decision to make Tin not a Robin. He was Robin for a couple decades and made appearances in several cartoons as Robin, he's recognizable, a trait that DC covets with an utterly reckless abandon, see what they did to the Batgirls to try to be more iconic, yet they get rid of him. I'm wager he's a more well known Robin than Jason, outside of the whole "Robin who got killed thing" so it makes not sense to me to get rid of him. If the fabled genuinely new customer who has never read comics before customer that DC claims to be courting but has done absolutely nothing to actually bring in comes in having seen the cartoons and knowing that Tim Drake is or at least was Robin, he's going to be told that he's wrong based on the whims of a writer and editorial mandate.
If DC really wanted to get rid of a Robin they should have ditched Damian. I don't dislike the character, but I don't think he's appeared in an other media yet, so his profile is lower, and I know for a fact that people who don't read comics are likely to greet the fact that Robin is actually Batman's kid no with the opinion that that's stupid. But then DC would have to go against Morrison, and since they seem to be prioritizing the wishes of capricious talent over having a cohesive and logical universe, that seems unlikely.

[ablackraptor]

That's what I've been thinking. Honestly Damian has grown on me quite a bit, but he'd be the obvious choice to retcon out. The explanation they gave doesn't even make sense. Wouldn't taking a name that sounds a lot like it be just as shoe stepping into as just taking his name? And, again, other writers have already established that he's a Robin. Consistency and logic, they're like Kryptonite and Red Sunlight to the DCnU.

[sistermagpie]

But Damian is biologically related to Bruce Wayne, which makes him instantly more interesting and more Robin than anyone else!

Seriously they really do seem to have a fetish for the idea of Bruce having a biological child who is therefore special. Part of it is probably also that they're enamored of the character currently because they like him, but they seem to love the idea of bio-Robin.

[kenn_el]

Tim's appearance in the toons was often not the Tim from the books, though. In the first animated series, for example, his origin was Jason's. I have nothing against Tim, but as the 'middle child' he was the most likely to be jettisoned. This whole kerfuffle just shows me that not enough thought went into the hasty reboot.

[silverhammerman]

The point stands though, a person has more chance of making the connection "Tim Drake = Robin" than they do "Jason Todd = Robin" just because of name recognition from the show. It doesn't particularly matter that Tim on that show was basically just Jason with a happier ending, it matters that he was called Tim.
You do make a good point about Tim being the middle child though. Dick, Jason and Damian all have significance as story beats for Batman, Dick is the one who first drew him out of the darkness and then grew up and became his own man, and Jason is/was Batman's greatest failure as a hero/parent, he let his sidekick be killed and then his sidekick wound up a murderous antihero. Damian is defined as the one who's Batman's biological kid, which like I said, gets described as a stupid idea by non-fans since it removes the nuance of the relationship, but does have a grain of an idea. Tim, by comparison doesn't have as much obvious narrative weight, he's just a plucky kid who took up with Batman.
Now that I've actually gone through them like this I think you make a fairly good point. I still think that Tim's greater name recognition is a good enough reason to keep him on, but I do see your point. Plus getting rid of Damian would derail Morrison's whole Batman thing which would suck since he's been working on it for years.
I really just wish we didn't have to weigh the artistic merits of the characters like this in order to justify stupid retcons. The old continuity was really quite straightforward in most places and it didn't need to be changed to fit some arbitrary 5 year time limit.

[kenn_el]

I agree with you, though I also see the DC Comics' point that a simpler universe is easier to get into. Five Robins and four Batgirls (if you include the hyphen) must be quite daunting. I'd chuck Damian and Tim if I had to do a compression. I like the way the Damian character is portrayed, but I hate the biological kid thing. It makes Bruce seem stupid, and it removes the choice inherent in choosing a partner. But I'm sure, as you pointed out, that Damian was a dealbreaker in keeping Morrison.
Bottom line, of course, is that if DC had the courage of their convictions, they'd start from scratch, and we wouldn't be trying to figure out what exists and what doesn't. Which is why the only series I'm stuck on is Earth 2, which is rebooting done right.

[oddityangel]

I honestly don't think Tim has that great of name recognition beyond comic book/older fans, which is to say he's not recognizable to the public as a whole. Almost everyone who knows Batman knows he's Bruce Wayne, but I've rarely met a casual fan who can name a Robin (and if they can it's typically Dick). The person behind the Robin mask just isn't that important to most people.

And I do think the other four (five, if you count Carrie) occupy interesting niches that Tim does not.

[jaybee3]

What they really should have done was just have 2 Robins for it to make sense - Dick who grew to be Nightwing and Damien who replaced him just a few years ago (new DCU time). It's their insistence on keeping Tim and Jason as Robins or even quasi-Red Robins (while pretending Stephanie and Cassandra don't exist- each of them already had non-Batgirl identities and wouldn't have been problematic to shoehorn back in) that's messed up the timeline.

They should have just started over from scratch like they did with Wonder Woman, Superman and Green Arrow. It would have been less problematic.

[sistermagpie]

Yeah, the thing with Tim was he made perfect sense when he was Robin, the one who wasn't going to die like Jason or have conflicts with Dick and Bruce like Damian, the one who didn't want to do this forever but might anyway. But as an ex-Robin he's like a second middle child, the one without the defining rebellion.