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[lipsofpoison.insanejournal.com]

I bring you some scans from the Jason story from Legends of the Dark Knight #100. With huge thanks to islwyn who encouraged me to go hunting for this, I found it a very enjoyable issue. Please excuse the slight wonkyness of the scans, my scanner hates me.

It's six months after Jason's training began and he's now an officially trained Robin. He's been really happy all day. This is running concurrently with flash-forwards to Bruce searching for Jason when Jason was searching for his mother during A Death In The Family. This little bit with Alfred, Bruce and Jason was what sparked my love for the story, though.









Then of course, it goes to Bruce finding Jason with this final scan which is pretty much heartbreaking. I like it as an ode to the case, though.

Comments

[runespoor7.insanejournal.com]

the only Robin Bruce has really never sexualized on any level is Tim

Same here, but I'm not sure how much of it is because I have Tim issues and how much is because Tim's best qualities are qualities Bruce cultivates in himself enough that he wouldn't be attracted to them in someone else. What I mean is that Bruce is most often attracted to people who display qualities he himself doesn't have, or that he doesn't allow himself to give free rein to. For instance, both Selina and Dick are a lot more fun-lowing than Bruce lets himself be, as well as more open, and, for lack of a better word, 'brighter'.

Tim's always been more similar to Bruce than the others; it's been a very long time since Bruce wanted Dick to inherit his place, whereas he's been preparing Tim to become Batman, and a Batman very similar to Bruce's Batman at that. Tim's too fascinated by Robin and Dick to be wholly, unquestioningly Robin the way Dick, Jason, and Steph have been. He's obligated to question the legacy in terms of what being Robin means, not just worrying if Batman's not going to be a dick and fire him. (IIRC, he's the only Robin who ever voluntarily said I quit.) That's exemplified - and I can't believe I'm using it to back it up something - with the cases to his dead loved ones, and most of all, with the case of his own Robin costume in Red Robin #2. It's a Batman move, not a Robin one. I've said that Tim's Robin case means that he wants someone else to put on the costume and rescue him from grimdarkness, and I hold by that interpretation. There are enough parallels between Red Robin #2 and Year Three/A Lonely Place of Dying to not make it completely stupid, at least.

And Tim's had his family to act as a buffer between him and Batman. He was always going to be less Bruce's than either Dick or Jason, simply because not only did he not live at the manor, but his father was alive, and Bruce would respect that. There was also Dick, too, for whom Tim was Robin early in his own career and with whom he created a close relationship. And then Young Justice. Codependency with Bruce would've been harder to come by.

I think with Steph, Bruce was eminently aware of how like Jason she was (not all that much, but enough that he got terrified), and he should have been aware that she was like Dick in other ways. Her becoming Robin was complicated by the fact that she was Tim's girlfriend, so I agree that emotional codependency would've been out of the question, but I have no doubt that if they'd been given more time they'd have reached their own little status quo o' wrong.

[lipsofpoison.insanejournal.com]

I think you just summed up exactly what I think about just about every character you mentioned, especially Steph and Tim. You start writing Batman when, please?

[lyraeinne.insanejournal.com]

Tim's best qualities are qualities Bruce cultivates in himself enough that he wouldn't be attracted to them in someone else.

Oh, I'm definitely sure that was a huge part of it. I also think that on that level at least, Bruce was responding to the legacy of Dick and Jason by doing everything to avoid associating Tim with either one of them, and thus making him another replacement for the irreplaceable. Everything from his early training even down to the long pants seems designed (both metatextually and within the actual Batverse itself) to separate him from his predecessors and define a new and arguably less dependent concept for the Batman/Robin relationship. And indeed, it’s clear that while the name and most of the colors are the same, the idea of what Robin is and what he does for Batman changes fundamentally with Tim.

It’s for that reason that I would argue that Batman has never needed Robin (at least in the sense that it could be any old kid wearing the costume and it hardly matters as long as its there) so much as he craves that contrast in personality and perspective, and the immediate, intimate presence of someone he loves and who clearly needs his love, who can thus connect him in some way to the regular people he’s trying to save.

I do think Bruce values and loves Tim quite a lot, but particularly with Dick around again by that point in time and a larger expanding circle of other people to rely on, I think he fulfills a very different role in Bruce's life that doesn’t really lend itself in the same way to the kind of physical and emotional intimacy that can so easily become suggestive with the other boys.

And goodness, you've sort of made me sorry I haven't been picking up Red Robin thus far. Tim actually made a case for his old Robin costume? That’s... really kind of sad. Poor kid.

[runespoor7.insanejournal.com]

Bruce was responding to the legacy of Dick and Jason by doing everything to avoid associating Tim with either one of them

Yes. That's one thing the fight scene between Jason and Tim in Teen Titans #28 got right when Tim said that his entire training as Robin was designed to make as unlike Jason as possible, because that's how much Jason's death affected Bruce.

Tim views his being Robin as temporary, which is fundamentally different anything any of the others did. It's always seemed to me thhat he thought he was just holding the forst until someone more suited to the task came alone, though how much of it was Tim being in denial is anyone's guess. Before his father died at least, Tim's idea of a happy ending would have been one where he was living a civilian life again, not being Robin forever.

I think part of the intimacy with Robin would come from working together (on top of the name and its legacy), but I agree that Bruce seems to have been deliberately putting as much distance between himself and Robin as he could, especially at the beginning. Sending Tim away so he'd get training out of Gotham could not be more different from how Bruce acted with Jason. I tend to read the 'Batman needs Robin'/'Batman needs a Robin' (which was how Tim changed his presentation of the thing) as 'Batman needs a safeguard'; to me, Robin is the person who's meant to disobey Batman's orders and call him out when he gets too much. Batman traditionally makes allowances for Robin - that he can make puns, that he can be more uncontrolled than Batman himself - that he practically stops making after Jason's death. It seems that the biggest allowance he's been making for Tim was Tim's civilian life, compared to Dick and Jason.

As for Steph... I'm pretty sure that he was going to unfire her as Robin soon enough. But there were all the other instances of Batman cutting her out in their history, and she was too independent to just take it. After all, she had an identity before Robin and that let her be less dependent on Batman's whim.

Tim actually made a case for his old Robin costume?

Oh yes, he has. (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/640196.html#cutid1) I'd be feeling a lot sadder for him if I didn't feel like it's put there by someone who has no idea how the Batfamily, the Case symbolism, Robin meta or Tim works. RR#2 has confirmed to me that I don't want to pick it up. I trust scans_daily and people on my flist to let me know what's happening there.