(no subject)

[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]

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.