I've been having a hard time with Tim Drake: Robin. I like the character of Tim, he was the Robin for most of my early Batman stories, and my first run of Teen Titans. He was my first Robin before Damian came along. I like him, and his Red Robin series is one of my favourite. As such, when he gets his own book again, particularly one that will be exploring his new queer identity, I should be loving it. Sadly, the first six issues were perhaps some of the worst comics I think I've read in the last few years. There was nothing in the story that grabbed me, he didn't feel much like Tim, and the art was absolutely wrong for the book and I found it super ugly.
The two of them arrive in a fancy restaurant that Bruce got them reservations for, but things start to go wrong as they run into Bernards horribly homophobic parents. Things get tense, and then Tim bails on them because he has to go jump into costume as Firefly turns up. Whilst Tim is battling the villain Bernard tries to get his parents out of the burning building, but his father ends up screaming in his face that he wished Bernard had never been born.
After Tim beats Firefly the two of them start to head home, but something Bernard says makes Tim realise that there's another villain at play and so he runs back to the restaurant with a bad excuse for doing so. Bernard follows behind and finds the building back on fire, Firefly free, Phobia helping him, Robin trapped, and everyone inside the building arguing with each other (including Bernards parents). Bernard goes in, helps to free Tim, and then watches as his boyfriend saves the day. And he knows that's what he's seeing, as he reveals through narration that he's aware that Tim is Robin.
This issue is an improvement on what came before, but it's still kind of bad. After beating Firefly it seems like Tim leave with Bernard without waiting for authorities of the fire brigade to arrive, so when he goes back everything is still chaos. Did he leave civilians in a burning building or did they go back in? Does he regularly just leave villains on the street? How does he get out of the fire cage like he does? Who knows, the writer doesn't seem to care to explain.
Tim is supposed to be one of the smarter members of the Bat Family, but this issue makes him seem the exact opposite. He runs out of every scene with a terrible excuse 'oh I forgot my sweater' that immediately falls apart 'what do you mean where's my sweater? Oh right, I must not have brought one'. He seems someone who's been a hero for a week, not the seasoned vigilante trained by Batman. It's no surprise Bernard knows his secret; he might as well have run back in to see Bernard having forgotten to take the costume off for how well he's trying to keep the secret.
Like with every other issue of this series, this doesn't feel like Tim Drake at all. Compare Tim here to how he's being written in the Batman back-up feature and I'd honestly believe it if you told be that this was a book set on another Earth. Tim is incompetent, makes mistakes, and acts like someone who's had little training. It feels kind of embarrassing. On one hand I'm sad that the series is being brought to an end with issue ten, because Tim deserves better than that. On the other hand the end can't come soon enough, because this series feels like an insult to the character.
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