Five Years, Four Robins

“ROBIN ROBIN ROBIN” | Dustin Nguyen

With Batman’s position as one of the most profitable characters at DC Comics, his fictional history was left relatively unaltered in the recent relaunch of their line. Still, the history of superheroes has been significantly truncated in this new universe, and even Batman is feeling the crunch. No where is this more apparent than with regard to his sidekicks, of which he has now had at least five (four Robins and a Batgirl) in less than a decade.

Fortunately, I think I can help sort this out.

2001: Damian Wayne is born.
2006: Batman goes public as a founding member of the Justice League.
2007: Dick Grayson becomes Robin after his parents are killed.
2007: Barbara Gordon becomes Batgirl.
2008: Barbara Gordon is shot and paralyzed by The Joker.
2008: Dick Grayson becomes Nightwing.
2008: Dick Grayson joins the Teen Titans.
2008: Jason Todd becomes Robin.
2009: Jason Todd is murdered by The Joker.
2010: Tim Drake becomes Robin.
2010: Jason Todd returns from the dead. Talia al’Ghul uses the Lazarus Pit to reunite his soul and body. Sends him to train with the All-Caste.
2010: Bruce Wayne goes missing. Dick Grayson becomes Batman. Damian Wayne becomes Robin. Tim Drake becomes Red Robin.
2011: Jason Todd completes his training, becomes Red Hood. Debuts as a villain, and has many run-ins with Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne.
2011: Bruce Wayne returns. Dick Grayson relinquishes the role of Batman and becomes Nightwing again.
2011: Bruce Wayne announces his involvement with Batman; creates Batman, Inc.
2011: Red Hood attacks Batman, but cannot bring himself to kill him.
2011: Barbara Gordon becomes Batgirl again.
2011: Dick Grayson travels the country with Haly’s Circus.
2011: Tim Drake creates the new Teen Titans.

Confused? I bet some of that looks just plain wrong to long-time fans. Detailed explanations, as well as the ramifications of some of these decisions, after the cut.

Dick Grayson: The First Boy Wonder

“Nightwing” | Vivian Pop

As of Nightwing #1, Dick Grayson is living in Old Gotham, fighting crime as Nightwing after spending a year in the shoes of his mentor Bruce Wayne, Batman. His adventures here take place late in 2011, judging by his appearance in Batgirl #3, set shortly before Christmas.

Five years earlier, Nightwing #3 shows us a Dick Grayson who is still performing with his parents in Haly’s Circus, implying that as of 2006, Batman had not yet adopted his first Robin.

The anniversary of The Flying Graysons’ murder is observed in Nightwing #6, which is set in early 2012 judging by the cues left in previous issues. From here we can assume that Jonathan and Mary Grayson were killed in early 2007, and that their son became Robin shortly thereafter.

We don’t know how long he served as Robin (more on this when we get to Jason Todd), but eventually he branched off on his own as Nightwing. Red Hood and the Outlaws #6 features flashbacks to those early days, complete with a surprisingly spiffy update of the “Disco-Wing” costume used in the seventies. As Nightwing, Grayson was part of the first incarnation of the Teen Titans, along with Arsenal, Aqualad, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Flamebird, Lilith, and Starfire.

As an aside, I know editorial has decreed that Tim Drakes team are the first incarnation of the Teen Titans. However, between Batwoman, Red Hood and the Outlaws, and Teen Titans itself, there are too many references to an older team for me to ignore. I expect Beast Boy’s involvement is about to be retconned with his appearance in The Ravagers, but we’ll see. His membership was briefly mentioned in Red Hood and the Outlaws #1, in which Arsenal also mentions an as-yet-unidentified Titan named Dustin.

About a year before Nightwing #1, Bruce Wayne goes “missing,” and Dick Grayson becomes Batman with Damian Wayne as his Robin. From late 2010 to mid-2011, Dick serves as Batman. Bruce returns sometime before September 2011, when he memorializes his parents’ murder for the last time in Batman and Robin #1. Dick goes back to his Nightwing identity, and his exploits are detailed in the pages of Nightwing each month.

Barbara Gordon: “You Were Always Meant To Be Batgirl”

“Batgirl” | Ryan Smith

The specifics of Barbara Gordon’s first stint as Batgirl have been left pretty vague. A flashback in Batgirl #3 show us an early meeting between her and Dick Grayson, and Grayson is already living in Wayne Manor with Bruce.

We do know that she was Batgirl “briefly,” until she was shot and paralyzed by The Joker in 2008, three years prior to Batgirl #1. It is unclear if Dick Grayson is still Robin at this time, or if he has already adopted the mantle of Nightwing. Expect to learn more when Gail Simone revisits The Killing Joke in Batgirl #7, due in March.

On December 22, 2010, James Gordon gives his daughter a Christmas present: he has scheduled an experimental neural implant procedure at a clinic in South Africa that may restore her mobility. Whether or not Barbara acted as Oracle in the previous two years, or another young woman served as Batgirl, has not been addressed.

We see Barbara’s return to crime fighting a year later in Batgirl #1, set in late 2011.

Jason Todd: Prodigal Son

“The Red Hood” | Daniel Kho

I know some people are gonna hate this, but here goes. Right now it appears that Jason Todd had the longest tenure of any of the four known Robins.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #4 establishes that Jason spent about two years learning from Batman. We know that Dick was Robin in 2007, and we can assume that Tim Drake was Robin in 2010 when Bruce Wayne went missing. That doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for Jason’s stint in the tights.

Conjecturally, I would place Jason’s debut somewhere near the beginning of 2008. Dick’s reasons for branching out on his own aren’t given; perhaps it’s connected to Barbara’s injury, perhaps it was simply time for him to spread his proverbial wings. Either way, Jason’s term lasts for anywhere between eighteen months and a full two years, a general range that Arsenal could describe casually as “two years.”

Personally, I err on the side of shorter only for one reason: Jason’s service ends with his murder, and we have a fairly concrete idea of when he returns from the dead.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #2 puts Jason’s resurrection at a year and a half before the date of the issue. It’s unclear when exactly the issue takes place, but we can reasonably guess that Jason returns in mid-to-late-2010, at about the time that Bruce goes missing.

Jason returns without his soul, only his body truly living. For unknown reasons, Talia al’Ghul uses the Lazarus Pit to affix his soul to his body, then sends him to the monks of the All-Caste where he spends a year in training. He then dons the Red Hood and returns to Gotham.

What intrigues me is that, if you do the math, The Red Hood actually makes his debut during Dick’s tenure as Batman. Jason isn’t given the chance to confront Bruce until after his return. In this timeline, he is also much more powerful than he was in Under the Red Hood, shown defeating The Batman in flashback in Red Hood and the Outlaws #6. He nearly kills him, but Nightwing intervenes.

From the point of Jason’s development, this actually makes more sense and makes him a more sympathetic character. Previously, Jason had his opportunity for revenge, didn’t take it, but then continued to whiningly obsess about it throughout Grant Morrison’s (unfair, I thought) portrayal of him in Batman and Robin. In this new continuity, he returns as a villain, as Dick Grayson’s nemesis, and they play out their sibling rivalry on a grand scale. Then Bruce returns. Jason seeks his revenge, but ultimately has to walk away, away from the path of villainy he was on and onto an awkward road to redemption as an anti-hero.

Tim Drake: The Road to N.O.W.H.E.R.E.

“Robin” | Miggu!

Assuming the broad strokes of Tim’s story have remained the same, we need to allow a period of time where Batman has no Robin. When he originally debuted as Robin in December 1989, Jason Todd had been dead for a year and Tim noticed how reckless Batman had become in that time. Out of all the Robins, he sought Batman out and, with Dick Grayson’s blessing, asked to be made his sidekick. So if we allow for a period of a few weeks to a couple months in this new, truncated timeline for Tim to come to this realization, we can infer that his stint as Robin begins either in late 2009 or early 2010.

Then Bruce “goes missing.” We don’t know the details of this. Final Crisis may or may not have happened in the post-Flashpoint world, meaning that, although we know some evil befell him, we don’t know for sure if he was sent back in time by Darkseid in an elaborate gambit to destroy the universe.

This cuts Tim Drake’s time as Robin short, and he likely has the briefest tenure of any of the Robins, lasting about nine months to a year tops. When Damian Wayne become Robin, Tim becomes Red Robin. He leaves Gotham, moves into his adoptive father’s Lex Tower Penthouse in New York City, and from there he uses his technological savvy to search for Bruce Wayne. Bruce returns in mid-2011, but Tim remains in New York to fight crime as well as the machinations of N.O.W.H.E.R.E., where we find him at the beginning of Teen Titans #1.

Conclusions

“The Last Thanksgiving Batfam Supper” | Raphael Roux

So there you have it! An altogether too long examination of the timeline of Batman’s sidekicks in the New 52. Some points to consider:

Batgirl and all of the Robins are much closer in age now than they were prior to Flashpoint. When we see flashbacks of Dick Grayson as Nightwing taking part in Jason Todd’s training, they are only about as far apart in age as myself and my younger brother (about two years, tops). Dick, Barbara, Jason, and Tim are all of an age that they’d be in high school together (Dick and Barbara as seniors as Tim was an in-coming freshman), or just about. It really drives home the relationships of these characters as siblings in a way that was often missed in the past.

Similarly, the idea that Batman is their father has been more consistently emphasized in the New 52. Even if they spend most of their time off and being independent, Dick and Tim still come home when their dad is involved in something important (like the announcement of the New Gotham Initiative in Batman #1). And Batman and Robin is entirely dedicated to the father-son dynamic of Bruce and Damian, with Bruce learning how to raise a troubled young boy for the first time (all previous Robins came to him at sixteen or older in this new timeline).

I mentioned before that Jason Todd likely had the longest tenure of the three retired Robins, and this might irk some. For me, it says something about the different characters. Dick Grayson became Robin out of a need to channel his grief, but he was already about sixteen years old when his parents died (judging by the flashback in Nightwing #3). They left him with a good foundation of love and support, one he was quickly able to build on as he pursued his independence. Tim Drake came from a much more abusive home, but this also forced him to grow up fast, and was already the most maturely independent of any of the Robins when he started his term. Tim channeled the trauma of his upbringing into honing his mind, and it was his intelligence that helped him escape his past.

Jason, however, had very different roots. His father was a murdered criminal, his mother a deceased addict. He was a homeless orphan when he first met Batman, and he survived on street smarts and anger. He, even more than Dick or Tim, needed support and love, and finding some semblance of it with Bruce, he didn’t move on to independence as quickly as the others. Of course, we’ve seen Bruce’s parenting skills in action. Unfortunately, Bruce only helped him learn to channel his rage. He never taught him to let it go. And when he died and returned, his rage was all he had left.

Still, he’s alive, and still has a chance to work things out with his adoptive father. The same can’t necessarily be said for Bruce’s daughters, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown. It’s still possible that one or both of them managed to serve as Batgirl during the three years Barbara was out of commission, though I doubt that’s going to be the case. And if Stephanie was ever Robin, it would have been a week-long gig with how compressed everything has become. I’d almost rather it not have happened than have it turn out that the one female Robin was killed after less than a week of crime-fighting. Both characters have yet to appear in the DCnU, and it remains to be seen what if any connection they have to the Batfamily. Rumors abound that Cassandra Cain will be appearing in Grant Morrison’s Batman, Incorporated as Blackbat, and that Gail Simone has plans for Stephanie Brown, but all these are rumors.

I’m sure DC will soon release more information that will render this work null and void, but I think I’ve created a well thought-out timeline of events for this band of boys and Barbara. Please pass it on, and let me know what you think!