The forced retcon to 3rd Robin Tim Drake continues
Tim Drake has been a busy bird these last few years. A lot of that stems from having his history restored in DC: Rebirth — and that process includes three separate restructurings by three separate writers: James Tynion IV, Brian Michael Bendis, and Meghan Fitzmartin. Arguably it’s been Fitzmartin, alongside artist artist Riley Rossmo, who has most informed this “new” Robin with the ongoing Tim Drake: Robin series.I wonder what's so well informed about a vision changing Tim into something he wasn't before - a LGBT practitioner? The above is just another way of saying the direction taken by Fitzmartin is entirely justified, because the interviewer says so. It's equally bad news when a scribe as unendurable as Bendis had a hand in getting Tim to where he's sadly at now.
Fitzmartin actually started her tenure writing Mr. Drake during the Batman: Urban Legends stories in issues #4-6 and issue #10, where she had the opportunity to write his coming out as bisexual (and his subsequent revelation to Bruce Wayne). Later, she was able to further develop Tim’s relationship with his boyfriend, Bernard Dowd, in DC Pride 2022 #1. Now, in the ongoing series, we’re seeing Tim strike out on his own as a protector of Gotham City.
AIPT: How is this different? Getting into the Tim Drake: Robin the solo series, versus the Urban Legends backups and the DC Pride special.Where they're doubtlessly going to shove more of the homosexual angle down everyone's throats, and don't care that it's alienated fans of the original Robin series by Chuck Dixon, nor that Bill Willingham, for all the harm he later did during Batman: War Games, made clear he'd never intended to characterize Bernard as homosexual himself.
MF: This has been just a different experience in creating a separate world for Tim, which has been really great to be able to give him his own slice of Gotham in a larger page count than we would necessarily be able to do whenever we were doing urban legend stories. This has been for him to spread his wings a bit.
AIPT: You had a plethora of like great artists to work with: from urban legends, the Pride special with Travis Moore, and a few here in Tim Drake: Robin. Was there one page where Riley Rossmo really just like blew over your wildest dreams with the art?I've seen some of the artwork from their drivel, and it's some of the most godawful slop to come down the pike in the past decade, and the mystery genre's no excuse. But nor is it shocking Fitzmartin would sugarcoat it. She's clearly somebody who thinks mediocrity is acceptable.
MF: I mean, all of it. He constantly surprised me in the best way. I think the two pages where I was completely bowled over, and I’ve talked about this before, when he drew the marina, I lost my mind. I could not believe he had reached into my brain and made it even better than I could have ever imagined. It was perfect. And then there’s a page in issue two when Darcy and Tim are going through a bunch of different books in the library and different detective stories there. We got that page back and I was just like, this is, this is gorgeous. This is genius. I love it.
AIPT: He really seemed like just the perfect artist to encapsulate that mystery style that you were going for with crime scenes and then the marina both inside Tim’s room and then the entire atmosphere. I feel like he really just captured everything perfectly.
MF: Absolutely. I mean, he was so in sync with just the tone and the ideas and everything that he brought to the table. It was just, it was gorgeous. It was a treat every time he sent some sent art in.
AIPT: Tim’s really been through a lot in the last seven years now, between DC Rebirth, getting kidnapped temporarily, everything with Young Justice, addressing his own identity, but we don’t really know how much time has passed in continuity for Tim. But given that, back in Detective Comics Rebirth, he was looking at applying to Ivy State University. Did he ever end up going there? Has he finished and graduated or is he doing some sort of like Zoom University concept for it?Tynion's another writer who's got LGBT propaganda in his resume, namely, perpetuating the forced retcon to Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, continuing the damage James Robinson started over a decade ago. If he had any part in this atrocity of an overnight retcon, it's no surprise either.
MF: I love the idea of Tim doing Zoom, but I ultimately think one of the things that I loved that James [Tynion IV] did in his run with Tim, is have him face that whether or not that’s what he wanted to do. And in that run he was like, “oh, I don’t think so”. And I really wanted to honor that. I think that Tim is drawn to Gotham, is drawn to staying in Gotham, and I don’t think the university is the right course for him right now. I think that he’s still got some, I would like to say that he’s on a gap-year, if anything, but yeah, he’s, he’s definitely still trying to figure out what it is, what the next steps are for him.
AIPT: Definitely. And you know, I know we’ve talked a bit about Tim, but he’s not the only main character right now in this series. What goes into your writing process for characters like Bernard and Darcy?In a way, Bernard has been kidnapped, by leftist ideologues, and so too has Tim. As noted before, the homosexual themes are clearly being continued ad nauseum here, and the interviewer's just as blatant as the writers and artists by not asking any challenging queries regarding the retcon. At the end:
MF: I love a found family. I love a ragtag group of individuals who are messy, unique, and are just doing their best, trying to find their own way. And letting them have the space to do it has been really important. So, letting Darcy be her sort of crazy kooky self and letting Bernard come in and out as it felt accurate to the story. You know, Bernard has his own life that he’s dealing with while also dating Tim, and vice versa, and being able to show some of those moments, and some of the moments as how they are their own characters, how Darcy’s her own character, how, how Bernard is his own character, but how that is also affecting Tim; because these are the people around him that are affecting the next phase of his life. So, making sure that they exist, his fully fleshed out characters
AIPT: It very much does feel like a sitcom in that way where they’re just kind of popping in o opening a door and coming into Tim’s life for a few pages before doing their own life again. And Bernard’s become such a prominent part of Tim’s life, but like you said, he’s got his own life outside of Tim, unless he’s getting kidnapped. I’m sure he has a lot of other things going on. What does Bernard do in his downtime outside of popping in and praying for Tim to come and help him out?
MF: Learning how to not get kidnapped I think is big on Bernard’s list of things to do in his downtime. In the next couple of issues actually we’re gonna see a little bit more of Bernard and a little bit more of what he does in his downtime and what he may be going to school for.
AIPT: Do you have a favorite Tim story that you’ve gotten to read, either of old or of recent times? He’s got, he’s got a few books.Interesting she doesn't cite Dixon's work, or even Marv Wolfman's origin stories from 1989, or even Peter David's Young Justice series from 1998-2002. Apparently, Johns, who can be thought of as Bendis' equivalent at DC before the latter moved there is viewed as a far preferable lot to this nobody in the business. She even loved one of the most pretentious Bat-stories coming after Dixon left, to which writers like Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka have story credits? Just terrible. And sadly, these are the kind of scribes seen as acceptable company in an era where DC/Marvel products are no longer relevant.
MF: I do love a team story. Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans was incredibly formative and I very much loved. Another really good one. I’ve mentioned this numerous times and it’s not just a Tim Drake story, but he features in the same way that everyone does. I loved Bruce Wayne: Murderer and the Bruce Wayne: Fugitive stories, because I loved seeing how each member of the bat-family functions. And Tim is such a huge part of that, and is one of those areas where he lives in those gray areas, in the gray space of like, “Maybe, but, like Bruce does know how to do this murder. Like I know that we don’t wanna believe that it’s him,” but Tim was the one who had to be like, “no, but he does know how to do this.” And that’s heartbreaking and that’s just devastating. And I love, love, love that story and what it shows of each member of the family. And I just think it’s, I think it’s beautiful. So I think that’s one of my favorites.
Labels: bad editors, Batman, dc comics, dreadful artists, dreadful writers, golden calf of LGBT, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Titans
Of course Fitzmartin likes Johns' overrated Teen Titans run that spawned so many TimKon shippers who pick it apart for "Tim's gay because he misses his dead friend" type reasons. Ironically, that run didn't do any favors for characters like Cassie but Fitzmartin acts like the OG YJ run was so problematic for her and others.
I also always thought of Johns as DC Bendis back when both those writers were at the top of their games. Yeah, they have some good stuff but plenty felt overhyped or ignored continuity to make it work.
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