Tim Drake Robin #1....3 Stars

Tim Drake Robin # 1 

                                                 

No I'm not going to give this 1 star, like a lot of comic fans would like me to do, but I do sympathize with Tim Drake fans. Having one of your favourite heroes continuity changed for the sake of gender politics, and then tossed to a writer who has a non conventional writing style, only to be called a bigot on reddit or comic forums when you protest, is a really shitty thing for DC to do to Tim Drake fans.

I was never a Tim Drake fan, by the time the  90's were in full swing I was done with sidekicks, but I always recognized he was an extremely popular character. Not many titles reach 50 issues let alone 183! Which is what the Robin title reached under Tim Drake, so you think that DC would clue in and realize that there was a big market out there for another Tim Drake run, but DC never learns do they. They still think that comics is primarily a demographically transitory hobby, and that they can make full scale changes to popular heroes without of a loss of market share....THEY ARE DEAD WRONG!....Reddit, you tube, and even the CBR comic forum is lighting up, and the message is clear...WE DO NOT LIKE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE WITH TIM DRAKE!

That aside lets get to the comic itself....

I have only read 3 or 4 titles by Meagan Fitzmartin, and I don't think she is a bad writer, in fact (this will make some people nauseous) she probably does have a place at DC. The two things that I find that her critics often harp upon is her politics and her writing style, which let's face it, her writing style is different, dare I say somewhat groundbreaking or ahead of it's time? Simply put, it's just  different, I've never encountered her writing style in comics before, though this particular issue almost had a Neil Gaiman Caroline, Scooby Doo mystery vibe to it, (the two old ladies who show up at the beginning mind as well be Miss Spink and Miss Forcible) so I'll leave that aside for now until I can put my finger on it.  My biggest problem with Fitzmartin so far is she can't seem to close out a story without it falling apart or becoming lackluster. They tend to start off good until the glowing animal manifestation of a gorilla or elephant shows up? At least in this issue. 

I think making Tim Drake gay, after he (if I understand correctly) was dating Spoiler for quite sometime was a miscalculation on DC's part. Let's be real. It's cool and all for writer's to be progressively political with their comics, but being LGBTQ isn't really a selling point once people get over the initial controversial buzz. Young male adults who make up the vast majority of comic fans aren't running out to purchase a comic because they heard a character was LGBTQ, some may even be turned off by it, particularly in this case where you've taken an extremely popular character with an established past, and changed him without giving any proper explanation a to why? 

Finally, this comic feels like it's written for a younger demographic, which is why it would be more suited for Damian than Tim Drake, who has a much older fanbase who have been waiting patiently for a worthy follow up to Chuck Dixon's masterclass run. 

It is for the these reasons I predict this comic will fail. Even if Meagan Fitzmartin was the next Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison, I still think it would tank, and I imagine Time Drake fans will breath a sigh of relief when it does. 

3 out of 5 stars.