We Are Robin (DC Comics)

I have to say, this sounds interesting. I hope it does not get messed up. What do you think?

Bermejo sees it as a chance to expand the Robin character past "teenage white kids who all look the same."

Well, maybe if you guys hadn't screwed up Steph's Robin tenure and ruined Canon Timeline!Carrie Kelley's chances before she even got the mantle, we wouldn't need to have this conversation today.

Unless you're trying to tell me they looked exactly the same as Tim, Jason and Dick.

edited 9th Mar '15 7:12:03 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Yeah it's weird how some of these interviews have the writers acting like what they're doing is somehow new. Still looking to it though.

-hopes for Carrie and Stephanie to impact the plot in some way-

Unavoidable crossover with Gotham Academy is unavoidable.

At the end of this book's run, wanna take bets on how many of those kids will the Joker have killed?

Zero, hopefully. : (And I'm kidding when I say this.) The Joker's son will kill them all.

Sounds good. I like what he had to say about Duke as well.

The idea that there are multiple Robins running around the city that can be activated at a moment's notice actually sounds like a scarier concept than Batman in some ways.

I really dislike the idea of turning Robin into a blanket identity for Batman's personal army. Makes me think of the Sons of the Batman from Dark Knight Returns. I miss the days when Batman was about Batman, Robin, and Alfred. Funny how the grim loner seems to need a massive support system...

Batgod has no need for a massive network of allies. Batgod just likes having one. Gives him more time to brood about how alone he is.

I don't think he's wrong though. Carrie ONLY exists in an alternate timeline and Steph's tenure was so brief and controversial that it hardly bears mentioning. It was a bait and switch with Tim always intended to reclaim the mantle.

So at least in an official capacity he has a point about Duke and the other kids (though there's the fact that Damian is mixed but that's a whole other issue).

I have said to other people that Steph's tenure as Robin (and Batgirl, for that matter) was so brief that one could be forgiven for completely discounting it. You might just as well include Bruce Wayne himself (who, in the Silver Age, apparently wore a Robin costume briefly so he could help out a detective incognito) and if you include Carrie Kelly, you might as well include Bruce Wayne, Jr. from those Silver Age "imaginary" stories. There does seem to be that contingent that really, really wants Robin to be a girl, though. Having Batgirl and Batwoman around doesn't do it for 'em, apparently.

Untrained street kids going up against Batman villains? They're dead. They just don't know it yet.

... Anyone else reminded at all of Team Robin from Teen Titans Go!?

Maybe if the artists at DC took the time or had the skill to make the robins visually distinct this wouldn't be a problem regardless of their ethnicity. not all white people look the same. this isn't just a problem with the robins either, cape comics as a whole have a pretty big sameface problem.

edited 13th Mar '15 9:53:10 PM by wehrmacht

Originally, the Robins looking the same was an in-universe plot point. Batman wanted to give the impression there had been a single Boy Wonder the whole time, which granted, perhaps gets ridiculous as a concept after a while. Surely Poison Ivy wasn't expected to believe this young boy is the very same young boy she first met seven years or so ago, kept magically the same age Because Reasons.

Anyway, that's why Jason Todd had to dye his hair from red to black.

In my honest opinion Steph's tenure hardly counts since she was literally made Robin as a plot-device to get Stuffed into the Fridge.

Yeah, I remember seeing a very early appearance of Jason Todd (before he was Robin) in an issue of the New Teen Titans showing his hair to be red. I think the fact was pretty much forgotten until Grant Morrison brought it up again in Batman and Robin. Even his entries in Who's Who list his hair as black.

Story and character concerns butting up against marketing concerns will always be a problem with super hero comics. I'm sure the one of the main reasons, if not THE main reason all the longest-running Robins have looked alike is so DC doesn't have to keep copyrighting new images (and then using them to keep them under copyright) and so they don't have to alter their marketing imagery too much. Oh, and that whole character recognition thing...

I love how the cover to the first issue is apparently so badass that DC is releasing a Harley Quinn homage to it in the same month. Or is it the other way around?

Damian is supposed to be half-Asian but you wouldn't tell by the way he's usually drawn. Connor Hawke has a similar problem.

Though it does look like the cover for the upcoming Damian series finally has him with a darker skin tone.

Is Talia supposed to be Asian? I thought Ra's (and by extension Talia) were supposed to be Arabic, or at least Middle-Eastern.

Some character bios.

She's mixed Arabic and Chinese I believe.

I got the first issue and really liked it. I felt they found a way to work in social media without it coming off as Totally Radical or Were Still Relevant Dammit.

It is inevitable that Bat-Gordon starts hunting them down considering that is his job now.

Dick is also half-Romani.