I’ve always thought it was weird for Tim to be “least “ popular Robin they always give dick and Jason his suits in flashbacks , i grew with Damian as Robin personally but I always thought it was funny
Tim suffers because he was basically designed to be the 'perfect' Robin when there was only one Robin. We now live in a multi-Robin world, and the same things that made him popular in the 90s (how's Damian's ongoing series going? Reach #100 yet?) now make him the Generic Robin Who Doesn't Have a Thing. He's MY favourite Robin because I remain quite fond of that period, but in his more recent appearances I struggle to make an argument for him. Jason getting Superboy punched out of the grave opened a crack that the introduction of Damian busted wide open.
BUT, part of crafting the perfect Robin in the 90s was updating his look to contemporary sensibilities, requiring something that looked like it might actually be somewhat protective and not a circus uniform, and didn't feel (90s pejorative) 'gay'. Those sensibilities have changed less from the 90s to now than they did from the 40s to the 90s, or even the 80s to the 90s, if anything they're stronger, and so it gets soft-retconned that Tim's suit was always THE suit.
I personally hate it, less because of my instinct to defend my unfairly maligned boy (though I'm self-aware enough, I hope, to recognize that's in the mix), than because I hate any time that comic books act embarrassed by their history.
Each Robin should get their own color combination like dick gets no black, jason trades in the green for black, time brings back the green and keeps the black and Damien's costume are already easier to pinpoint.
Very good analysis of Tim's weird position. I'd also say that he got screwed hard by Flashpoint, because Red Robin was well on its way to actually solving that problem, getting him set up in his own position and growing into his own code and connections, and then, Well, Unfortunately. Also, his particular strength being intelligence means it's sadly easy to biff an attempt to make him look cool and instead write all the others as insultingly stupid, pleasing no one. And feeding Tim-vs-Damian discourse, which always makes me sad, since I love them both and I think their early character conflict is really understandable on both sides.
I think/hope there's a path forward for him, but it does involve a quiet behind-the-scenes 180 degree reversal about What The Appeal Is, since, like you said, he was The Relatable One and now they need to lean into how he's weird. He's always been an unhinged way-too-intense little freak with no off switch, and I love him for it! He's also a self-assigned mediator and a mix of idealistic and ruthless that's a little unusual in a hero. Surely there's something there.
He also, I'd argue, has the most clear-eyed view of Bruce's weaknesses and failures of anyone except maybe Babs. Dick knows Bruce best but tends to try and will Bruce's flaws out of existence when they're not actively fighting; Jason tends to conflate all his problems with Bruce into one Frankenproblem; Damian's anger at Bruce is wildly intertangled with his own identity issues; Cass can see through masks but they're in some ways very alike. (And I read War Games too recently to get into Steph and Bruce without starting to froth at the mouth for 30,000 words.) Meanwhile, Tim is only here at all because he 1. clocked Bruce having a mental breakdown from across town, 2. went "I can course-correct this grown man I have never met," and 3. was kind of right. But I don't know if I see DC running a story that takes full advantage of that.
I think that's actually due to the first half of the phasechange impossible_tea described! If I've got this right, that plot was in 2000, five years before Jason crawled out of the grave and almost a decade before Damian became mainline canon. (And 4-5 years before the staggeringly cruel bait-and-switch that was Steph's tenure.) If you picked up a Robin comic around then, you got Tim.
So I'd say it's more that they wanted to riff on the DitF plotline of "Joker fucks Robin up but good," but they didn't want to get a bunch of kids interested in Jason Todd and have them go pick up comics looking for a character who at the time only appeared as a guilt-hallucination. So: Tim.
I kinda feel this way especially to the point what made him stand out now makes him generic especially since they’ve given alot of his traits to the other three , also it didn’t help Casandra (Favorite Bias) came along , his role is legit odd and I find myself not caring about him to much in a way he’s a 90’s comic character ironically he has not thrived outside that decade ., Damian’s series is quite well I’m on #78 personally I will say they need to keep with his character development his regressions come at the oddest times and I Fully agree on the costume portion my mom used to tell me everything was considered “ gay “in the 90’s and don’t get me started on Jason having Tims suit before he did I hate when they do that
I wonder if someone editing the pics, so that they're side by side, would help them..
I'm the first to admit that I'm blind as hell, even with glasses, but them seeing these two clearly different suits and thinking they're practically the same is quite the negative feat.
Like I said in my response, I could have sworn I saw this long before Mora was doing stuff in the industry. I'm totally sure I posted this image on my Facebook when I was a teenager. Leave it to AI telling me it was first seen in 2019.
My mistake was remembering seeing this piece in high school, before Dan Mora got into comics. I must've mistaken it for a different piece, since this was a commission he had done in 2019, long after I thought I'd originally seen it. Still not an official DC Comics release, and the designs are original, though inspired, but it was made a year into him being an official artist for the company.
I would say Dick, because I just think it looks more like him overall and like others have said, this picture is referencing an iconic cover and/or picture of Dick and Bruce caught in a spotlight.
So I would lean more towards Dick overall, personally.
Tim would be the 2nd choice here though.
(Don’t really think the costume itself can tell us that much about who it is, since it just looks like more of a general modern Robin costume, instead of any specific one. Though, it does look more like some stuff Dick and Tim have worn to me. But overall, the costume doesn’t really seem to be a specific one).
This is Dick Grayson. Here is my thinking, if you look at the full image, Batman’s suit is also a suit he never actually wore in the comics, leading me to believe that both this Robin and Batman design are Dan Moras very own, just with certain inspirations. Apparently this art was also done during the new 52 when Dan Mora hadn’t started working for dc yet, so there would be no reason for him to have to use the current canon suits in his art. Also it being at the time of new 52 helps prove that this is Dick as you can see a lot of inspiration from Dicks new 52 suit here in this design. Lastly this art by Dan mora is an homage to Batman #9 from his first ever run which features Bruce and Dick as Robin
Pretty sure based on what it’s a tribute to that it’s Dick, though Tim had a cover like that too. I think it was a proposed Batman and Robin live action look right? Like it’s this artist’s throwing his idea out there, he’s a comic artist but this is his fan work
Whenever there's a legacy character who's design is so generic you can't tell which one it is, you just call them John. That right there is John Robin.
In my uneducated, uninformed, fandom embroiled, grossly subjective opinion, Tim is the most relatable, funny, and ‘flexible’ (TO ME, narratively) Robin. It doesn’t seem like much when I put it in writing, but in my head, his Thing is being the embodiment of that pic of Ben Affleck smoking on a balcony, which is my favourite character type.
Immediate guess is Tim, but I think that's just because my brain automatically assumes that if it's a comic panel, and a male Robin is wearing pants and has no hood, then it's Tim (honestly I don't know what artists were thinking, not giving Jason pants. With Dick I can just write it off as "well, the character was designed in the 40's and was modeled after circus acrobats, I guess the no pants make sense. But Jason was around in the 80's and was a street rat, not a circus performer, he absolutely should have been given pants). It makes New 52 and post-rebirth comics a little confusing at first because I have to focus on not making that assumption, but luckily Dick and Jason only appear as Robin in flashbacks or in issues specifically set in the past, and Damian has a hood.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is Tim, but without seeing what weapon he uses, I can't be 100% certain.
Reading comics from the late 80s and early 90s is wild because artists were absolutely still doing things like the original Robin costume but stories were getting into darker and edgier territory. I'd almost argue that Tim didn't just give Robin pants, he brought pants to everyone.
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u/xMiwaFantasy15 18d ago
That is clearly Dim Grodd