Bi the Way, Robin Came Out
It’s been all over the news so no spoiler banner this time around. Robin is bisexual (or at least questioning) and it’s DC canon as of Batman: Urban Legends #6. The tile is an anthology of stories around various characters falling under the Gotham/Batman umbrella. This month, a story about Robin was one of them. It turns out that Tim Drake has broken up with Stephanie at some point. Now, he’s saving a friend of his, Bernard, who us about to be sacrificed like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Tim shows up to save him and instead of escaping, Bernard sticks around to help him fight. Unsure of the outcome, he asks Robin to tell Tim Drake that he wishes they could have finished their date. (Why do they always do this when the person they are talking about is the secret identity of the person they are talking to?) This makes Tim think during the fight. It turns out Bernard is a pretty good fighter and acrobat as he holds his own there. Afterwards, Tim shows up at Bernard’s house. Bernard asks him out on an actual date and Tim says yes.
Tim says he still loves Stephanie at one point but doesn’t know why he broke up. It’s obvious from his thoughts through the story (like the mention of a “light bulb moment”) that he’s realizing there are things about himself that he needs to explore. The follow-up to this won’t be until Batman: Urban Legends #10 so we’ve got 4 months until we see where this goes. There are a lot of reactions to this out there. The obvious one is the people complaining about Tim “being changed” to be bi. It seems people don’t really realize how this works. A lot of us knew early on that we didn’t fit the male-female coupling that we’re taught everyone is supposed to have. There are still a lot that don’t realize or admit until later on that they aren’t straight. Despite the fact that Tim was introduced about 32 years ago, in the comics, he’s still pretty young. He’s still figuring a lot out and character growth doesn’t mean someone’s direction is suddenly being changed. Everybody changes in different ways as they live their lives. This is one of Tim’s ways. It’s not a change, it’s just more being revealed. As Tim said, he still loves Stephanie so that didn’t change. Tim is learning that he is interested in both men and women.
This leads us to another topic of discussion. Some people are acting like Tim is gay. Some people believe that bisexuality is just a stepping stone to being gay. Yes, some people do say they are bi while they are figuring things out but that doesn’t mean that everyone is doing that. I actually had someone tell me that they should have just made him gay so there was more gay representation. First, being bi still falls under the LGBTQ umbrella (See the B in there?) so it’s still bringing attention towards the topic. Also, there are a number of gay characters in comics. Making time bisexual is almost a braver step. It’s a topic a lot of people want to ignore and a story that needs to be told. It will give a lot of room for writing stories for Tim that wouldn’t exist were he gay and that never get told. I’m looking forward to see how they address this. I hope they do good by Stephanie too and I want to see how she handles things once she find out. Batman, on the other hand, might be the scarier one to tell. (I’m sure Nightwing and Oracle would be totally cool about it.)
This just happened a week ago (only a couple days before Tim was introduced on the Titans series on HBO Max) so we’ve got a while to see how this goes. Why they are waiting 4 issues to address this again, I don’t know. They better make the next part worth it though. Leave a comment and let me know what you think about this.