Coming out is the best thing that’s happened to Robin in a decade
In 2021, Robin realized he had a crush on a boy. It was a sweet story, delivered without a drop of fanfare from DC Comics — a story that gave me, a queer reader and enormous fan of Robin, the singularly euphoric experience of seeing queer subtext actually and unexpectedly become text. But before I could enjoy it, my online discourse-poisoned brain handed me an urgent assignment, and I figuratively sat down at a school desk to do my “Representation Calculus” homework.
Marginalized fans know all about Representation Calculus: Is this “good” representation, or the kind of thin stereotype the majority has learned to tolerate? How much risk is this capitalist business actually assuming here, or is it playing things safe and looking for kudos? Is this a character anyone has heard of, or will hear of ever again? What is the value of this gesture?
One could construct a proof to show that Tim Drake coming out as queer kinda sucks actually. The strong headline “Robin just had a queer awakening” obscures the hard fact of “The second-most obscure of the five characters who have at one time been Robin just had a queer awakening.”
But there’s another way to make the case for Tim’s queerness as a net positive. No, not because of what Tim Drake can do for queer representation in media, but because of what queer representation can do… for Tim Drake.
Actually, it’s entirely possible that you have. Tim (with some backstory cribbed from Jason Todd) was the Robin of The New Batman Adventures, the gently revamped continuation of Batman: The Animated Series. He got that billing because he was kind of a big deal in the comics, for kind of a long time — it’s just that that long time was a long time ago.
Tim was the first Robin to have his
Read more on polygon.com
