After 20 Years of Subtext, Finally a Queer Robin
Why It's Such a Big Deal that Tim Drake Likes Guys
If you follow comic news at all, yesterday you probably saw a headline boldly declaring that Robin — as in the sidekick of Batman — had come out. This is, essentially, true, and it’s very exciting, as it would quite possibly make him the most high profile queer character in all of superhero comics, one of the only major icons to not be straight1. That’s huge.
But my title says “20 years of Subtext,” and people have been calling Robin gay since the 40s2, so what gives? Well, if you know me or have known read my newsletter for any period of time, you probably know that my favorite thing to talk about is the fact that there have been multiple characters who have served as Robin over the years. In this situation, the specific Robin we’re talking about is Tim Drake.
Tim Drake is the third young man to take up the mantle of Robin, originally introduced as an amateur detective who deduced Batman’s secret identity and inserted himself into Batman’s life after a great tragedy out of the belief that “Batman needs a Robin.” From 1989 to 2009 he served as Batman’s primary sidekick, and starred in his own monthly comic for even longer. Throughout the 1990s he was legitimately one of DC’s most popular and best selling characters, not just as an extension of Batman, but based on the strength of his own character. Again, it’s not just a big deal for a character as well-known as Robin to come out; it’s a big deal for a character as popular as Tim Drake to come out as well.
Still, there’s something else that makes Tim Drake specifically coming out big, and that comes down to that 20 years of subtext I mentioned.
Now, in text, Tim has always been portrayed as straight. He’s had several long-term girlfriends, including one, Stephanie Brown3, who has gone on to be a popular character and superhero in her own right. But Tim’s also a fairly stern, shy, and introverted character, and he’s also often been written as a more chaste hero, not being allowed to do much more than occasionally kiss his girlfriend. As a reader, I always felt real affection for these girls from Tim, but I never detected much in the way of passion.
On the other hand, though, there’s Superboy.
This version of Superboy was a clone named Conner Kent, created with 50% Superman’s DNA and 50% Lex Luthor’s. Tim and Conner had been friends for a while, teammates in a group called Young Justice, but were never portrayed as super close; Superboy, at this point, seemed closer to Impulse, who he felt was more “fun,” while Tim was largely left to “manage” Superboy and be annoyed by his antics.
All this changed when Geoff Johns and Mike McKone relaunched the Teen Titans comic in the early 2000s, greatly revamping Superboy in the process. Johns wrote Tim and Conner as the best of friends, perhaps even a bit of what we would have called a “bromance” back then. There was clear chemistry.
But something interesting happened. Somewhere along the way, they became the most important people in each others’ lives. Conner would go to Tim with his fears. Tim would turn to Conner when he faced tragedy, such as being forced to briefly retire as Robin, or when he had to deal with the death of his father. In the text they were never more than best friends, but aside from the chemistry, Tim also treated Conner with a level of devotion, adoration, and obsession he never quite had for his girlfriends.
…and then Conner died, and things ramped up 300%. For a while, Tim as a character became defined by his grief over Conner, especially in the Teen Titans title, where he went so far as to try to clone Conner in a mad scientist lab under Titans Tower in order to bring him back.
There were textual reasons for this. Tim had endured a series of deaths in rapid succession, and Conner’s was portrayed as the straw that broke his mental health’s back. Again, though, this was Tim showing more anguish, expending more mental energy, over the death of his best friend than he did the death of his father or girlfriend, with literal years of story laser-focused on Tim’s feelings for Conner.
Tim did continue to date women during this period, but perhaps the most notable of these relationships was with Cassandra Sandsmark, a.k.a. Wonder Girl, a.k.a. the girl Conner was dating when he died.
Even the text eventually decided that they only got together because of their shared grief over Conner, but hell, that is some phenomenally loaded subtext.
Then there’s this panel:
By this point a large contingent of readers had already decided that Tim Drake was gay, but this was the moment where even the most stubborn of non-believers had to begrudgingly admit something to the extent of: “Okay, I don’t think Tim Drake is gay, but he sure as hell is in love with Superboy.”
My point is, Tim Drake has been enmeshed in homoerotic subtext for a good 20 of the 30 years he’s existed as a character, and because of that Tim’s long had a loyal queer following. Tim actually being revealed as queer himself after all that time is an even more surreal version of the whole Destiel situation, except actually handled with nuance and respect, and at a time when fans still care, and with an actual future to explore this development ahead of them. It’s a gift to fans who never, ever expected to actually receive it.
The last decade or so has also found Tim knee-deep in a different kind of gay subtext. In 2009 Batman’s biological son, Damian Wayne, took the mantle of Robin for himself, and Tim has been a bit lost as a character ever since, both within his fictional world and within our real one. He’s cycled through code names, from Red Robin to Drake and back to Robin, sharing the role with Damian. He’s cycled through even more costumes, including this gem:
Tim, honey, I apologize for ever thinking you were straight.
Most significantly, though, he’s struggled to find a purpose, a new role within the Bat-Family of characters. He was a globetrotting detective; he was the leader of his friends; he was the architect of the Gotham Knights braintrust; maybe he’s destined for something even greater than being a superhero. More than anything, Tim’s spent the last decade aimless, trying desperately to define himself, to discover who he is, what his purpose is, and what he wants out of life. That’s a feeling that’s relatable to any young person, of course, but it’s even more relatable to most queer people, who often spend large swaths of their lives attempting to come to terms with who they really are, and trying to find a place to fit in in a world not designed for them.
Tim Drake has been a queer character for years. It’s about time DC finally just bit the bullet and made it official.
That sense of belonging Tim’s been so desperately seeking is an intrinsic part of Tim’s actual coming out, as well. The story, which comes courtesy of Meghan Fitzmartin and Belèn Ortega in the pages of Batman: Urban Legends 6, finds Tim at a crossroads. He’s broken up with Stephanie again, seemingly for good, but really doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t know why he’s so restless, why he’s having such a hard time finding where he belongs. Then he reunites with an old friend and has what he terms a “lightbulb moment.”
Notice that, while headlines seem to be declaring Tim as either gay or bi with about equal frequency, neither the story nor Tim himself ever specify his sexuality. He’s still figuring it out. Maybe he’s bi or pan. Maybe he really is gay, and now has to recontextualize his past relationships with women. Hell, I suppose Tim’s technically Gen-Z now; maybe he doesn’t have any interest in labels, just in loving who he loves4. Either way it’s an exciting and long overdue development in Tim’s story, not just from a character standpoint and a social one, but also from a storytelling perspective; Tim’s a character who’s been in desperate need of a new niche for close to a decade, and it turns out the perfect one has been staring us in the face all this time, just waiting for someone to get the guts to make it happen.
EXTRA CREDIT
Last year I wrote a column of this newsletter that goes into far more depth about Tim Drake’s background, his recent identity crisis, and the past decade creators have spent trying to carve out a new niche for him. If you’ve got time, it might just be the perfect compliment to this week’s installment.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!
As far as I’m concerned, his only real competition is Wonder Woman, and her bisexuality has largely been treated as a footnote.
Most of these have been schoolyard taunts about his “short pants,” but the criticism has occasionally hit the mainstream. Most famously, Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent,” the treatise that claimed comic books were a leading cause of delinquency and which nearly destroyed the comics industry in the 50s, claimed that Batman and Robin were promoting the homosexual lifestyle, leading to the introduction of Bat-Woman and Bat-Girl as characters solely designed to prove their heterosexuality.
Stephanie is best known as her initial (and current) identity of Spoiler, a persona she created to “spoil” the plans of her supervillain father, the Cluemaster. But she also took up the mantle of Batgirl for a few years, and even briefly served as Robin herself during a period where Tim had been forced to retire by his father.
For what it’s worth, while I’ve considered it obvious that Tim likes guys for the last 15 years, I never really thought he was gay, because his relationship with Steph seemed so sincere. Most of the time I assumed Tim was bi; if I was feeling especially chatty, I might have said that Tim was “asexual but bi-romantic.” To be honest, this new story is the first thing that’s made me reconsider that in a long time.