What Robin Stands For

I'm willing to bet that most of you had no idea that Robin wasn't just a cute nickname--it was an acronym:

See? All great values...Readiness, Obedience, Brotherhood, Industriousness and...uh, Nationalism??

Uh, are you sure about that one, guys?

Yeah, I guess they are!

Of course, we now realize that Red Robin is an acronym, as well...
Retconned (never having been Robin)
Exiled (to the Teen Titans)
Demoted (from being Batman's protegee)
Respectful (never took the Robin name out of respect for Jason Todd)
Orphan
Burton (Tim Drake was named after Tim Burton...really!!)
Idealistic
New costume (crappy)

Prove it isn't so!!

Now don't get me started on what Nightwing stands for...

From Batman #1 (1940)

Oh. My. God.

From today's reveal of the New New New New New Teen Titans:

Tim Drake is forced to step out from behind his keyboard when an international organization seeks to capture or kill super-powered teenagers. As Red Robin, he must team up with the mysterious and belligerent powerhouse thief known as Wonder Girl and a hyperactive speedster calling himself Kid Flash in TEEN TITANS #1, by Scott Lobdell and artists Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund.

I have a few comments:

**AHHHHHHHHH MY EYES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sweet lordy but that's the most set hideous costume design EVER. Dear Jim Lee--please stop. The 1990s are over.

**To the weaselly claims of "not a reboot"--right. Either these are all new characters using the old names, or it's a reboot. "Tim Drake has to step out from behind a keyboard" sure sounds like he wasn't Red Robin before, and there's a conspicuous lack of the Robin symbol on his costume. And a Tim Drake who doesn't know Dominatrix Wonder Girl, W.I.L.D.Cats Kid Flash, or Emo Superboy, and wasn't Robin before...look, there's no way you can do that without a full reboot, or ridiculous selective amnesia.

Sure, it could all be explained with a few sentences; maybe they're all new, and they just used odd phrasing to describe Tim. Yup, sure.

**So, Warner...you spends millions and millions on your lawsuit to maintain ownership of Superboy...and this is what you do with him??

Seriously...at this point I'd rather have Superboy-Prime back.

**Just for the record, that had better not be Wally as Kid Flash...that is a warning, DC.

**This convinces me more than ever that DC is going to do a pretty thorough reboot on Superman himself, and I'd put money on the fact that Grant Morrison is finally going to get to adopt some version of his Superman 2000 proposal. The loss of the red trunks, separating Superman and Lois...these have long been proposals of Morrison, and he's supposedly writing Action. And what the heck...maybe DC can make the "new" Superman different enough to salvage something after 2013...

Self-Awareness Saturday--Red Robin #23

While escorting a felon, Tim Drake shows that it's not just the fans who think his alter-ego has a pretty stupid name:

You're preaching to the choir, Tim...

Fabian Nicieza shows that even Red Robin thinks that Red Robin is a really, really really stupid name in Red Robin #23.

Census

In this week's Red Robin #21, there's a very silly storyline wherein Tim Drake has to destroy the Ünternet (please don't ask) in order to keep the old Blue Beetle villains, the Madmen (who had been turned into "living servers" by Darkseid--again, don't ask), from infecting everyone on Earth with their "cancer of the soul" (again, asking is contraindicated).

Anyway, it turns out the only way to stop them is to channel the entire Gotham City power grid through them, with leads Fabian Nicieza to drop this little bomb on us:

So...Gotham City is the fourth largest city in the U.S., at least in the DC Universe??

Game. On.

We already know that DC geography is...somewhat different than our world. My pal Siskoid has had some fun recently discussing where they might be located, and having a contest to that effect, as well.

But that's just location. Today's question: just how big are the cities? Hmmmm...

1) Is New York City still the largest in the DC Universe? Or has Metropolis surpassed it? If so, how does the Big Apple feel about being #2?

2) What about Chicago and Los Angeles? Which one (if any) is bigger than Gotham City?

3) Given earthquakes, plagues, military blockades, and the everyday deaths caused by the Joker, Killer Croc, Black Mask, etc., it's pretty much amazing that Gotham still would have enough population to be as high as fourth. And seriously, why haven't the survivors moved away from there? Death wish?

Of course, that begs the question--before all the disasters, was Gotham higher? First place, even?

4) So, where did Coast City rank before, well, you know? Blüdhaven? Seriously, DC cities--unsafe places to live!

5) What about the other DC cities? Where does Fawcett City rank, or Midway, or Opal, or Star City, or...?

Have at it, minions. Show your work.

Questions Based On The First Panel Of One Of This Week's Comics Part I

From the first panel of this week's Return Of Bruce Wayne #5:

Now, maybe this is just me, or maybe it's the really odd way time gets portrayed in comic books...but Tim Drake was Batman's partner for a longer period of time than Dick Grayson??

I always got the impression that Dick Grayson started as Robin at a younger age than Tim did (check for example, the portrayal of Grayson's age in All-Star Goddmaned Batman...not canon, I know, but still)...and Dick while was Batman's partner until he left for college, whereas Tim, if I recall correctly, dropped out of high school to become Red Robin and search for Bruce. So, as I perceived it, Dick started younger and stayed at least a little bit longer.

Hey, I could be wrong. Maybe I'm just old and the cognitive dissonance of the possibility of anybody being Robin longer than Dick Grayson is warping my brain. Or maybe Superboy-Prime just punched the universe again...I'm just askin', you know?