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Yup, the contest is over, the winner is . . .
Jay from Minnesota!
We have his real name and all, but that's how he
requested we identify him.
Jay asked me to take a look at one of the oldest
characters in comics. One I've taken a shot at,
before, but only in a peripheral way, as a member of
the Batman family.
Robin . . . the archetypal sidekick. Young, impertinent
and precocious. Don't you just HATE him? I did,
growing up. I was a kid when Batman was on TV and Burt
Ward's Robin was the lens through which I saw the
character.
Later, when I got interested in comics, something
changed. That change was in Detective Comics, during
the short but excellent run when Steve Englehart,
Marshall Rodgers and Terry Austin had the book. Robin
only showed up late in the run, and only for a short
time, but it was memorable to me. Especially the scene
with Batman and Robin sparring in the Batcave. Not a
match, more like a father and son, or brothers,
testing one another. It was friendly, they laughed.
Yes, Batman was laughing and smiling. Near the end,
Robin gets a call from Wonder Girl (nice one-panel
cameo of Wonder Girl) and has to go off to join the
Teen Titans on a mission or something. Turns out that
was the end of the Titans, for awhile. Good riddance,
I say. That series of the Teen Titans was
unreadable!!!
Of course, the next time I encountered Robin, was in
the New Teen Titans. And even though he was as goofy
looking as ever, he was not the Robin of the TV series
or other appearances. More like that Robin from
Detective Comics. Young, but not a child. Still
dressing like one, though. Took way too long to get
him out of that outfit.
Robin's costume is one of those mistakes that no one
seemed to want to correct. It's just embarassing. The
poor kid was made to parade around in a red vest and
green sequin panties for decades! And those shoes!!!
Argh!
It would take awhile before we got a new Robin
costume, two whole "generations" of Robin would have
to pass, before the third, Tim Drake, got to wear
something a little more presentable. But, that's only
if you remain in the post-Crisis continuity.
Fortunately, we're free to roam further afield than
that!
Once upon a time, there was another Robin. He started
his career, cavorting around the rooftops and
alleyways of Gotham City is 1940. Thanks to a neat
trick, he apparently aged at a vastly slower rate than
his contemporaries. This is obvious, because by the
1970s, he was in his adulthood, no middle age. This
Robin was the one from the old comics, approximately
ending when Batman got the yellow oval on his shirt,
or thereabouts. This Robin was Dick Grayson, like we
all know, but when he reappeared in Justice League of
America #55, he was almost as badly dressed as the
last time he'd been seen.
He's the one on the left. He'd borrowed a few items
from his mentor's closet, obviously, but he hadn't
learned any sense of style at that point. The mask,
chest emblem and cape are just bloody awful. Later,
someone with a little better fashion sense adapted his
old colors into a style not a lot different from the
one designed for Tim Drake. The cape is still a little
bright, but if he's careful, it won't make him too
much of a target. Yeah, right....
At the time, this Robin costume was the best they'd
come up with. Still needed something, though. One of
the nice things about multiple Earths was, it gave
writers and artists a place to experiment. In a lot of
ways, I miss those days. All the alternate worlds kept
things from feeling too crowded. The Earth's a crowded
place in DC Comics, these days.
The second Robin (excluding the whole Earth-1/Earth-2
thing) was Jason Todd and, visually, he was nothing
new. Dark hair, short, young, fit the old costumes so
what the hell......
I liked some of the things about Jason. He wasn't a
"good boy". He was the son of a criminal and he tried
to steal the rims off the batmobile. The kid had
balls.
So then, Frank Miller comes along and tells us in his
masterpiece Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that Jason
gets killed. Screwy. But, in Dark Knight, we get to
meet yet another Robin. This one has much in common
with the third Robin, in that she sought out Batman,
not the other way around. Her family was intact, at
the time she chose to become Robin. She had the
costume made for her, choosing the classic style, but
it works better on a girl than a boy, anyway. Some
Robin. I figure.
Carrie Kelley was an excellent Robin. She had all the
impertinance and recklessness a good Robin needs. She
didn't follow orders very well.
I don't know what the future holds for Carrie Kelley.
Maybe we'll never see her again, but I kinda hope
someone who works on the Justice League cartoon reads
this and takes this little suggestion.... Carrie
Kelley...Robin-BEYOND. :P
I tried to stick to the Batman Beyond styling. Keep it
sleek and simple. I figure the wings retract, like
Batman's.
For a moment, let's go back in time...years ago, I had
an idea for a Batman series, but I never found the
hook I needed to tell a really compelling story for
it. The idea would be to do an Elseworlds style Batman
story, set in the days when Batman first appeared, the
late 30s/early 40s. When it came to costumes, rather
than just mimicking the Golden Age art, I thought
about designing costumes that would look like they'd
be made in that period. With Batman, I didn't change
much. His costume is one of the perfect comic
costumes, after all. The cape and mask, however,
needed a few touches. I figure leather for all the
black bits. Probably with some padding or layering.
The mask is like a wrestling mask, laces in the back,
or straps with buckles. Nothing too big, but there to
make the mask fit snugly. The cape would be attached
to the extended neck of the cowl, giving a double
layer of leather, there. I didn't draw it, but I think
the gloves should also have some laces at the wrist,
to snug them up.
For Robin's suit, I had a few definite ideas. My
conception of a Golden Age Robin is inspired, in part,
by Jason Todd and the old Bowery Boys movies. I could
just picture a street kid in 1939 with a tire iron,
sweating and cursing trying to get the lug nuts off
the Batmobile. An orphan child of two murdered circus
performers, a runaway from the county orphanage where
the circus folk dumped him. Yeah, that worked.
But, would a street kid, even the child of circus folk
dress in that embarassing little costume? Hell, no!
One of the things American kids in those days longed
for was to get out of short pants! So, my Robin
costume had to take those things into consideration.
Even so, I wanted to keep the basic outfit
recognizable. I did a little research and found some
things I could work with. The vest, I got from a
fencing vest. Padded and layered, it's designed to be
light, yet give some protection against blunt force
and possibly even turn a blade. It's double-breasted,
so there's a double-layer of protection over the
center of the chest and abdomen. The outer layer would
be leather. The green short sleeves would be padded,
but less heavily, allowing for more freedom of
movement. Robin's a boy, he's acrobatic, but nowhere
near Batman's class, so he can't necessarily rely on
his ability to dodge, etc., so padding is the
difference between a bruise and a broke bone.
I gave him a utility belt like Batman's, not the pared
down "kiddie" version he'd always had before. No
sequin panties, this time. Black's good enough for the
old man, it's good enough for Robin. Helps hide the
athletic supporter and cup, anyway. Notice I gave him
long sleeves and leggings. Gotham City is in the
north, and has long cold winters, can't be running
around dressed like a pedophile's dream in two feet of
snow. And, no more friggin booties! The boots I
designed are meant to be flexible, but tough enough to
give some protection. They lace up the back, to keep
them snug enough for an acrobat's footing. The green
would be a dark color, evergreen, something like that.
No kelly green glaring out of the night, but the green
of the forest. The cape is longer than the classic
Robin's cape and reversable, like Tim Drake's. One
side dark green, the other the same muted gold as the
sleeves and leggings.
Of course, we finally got a new Robin suit, in Batman
continuity, with the suit designed for Tim Drake. It
accomplished the goal of eliminating the worst
weaknesses of the original Robin suit, closing the
tunic, getting rid of the sequin/scale mail trunks and
the little fairy booties. When it was introduced, it
was said to be composed of so many layers of Kevlar it
would have weighed like 100 pounds! The cape was
several layers of Kevlar, too, and added to the
weight. I guess they later revised that the material
was some kind of alternative to Kevlar developed by
Wayne Industries, to reduce the immense weight penalty
of Kevlar. Whatever. I don't mind the body armor, but
too much makes it unwieldy. Armor the most critical
parts, but the point is to get out of the way of
bullets. In the original design, and for years after,
Tim's boots had the split toe of Japanese "tabi"
boots, in the ninja style, but this has fallen out of
favor in recent years. Mostly, I like this design,
though the belt is impractical. The staff weapon is
cool, but an automatic opening and closing
telecscoping staff would be impractical, as well. The
segments would have to be too thin and weak to serve
as a staff, except the segments with the mechanism.
The balance would be poor and it just wouldn't work.
But, it looks cool, so leave it alone.
For a short time, Tim was out as Robin and Batman had
taken one of Tim's friends, the daughter of the
villain The Cluemaster. Stephanie had a costumed
identity, for awhile, as The Spoiler, which she took
up in order to stop her father. She blamed him for her
crappy childhood and she wanted to stop him. At some
point along the way, Batman saw her potential and
began working with her, training her and eventually
allowed her to become Robin. Unfortunately, she was
killed by Black Mask, or Leslie Tomkins, depending on
what you read. I don't read any of the bat-books,
right now, so I can't say for sure.
With all that's changed in Tim's life, lately
-Stephanie's death and his father's, especially- it
might be time for him to make some changes and in
comics, that always needs new duds. Again, I wouldn't
want to change the basic Robin layout, the color
scheme just works so well, regardless of what you've
seen in the movies. In the dark, all colors are black,
dammit! All I did was add a few "Ultimate" style
touches to the suit. I decided to lose some of the
pointless detainl, like the little pods on the gloves
and short sleeves. I figure the winter version has
long sleeves in place of the short sleeves. It's up to
the writers and artists to show us the changes of the
seasons, otherwise you end up with Ultimate
Spider-Man, which hasn't showed the change of even ONE
season in the 3 years it's been published.
Anyway, back to Robin. The gauntlet gloves are
classic, and they stay. The boots I adapted from the
Teen Titans cartoon series and some real boots I've
seen at cons and online. I gave him a utility belt
with usable pouches, too.
I didn't stray into Nightwing or Tim's possible future
as Batman, because that would break out of the "single
character" criteria for the contest and it just
complicates things.
As for the contest entries that didn't win, I plan on
mining that list for column fodder, so keep an eye out
here for your suggestions. I can't say when I'll do
which characters or anything, but I'll certainly try
to credit whoever suggested it.
See you next month!
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