Blogger Steven Padnick looks at Teen Titans and Robin, and detects signs of JLA/Batman Syndrome, “a disease of writing in which an under-powered character, in order to be useful in a team setting with much more powerful allies, is written as much more capable than he is in his own titles”:
While Batman is the most famous sufferer of this disease, his sidekick Robin suffers from it that much worse. Batman is always somewhat distant, calculating, and scary, but Robin is much more cheerful and emotional, prone to crack jokes after a fight or freak out a bit when encountering the fantastic.
In fact, in his own title, Robin freaks out A LOT! …
[snip]
But put Robin on a team with a kid who runs at the speed of light or an Amazonian powerhouse, and JLA / Batman Syndrome kicks in. To prove that he has a right to stand with these young gods, these teen titans, Robin has to be written as more than human, a Nietzschean Übermensch, who does not let human concerns get in the way of his goal.
Padnick goes on to make a Sally Struthers-like plea for a consistent, “normal” Boy Wonder: “So please, let him be human again, and working together, we can make a better world.”
April 18th, 2007 at 9:46 am
man, get someone who can draw for this title! The posing is bad, it’s graphically boring as hell…Lady Martian Manhunter looks horrible.
Go!Teen Titans, Go away!
April 18th, 2007 at 10:00 am
With Adam Beechen taking over Teen Titans, hopefully this will change because I’ve been enjoying his take on Robin while TT has fallen off my pull list a couple of times since Johns totally lost his way during Infinite Crisis.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Yeah, I don’t see why Robin can’t be “cheerful and emotional, prone to crack jokes after a fight” (etc) as well as being an intelligent, capable, problem-solving uber-tactician who’s also a pretty mean martial artist. His abilities shouldn’t dictate his character.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
You know what?
Don’t worry about it.
The thing with licensed characters is that different writers write them differently (duh?).
You are free to like or dislike a particular writer’s take on a particular character, just don’t expect them all to conform to some super-restrictive mould (wouldn’t that be boring?).
In any case, now that Beecham is writing both, you’ll get your wish.