DC Comics Offers An LGBTQ Robin (Sort Of)

Gotham City has become a lot more interesting lately as Robin seems to have taken a romantic interest in another man.

What Happened: In the latest edition of DC Comics’ monthly anthology comic series “Batman: Urban Legends,” Tim Drake — the third person to take up the identity of Robin after Dick Grayson and Jason Todd — goes out to dinner with an old friend named Bernard Dowd, who winds up getting kidnapped as the evening progresses. Tim slips into his Robin costume to save Bernard, who is unaware Tim and Robin are the same person. Bernard remarks to Robin that he wished he could have finished his date, which gets Tim to wondering about his feelings for Bernard.

The next day, Tim arrives at Bernard’s home tries to explain to Bernard that the dinner was more than a culinary distraction, stating, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, about that night, and I — I don’t know what it meant to me. Not yet. But I’d like to figure it out,”

Bernard, who apparently is on the same wavelength, responds, “I was hoping you would. Tim Drake…do you want to go on a date with me?”

And Tim replies: “Yeah… Yeah, I think I want that” — at which point the reader is left hanging for next week’s installment.

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Why It Happened: The sexual orientation of Batman and Robin has been the subject of endless conversations for decades, and the campy 1960s television show only dropped intensified the chatter.

While DC Comics added LGBTQ elements to characters including Batwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Midnighter, the company — a division of AT&T T — has long resisted the suggestion of homosexual orientation for the Caped Crusaders.

Tim Drake’s character had romantic relationships in earlier storylines with Stephanie Brown and Cassie Sandsmark. The new story doesn't conclusively identify him as either gay or bisexual, but he has already been embraced by many fans as an LGBTQ symbol.

Meghan Fitzmartin, the writer of this storyline, tweeted that this plot twist came about because her “goal in writing has been and will always be to show just how much God loves you. You are so incredibly loved and important and seen.”

Photo: DC Comics.