I encouraged my fellow Mod, Khris, to kick the feature off with his look at Batman Reborn, which was a much more well known arc than the one that I looked at in week two (and present for you below).
So far, I've had articles covering Kingdom Come, Batman: Year One, The Crow and House of M that are in line to be published. It would be great if more of you would head over to arkhamcity.co.uk, take a look at what we're doing and get involved by submitting your own articles.
Below is my entry to the treasure chest.
Present Tense, Broken Futures
Whilst Robin 116-120 have never been collected, their story arc remains one of my all-time favourite comic arcs for several reasons, not least fantastic art from Pete Woods and superb writing from the underrated Jon Lewis.
Warning, this article contains spoilers for the afore mentioned issues.
Set inbetween the Bruce Wayne: Fugitive annd Batman: War Games storylines, the arc starts out with Tim Drake's 16th birthday. Tim's complete lack of social life is evident by the fact that his party consists of just his dad, stepmum, girlfriend Steph Brown (The Spoiler) and best friend, Ives. Part way through the party, the doorman brings up a parcel that was delivered anonymously. It's a plain white box with no lid or other way of opening it and no label or other identifying features.
Treating it as suspicious, possibly a weapon sent by an enemy, Tim slips it to one side and flags it to Batman for investigation. They begin their investigations in the batcave and then split up. As Robin is running across rooftops, the box opens in his hand. Sensory equipment covers his face and the device plays a holographic message from Alfred - 10 years in the future.
In the message, the future Alfred tells Robin that Gotham is in chaos. The police and military are at war with the vigilantes; fighting over who will protect the city. Needless to say, the destruction caused by such as war has been devestating to the city. Alfred says that the cause of these problems is one of Robin's allies and that they must be stopped now, in Tim's time, before they descend down a dark path. However, Alfred is inconviently killed before he can tell Robin who this person is.
Tim's not stupid. He takes some time deciding whether or not this is real or a hoax before deciding that it warrants investigation. The prime candidate for bringing Gotham to ruin is Batman himself. After everything they'd gone through leading up to the Murderer/Fugitive arc, the relationship between Bruce and Tim was a little strained. The first major desicion on this investigation is to keep batman in the dark.
After chasing down some false real-world leads, Robin eventually decides that he is going to have to investigate his allies closely. He follows them, studying them for 10 days; concocting various scenarios in which they could become a tyrant. To his dismay, he realises that it could be any of them.
Tim determines to test his friends. He formulates a lie; a lie that would contain extreme right-wing beliefs that he'll tell to individual members of the Bat-clan. Surely, the future tyrant of Gotham would be the one that showed sympathy to the ideas and didn't tell him that he was being crazy.
Before he can present the lie to any of his allies, he is visted by a restored future Alfred, who has now transported himself through time to speak with Robin. The implausability of the future Alfred being brought back to life and sent through time, combined with little clues that he picks up with his detective's eye and nose, tell Robin that this is a fabrication. He pulls the mask off to reveal the present day Alfred. The box, the hologram, the entire thing had been a test laid out by Batman. A test that Robin passed through his investigations and finding the truth.
The relationship that exists between Bruce and Tim is unlike that of any other Batman and Robin team. The dynamics of this relationship are summed up perfectly within this arc. Tim has a father and new step-mother who love him, which allows Bruce to retain a certain distance from Tim that he couldn't afford to give his previous wards. Regardless of this distance there is a bond between the two that stems from their similarities rather than any paternal relationship. Their similarities are also the cause of problems between them; namely their tendency to keep things to themselves. Several months before the events of this arc, Batman revealed Tim's civillian identity to Stephanie Brown. Whilst Robin and Spoiler had been an item for a while, Tim had not revealed his real name incase a trail could be made back to Dick or Bruce that would reveal their alter-egos. Obviously this led to some anymosity between the two of them.
Now we get to this arc, in which Batman has decided that Tim is ready for the 'next level' of his training and sets about it without informing him. The process of investigating his friends, formulating possible temporal paradoxes and even questioning his own memories placed obvious stress on Robin and when he reveals the plot he is furious to the point that he considers quitting. It doesn't take Tim long to deal with his anger and come to the conclusion that Bruce was right to step up his training, though he went about it the wrong way. No matter what happens between them, this Batman and Robin team's relative distance allows them to put things aside in order to serve 'the mission'. This acombined with thieir similarities allow them to function in a way that the other Batman and Robin teams couldn't as true mentor and protégé.
Pete Woods had been the regular artist on Robin from the end of No Man's Land, so he'd had plenty of time to get to grips with the character, but this arc proves a perfect swan song for his run as he hits new heights. I could count the number of artists who draw Robin at an appropraite age on both hands; many either draw him as a child or a small adult, but Woods' absolutely nails it.
I've never understood why Jon Lewis hasn't worked on more mainstream comics. His characterisation of Tim Drake is absolutely perfect, from the overabundance of caption boxes compared to speech balloons to his tendancy to keep things to himself. Infact, the entire plot of the arc plays to Tim's strengths. It forces him to over-think, to analyse, to work in solitude and, yes, even to lie to Batman.
Lewis wraps up some of his ongoing subplots here as well. Tim finds out that Steph has been living in a low-rent room after refusing to stay at he mother's house following the death of Cluemaster, her father. Steph was furious that her mother seemed to forgive his crimes simply because he was dead. Tim helps to patch things up between them and then spending time with Steph, enjoying the distraction from his investigation.
Part of what made this arc seem like such a classic is what followed it. #121 began the run of a new writer who lead us through two-and-a-quarter years of dire dialogue and crummy characterisation. Over the next few years it felt as though DC Comics had recognised that Robin had built up his skillset through Robin #120, and in Geoff Johns' Teen Titans, and they were trying to get him back to that point.
Eight years on Present Tense, Broken Futures remains one of my favourite arcs, primarily because it does what all truly great stories do and embraces the qualities of it's protagonist to the fullest; it is quintessentially Tim Drake.
Source: arkhamcity.co.uk
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