Review: Tim Drake: Robin #8

Overview: In Tim Drake: Robin #8, Robin is faced with a murder mystery that points to an unexpected suspect within the Bat-Family.

Synopsis (spoilers ahead): As Tim Drake: Robin #8 begins, Darcy and Bernard are with Tim on his boat.  Tim is working on the motor of his boat while Bernard and Darcy question him about living on a boat.  Darcy is concerned that it is going to storm during the night, and she wonders if they need to get the tarps.  Bernard, with his faith in Tim, knows that he will fix it; he just doesn’t know how to yet.  This appears to be more of an argument between Darcy and Bernard.

Suddenly a shadow casts on the deck of the boat.  At first, it was thought to be a plane, but soon it is discovered that it is Batwoman crashing onto the boat.  Tim and Darcy make eye contact, and Darcy grabs Bernard to usher him away as Tim checks Batwoman’s pulse.  She has one, but there is a lot of blood on her gloves.

Later Kate is conscious below deck with Robin and Sparrow.  Kate admits to not being able to remember anything, but first, Robin wants her to take off her gloves.  The last thing she remembers, she came home after helping Harley and crashes into her bed.  She heard a noise, and then she sees something that she does not recognize.

Meanwhile, Tim is analyzing Kate’s gloves.  The blood is not hers, but there is no match as to whose it is.  Robin surmises that Kate is going to take it upon herself to discover what happened.  She does, and Robin tells her that they are going to figure this out together. Batwoman landed on his boat.  The first step is to report it to the GCPD.

The three leave on their cycles.  Robin admits to Sparrow that he was not just working on the boat’s outboard motor but also looking into how to make the bike’s motors waterproof.  Batwoman says that she has no memory of the last few months.  Batwoman says that not one of the family looked for her.  Robin, however, states that he has seen her.  She came over for Christmas dinner with Bruce, Dick, and Damian.  She even took Bernard and Tim out to celebrate their coming out with Barbara.  Kate even helped Tim move into the boat.  Kate remembers none of these things.  Soon they have more to worry about.  They come onto a battle scene.

Robin deduces it is the Chaos monsters, and they pick up a call on the police scanner; an officer is down.  Robin, Batwoman, and Sparrow, fortunately, are on the scene to provide Detective Williams with the backup he needs.  The Chaos cult was released after all the charges against them were dropped.  They were quiet until now.  Robin tells the detective that they are going to face some chaos.  The three go into action.  This attack, however, does not fit the modus operandi of a Chaos attack.  There is no one leading this attack, no one who can benefit from this attack.  The three heroes go into attack mode, but their goal is to gain information.  Batwoman, however, is very interested in what happened to her, so she goes more violent than Robin wants.  Robin discovers that the one leading the chaos may be on the roof.  He grapples up.  He wants to confront the threat alone, but Batwoman again wants to know what happened to her, so she grapples up leaving Sparrow.  Unfortunately, Sparrow takes a knife in the abdomen right after Batwoman leaves.

The two move forward without knowing the extent of Darcy’s injuries.  Batwoman approaches the man as he says he was wondering when his message was going to be received.  Batwoman grabs the man by his lapel as Robin grabs her arm.  The man says that he wasn’t talking to her but rather to Robin.  He soundly beats Batwoman, forcing her arm behind her back and holding her neck, saying that Robin has helped them capture a child killer.  Just then, Williams radios Robin; he is with Sparrow, and he doesn’t believe she is going to make it.

Analysis: Tim Drake: Robin #8 provides a great ending for the first chapter. Batwoman is accused of being a child killer, and it appears that Sparrow may be dead herself.  This story is full of mystery.  What happened to Kate Kane, and why are her memories missing?  It appears from Robin’s conversation that a large part of Kate’s memories are missing; we only know of the events involving Tim, but what else is missing?  Batwoman is a more violent member of the Bat-Family but a child killer; she is not.  Also, it is unclear who the mystery man is other than he is well-dressed, but at the same time, he has to be an extremely skilled combatant to defeat Batwoman so easily.

The art of this issue is not the same as the previous issue.  It is a little more cartoony, but not like the first arc of this series.  With that said, I like the art here.  It is stylized. However, I like the models of the characters.  Bernard looks like a male, not overly masculine, which is not his character but definitely not as feminine as he looked in the previous arc.  Bernard looks like a boy here.  The exaggerated features of Tim’s face are also not present here.  He looks like a regular character without the button or pointy nose he had previously.  I do miss some of the more realistic details, but this definitely has enjoyable visuals that do not take me out of the story.

I do want to talk about the coloration.  The colorist is good at making the blood distinct from the other reds.  It looks like Kate’s red gloves are covered in blood.  The reader does not just have to take the word of the characters; the gloves do look like they are covered in blood.

Editor’s Note: DC Comics provided TBU with a copy of this comic for review purposes. You can find this comic and help support TBU in the process by purchasing this issue digitally on Comixology through Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.