Why do I have such a love/hate relationship with this series? Why?
Oh, I remember. It’s because RED ROBIN keeps riding the line of being a good title but it keeps choosing to hold itself back.
Ignoring that for now, I’ll catch up on the story. Here’s a big spoiler if you haven’t been keeping up: at the end of issue #4, Red Robin (with some League of Assassins help) located a mysterious cave in Iraq complete with Bat-symbol scribbles and all. Then, everyone got stabbed to death by some crazy assassin dude from the mysterious Council of Spiders. That's right—the Council of Spiders. And with that, RED ROBIN's muddled first arc actually ended on a relatively high note.
When this issue catches up with Red Robin, he isn't looking so great. Apparently, he and his bald-headed League of Assassins sidekick chick (Pru) managed to make it out of the desert alive and into a Bruce Wayne-owned penthouse in Baghdad. Then, a horrified Tam Fox (Lucius Fox's daughter) enters the room to find their bloody, lifeless bodies sprawled out across the bed. Almost immediately, a group of League of Assassins ninja storm the room and take everyone (Tam included) to the Cradle -- the unofficial LOA headquarters.
After a cop-out way of reviving Tim and his ninja partner, a new "White Ghost" character is introduced. This actually makes some sense; every time Ra's al Ghul comes up with a new world destruction plan, he has a new Ubu. Later, the enigmatic Council of Spiders is introduced -- they're basically an organization attempting to destroy the LOA for fun. At the request of Ra's himself, White Ghost gives Red Robin a new mission -- to lead the League of Assassins and take down the Council of Spiders for good.
And that's where a lot of the problems with this story begin -- not with the content, but with the structure. Ever since this series started, Chris Yost has apparently found it absolutely necessary to break up each part of each issue into a series of disjointed flashback and flash forward (and present time) sequences. If that didn't make things confusing enough, this issue also contains multiple story jumps exploring the Council of Spiders back story. Why is this needed, Chris Yost? Why?
If that wasn't enough, this issue also suffers from "way too many internal monologue boxes" syndrome. And that's unfortunate because the characterization of Tim in this issue is probably the best of the series so far -- just look at how he plans to handle his new job description. I'm also a bit worried about this Tam Fox character; at the moment it seems like there's no reason to have her in the story.
Just like the initial arc of RED ROBIN, there's a really interesting story concept here, but the way it's being told makes it a chore to read through. If little things like the story jumps were eradicated, I really believe that the title could reach its full potential. It's not like there isn't enough intrigue here to carry the story along. And even with all of my complaints, I'm still looking forward to the rest of this arc. Marcus To comes on board the next issue as artist, and I think his dynamic artwork is exactly what this title needs.
On a side note, if you like Red Robin/Tim Drake as a character, do yourself a favor and pick up this past week's ADVENTURE COMICS #3. Thanks to Geoff Johns, you'll get some wonderful character development and a better explanation of why Tim wears his new costume than his actual title provides.
