The second half of this block focuses on the “Batman R.I.P.” tie-in issues of ROBIN. If you missed the previous issues, check the first half.

Fabian Nicieza begins his run with Robin #175, a “Batman R.I.P.” tie-in issue. It begins with Robin wondering why everything doesn’t seem right after he, Bruce, and Dick took their year away from Gotham City. He’s taken the black casebook from The Batcave, and he begins to wonder exactly what to do if Batman REALLY does go crazy/missing. The rest of the issue is very eclectic (just like “R.I.P.” itself), switching between present day and during the year away from Gotham. By the end of the tale, though, Tim does decide what he’ll do if Batman went crazy: He’ll take him down.

Robin #176 continues this story, complete with flashbacks. Robin has given the Penguin money so he’ll be notified of anything strange going on in the Gotham underground regarding Batman and his current crazy/missing status. While Robin is trying to figure this out on his own, it is revealed that Stephanie Brown, Spoiler, knows a lot more about the situation than she’s letting on. Apparently, it turns out that Batman told Spoiler that he anticipated something happening to him, and to not let Robin get involved. The interesting thing is that Robin acts very much like Batman would in a situation like this, doing what he thinks is right.

There’s a very interesting question here: With such an interesting, convoluted, and centralized story going on in the pages of BATMAN, how should the other Bat-family books react? Titles such as DETECTIVE and NIGHTWING chose to reference “R.I.P.” very subtly. ROBIN takes a different approach here, trying to tie-in to the “R.I.P.” story as much as possible without taking away from its central narrative. I’m not sure if it works exactly, but it’s a very interesting and fresh way to look at the Robin character and to see how he would handle things if he were forced to be in charge.