It's been a few months I checked in on Robin and the new direction writer Jon Lewis has taken with the title character's life. I'm pleased but not surprised to find that the focus is on Tim Drake and not Robin. Lewis achieves a nice balance between a teenage slice-of-life riff and super-hero storytelling, offering a light but entertaining read.
While writing an equivalency exam for public high school, Tim runs into an old friend from private school who needs to catch up on his education after a three-month illness. Tim's relieved to have an old, regular, non-tights-wearing friend to kick back with, especially since his girlfriend Steph, AKA the Spoiler, has been giving him the cold shoulder lately. Tim's time with Ives is twice interrupted, though, by a couple of mysterious and highly unusual vagrants.
Woods's light style suits the overall tone of the story quite well. He manages to convey the cluttered, busy urban landscape of Gotham City nicely, and the main characters actually look like youths, not children but not adults either. The colors are interesting as well. The one Robin sequences has a much darker, more muted look than the rest of the book. It serves as a nice visual divider between the two radically different sides of the title character's life.
Bringing Ives -- a supporting character from the Chuck Dixon stint on the title -- back into the fold was a smart move on Lewis's part, because the character is the reader's gateway into Tim's world. He may be as smart as Tim, but he's freaked out by the violence around. As the title character himself notes, though, Ives's real importance is that he gives Tim someone normal and down-to-earth to relate to, thereby opening the door for some grounded character development.
I have to admit, though, that I find Steph and Tim's relationship and the former's problems to be the most fascinating aspect of the book. While I don't share the same kinds of experiences that Steph goes through here, there's definitely a genuine tone to her pain, confusion and anger. I'm surprised and pleased to see what a strong character the Spoiler has become over the years.
