Sam Register, one of the minds behind the animated Teen Titans series (not a bad show, but miles below Bruce Timm’s groundbreaking Batman/Superman/League animated series), when asked whether the Robin in Titans is Dick Grayson or Tim Drake (aside: incidentally, Grayson is the only answer that makes sense), answers: “I am so completely bored with the DC universe and continuity and all that crap. To me, he’s just Robin. I know all the fans give a crap, but I don’t.” In other words: turn off your brain and just swallow any shit we decide to feed you. What a contrast with Bruce Timm and his crew.
"Austro" as in Rothbard and Wittgenstein, "Athenian" as in Aristotle and smashing-the-plutocracy.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
I didn’t know you watched Teen Titans too
Dick Grayson is the only answer that makes sense even if it’s for the obvious reason that the alternate reality Robin was named “nosyarG ckiD” (Dick Grayson in reverse). I remember there being some dispute about the identity a few years ago, but we all knew that the creators of the show didn’t give a damn about anything. This was fine so long as they made some awesome episodes (and they did).
For any fan of that show who complained about unfinished story lines, hanging plot threads, and just random teasers that really went nowhere because the show would never do an episodic story arc… my heart goes out to you. We’ll never know what Slade wanted with those red, green, and blue chips. We’ll never really know for sure what happened with Tara (origins/destination). We’ll never know what was up with Trigon and Raven. Titans East? Who? Could they have delved a little more deeply into the story of Starfire’s people? Yes, but c’mon, you should know by now.
The memories of frustration all come flooding back.
The case for its being Grayson is the “nosyarG ckiD” thing, plus his being involved with Starfire, plus his backflash of acrobats falling to their deaths, plus the vision of his future self as Nightwing. The sole case for its being Tim Drake is a) he looks more like Tim Drake (so what? different ages, different animation styles), plus in another series Batman mentions that Tim is off with the Teen Titans (but even supposing that show is in continuity with this Titans series, why couldn’t Tim join the Titans later after Dick becomes Nightwing — just as he did in the comics?).
As I understand it the DC comic universe is fraught with contradictions and conflicting storylines. Maybe he just feels frustrated about it?