Behind in the Times

Hey guys, missed my day again. I've been sick all weekend and haven't felt like doing much of anything. Don't want to go to class today, but I should. My medicine isn't helping my motivation at all. I feel like there's a cloud betwixt my ears.

I don't think I mentioned this, but I've always been a fan of comic book Super Heroes. When I was a kid I used to watch all of the super hero cartoons that came on. I admit that Marvel was my favorite, but DC wormed its way into my favor with the Justice League Unlimited and Teen Titan cartoons. I don't think that I've ever read a DC comic, but I have read some of the revamp Marvel ones.

I've been watching the Young Justice cartoon lately, and I like it. But it gets me back to thinking about the DC universe. Now I'm a little bit more caught up on the Batman universe in which the large amount of people Batman has trained/adopted become known as the Bat Family in fanon and it's crazy, like everything in Gotham.

The DC universe is interesting because it has evolved in a creative way. Let me take the character Robin, sidekick to Batman, as an example. The first Robin was Dick Grayson and was created in order for boys to connect with a character in the Batman comics with some success. Years later the Robin character fell out of favor and they wanted to add freshness to the character so they changed his personality a bit and gave the Robin the name Jason Todd. Fans hated the new Robin so the creators were forced to kill him off. Later, when they decided to bring the Robin character back in the franchise they named him Tim Drake. Because of his past popularity Dick Grayson's Robin was brought back in the spin off Teen Titans and eventually Tim Drake was given the spin off Young Justice. That is what really happened.

This is the modern revisionist history of the Robins: The first Robin was Dick Grayson who decided split from Batman when he got older and joined the Teen Titans. He later went solo and became Nightwing and temporarily Batman. Jason Todd was killed by The Joker, or at least that's what Batman was lead to believe. Jason comes back as the Red Hood, a "superhero" that kills and becomes this great critic to Batman's policy of never killing. Tim was taken by the Joker once and it drove him insane. He seemed to have gotten past it and, like the Robins before him, he left Batman and joined Young Justice. Decades in the future his insanity takes the best of him and he becomes the new Joker.

In the end they all become this twisted family, which fits in with the modern trend of grim storylines in comics. Batman has always been dark, but never this convoluted with pessimism, which is why I prefer the cartoons to the comics right now.

As you can probably tell, I love the Robin story and I didn't even mention Damien Wayne who is all kinds of psychotic and Stephanie, the only girl Robin. Dick Grayson is favorite Robin ♥

In case you were wondering, the people in that picture to the left are this, from left to right: Red Robin/Robin #3/Tim Drake, Batwoman, Robin #4 or 5/Damien Wayne, Batman/Bruce Wayne, Nightwing/Robin #1/Dick Grayson, Batgirl/Barbara Gordan, Red Hood/Robin #2/Jason Todd. They're the Bat family. Yes, I'm a loser who knew that off the top of my head.

Stephanie, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving. Your shedule is nuts. I hope you know what you're doing. A common mistake many college students make is taking on too much and then ending up quitting. But if you believe you can handle it (and I've seen people handle impossible schedules before) I trust you'll do fine.

Alda, hope all is well with you in Germany.

Ciao!