Checkup on the DC Universe Rebirth : Mr. Oz Unhooded (Part 1)

Checkup on the DC Universe Rebirth: Mr. Oz Unhooded(Part 2) – Tim Drake & A Lonely Place of Living

DETECTIVE COMICS #965

“A Lonely Place of Living” Part 1

Synopsis:

Flashback to the events of A Lonely Place of Dying where a young Tim Drake is telling Dick Grayson that he knows he is/was Nightwing and Robin.

In the Present, Tim is in a Kryptonian holding platform while he is being questioned by Mr. Oz. Mr. Oz asks him why he went to Dick and Bruce years ago.

As Oz grills him, more flashbacks of “A Lonely Place of Dying” are shown.

Oz then shows him his teammates and tells him that Bruce knows Tim is alive. He also tells him that Bruce is consumed with finding Tim.

Oz then presses Tim again about why he decided to retire from being Red Robin:

Tim says that he has been allowing Mr. Oz to interrogate him so he could multitask and use some Kryptonian coding theory he deciphered with Batman years ago to break the holding cell.

He attacks Mr. Oz, demanding to know where he is and why he was brought to this place.

Oz reveals himself to Tim, who recognizes the Superman symbol and tells him that he is Hydra-El … I mean Jor-El…also known as Superman’s father.

Jor-El tells Tim that he sees a lot of himself in Tim, as someone who tends to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. He also tells Tim should make the selfish decision and stay as HIS eyes are turned elsewhere at the moment and Tim’s need to save his friends is what turned HIS eye toward him.

After Oz disappears Tim desperately tries to contact Batman. He gets a response from Batman saying that he is a prisoner also and to hurry before Oz returns. Tim hacks the computers once more and deactivates all the containment cells and runs to where Batman says he is being held.

Tim finds Batman, who shoves him aside as he fires a gun… which confuses Tim since Batman does not use guns… and Tim screws up by opening all the cells instead of just the one.

Thoughts on the issue:

It was nice to see that Clark/Superman is not the only character to have their origin restored during Rebirth. This issue recognizes the events of Batman: Year 3 and A Lonely Place of Dying as Tim’s origin…not the New52 one.

It was a nice touch to use the flashback sequences which show Tim’s true (PreNew52) origin:

Tim’s not wanting to be or become like Bruce/Batman is consistent with his characterization Pre-New52

During the Pre-New52 Era, there were a few occasions that Tim either considered quit or retired from being Robin or turned down the Batman mantle. This is one of the aspects of Tim that I always enjoyed. Yes, like Bruce he suffered the loss of loved ones, but it was never the driving force behind why he first revealed he knew that Bruce was Batman. For me, from the beginning, there was the feeling that Tim would not be part of the vigilante community for the rest of his life and that he would eventually move on to live a normal life. Even after facing tragedies like the loss of Conner (Superboy) and his father (during Identity Crisis), he did not let those push him to the edge or make him want to make Robin his whole life.

Where Bruce is a mask for Batman, Robin is a mask for Tim.

Turning Down the Mantle of the Bat:

Knightfall: When Bane broke Batman’s back, Tim could have easily stepped into the Batman role, deferring to Jean Paul Valley aka Azrael.

Prodigal: When Bruce returns after reclaiming the mantle of Batman, Bruce stepped away again leaving Dick to assume the mantle

Death of Bruce Wayne/Battle for the Cowl: After Bruce is “killed” during Final Crisis, Tim dons the Batman suit and takes on Jason Todd who believes he should be the next Batman. When Dick finally assumes the Batman mantle, he fires Tim from being Robin, replacing him with Damian. Tim would assume the name Red Robin and continue to search for Bruce, who he believed to be alive and stuck in the timestream.

During his 1993 solo series, Tim considered more than once quitting or quit being Robin for a time.

DCU GENESIS event: After failing to save a gang member from drowning, Tim starts to question his ability to continue his second life as a vigilante. After stopping The General, Tim retraces the step he took on his path to becoming Robin where he faces Lady Shiva and King Snake once more.

Robin #123 – 125: Robin believes he has murdered Johnny Warlock and once again questions his activities as Robin. At the same time, Tim’s father decides to take a bigger part in Tim’s life. After discovering that Tim lied about being on the football team, Jack discovers Tim’s Robin costume. Jack first confronts Bruce, threatening to first kill him or exposing him and the rest of the Bat-family to the public. Tim gets a “put your big boy pants on and suck it up” talk from Steph and decides that he can move past the incident and be the hero he needs to be. When he returns to the Batcave, Tim’s father is there and is pissed about what the double life Tim has been leading. Tim gets his father to agree that he will not expose Bruce as Batman if, he (Tim) agrees to retire as Robin. This leads to Steph becoming Robin for a few issues before she was fired and started a gang war using Batman’s simulation that he had put together if he ever wanted to get rid of the gangs in Gotham. When he returned to being Robin, Tim did so with the blessing of his father.

The Batman Tim that he meets seems to be from”Titans Tomorrow” from Geoff Johns’ 2003 Teen Titans run.

After Oz frees him, Tim tries to contact Batman. The Batman who answers him, says he is also a prisoner and it turns out to be another Tim in a Batman suit.

As mentioned above, Tim has no desire to become Batman but there are versions of him (possible future versions or from other Earths) that do take up the mantle.

The version he meets in Oz’s prison seems to be one from the pre-New52 era Teen Titans run.

Teen Titans #17 -19

The Titans return from the trip with the Legion…ten years too late! Tim encounters his future self in the identity of Batman after his mentor died in a crisis. This future happened despite his repeated statement that he did not want to be the next Batman, and is rather content being Robin.

In this timeline, Tim was now the leader of the future Titans with himself as Batman. After Bruce Wayne’s death, Tim has the Titans take control of the entire West Coast. He orders any rebellions to be put down by Dark Raven absorbing the people’s free will and hope. He even hunts down most of Batman’s Rogue’s gallery and kills them with the handgun that was used to kill Thomas and Martha Wayne. He explains to his younger self, “It took me years to do it.”

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Like above with the Lonley Place of Dying flashbacks, Writer James Tynoin uses dialogue from the Pre-New52 era, as Batman Tim introduces himself:

I would have thought that if there was another Tim Drake in Oz’s prison it would have been the Tim Drake who assumed the Batman Beyond mantle after Terry McGuinness was killed in the New52 Future’s End storyline which involved Brother Eye.

Thirty-five years into the future, Brother Eye has managed to transform the majority of superheroes into cyborg bugs. As the last remaining heroes launch one final attack on Brother Eye’s power source, Bruce Wayne creates a time machine in an attempt to prevent Brother Eye’s ascension and this future. Bruce forces Batman (Terry McGinnis) to travel through time instead. Arriving in the past, Terry realizes that he has arrived five years too late, with what he was trying to prevent already in play. After Terry is attacked by the cyborg bug of Plastique, which he subsequently dismantles, he learns that Mister Terrific is working on the technology which will lead to Brother Eye’s ascension. He poses as a homeless person and slums outside Terrifitech Tower. Lois Lane, discovers Tim Drake, the former and thought-deceased Red Robin, alive and masquerading as a bartender named Cal. Terry McGinnis attempts to shut down Mister Terrific’s development of his Brother Eye technology, but accidentally helps it along with the introduction of corrupted technology from his future. In a final battle, Terry teams up with Tim Drake, who has been persuaded to return to active duty as a hero, and sacrifices himself in order to prevent the rise of the machines. Honouring his sacrifice, Tim Drake takes Terry’s futuristic Batman suit and becomes the new Batman. With Brother Eye having taken over all of the technology on Earth, Tim is forced to use Terry’s time travel technology to travel back in time a further five years and destroy Brother Eye’s satellite in the past (the very-near future in contemporaneous DC Comics). He convinces the Brother Eye satellite not to send a beacon in response to the distress call of Earth 2’s refugees, leaving them stranded in their own dimension. In the final issue and the story’s denouement, Tim Drake emerges in Terry’s future, 35 years later, only to find his mission in the past was a failure and humanity remains enslaved and decimated by the machines. Accepting that it is impossible to defeat Brother Eye with time travel, he vows to form a resistance in the present day, setting up the new Batman Beyond spin-off series starring Tim Drake as Batman.

While protecting Neo-Gotham as Batman, Tim discovers that Terry is alive because the timeline he died in was reconfigured (Thanks, Doctor M.) and has been under the control of Spellbinder. Terry is able to break free and Tim returns the Batman mantle back to him and rides off to discover the new world … and disappears.

I think that Oz/Jor-El is collecting Tim Drakes and Doomsdays from across the Multiverse for some reason…more on this next time.

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Overall I am excited as to where this story is going

Action Comics #988

The OZ Effect (Part 2)

Synopsis:

Superman calls OZ a liar…literally!



Superman says that his parents died with Krypton and his father cannot be standing in front of him, to which Jor-El assures him that he is real and survived the destruction of the planet.

Superman tells his robot Kelex to do a full-spectrum analysis but the robot does not obey. Jor-El says that he is programmed to follow his inventor first and progeny second. Kelex runs the scan and says that this is indeed Jor-El, Superman’s father.

Superman still thinks it is a trick and Jor-El reminds them of their meeting at the motel in the DCU Rebirth Special. Jor-El says he has been watching Kal all his life, and his grandson (Jonathan) also.

Jor-EL uses the Sun crystals to take Kal back to Krypton days before Kal was born. Jor-El shows Kal his maternal grandfather, Lor-Van, who was Jor-El’s scientific benefactor, arguing over the fact that Jor-El’s research was supposed to save Krypton not evacuate it as space travel was forbidden.

Superman’s mother tries to maintain the peace between her father and husband, but Lor-Van erases all of Jor-El’s research on the Stardrive. Jor-El tells Kal that he built the ship that brought him to Earth from memory. The two witness the final moment of Jor-El and Lara, where Jor-El is taken away by blue flames as Lara dies.

When he awoke he found himself on Earth in the most lawless, war-torn place on Earth where he was found and cared for by the locals instead of taken to the warlord who ran the city.

The family hid Jor-El from the soldiers but also made sure he was fed before they ate from their meager supplies.

Once he was well, the family asked him to leave which he did, but also wanted to repay their kindness. He snuck into the warlord’s palace and stole food for the family.

The family’s young son informed the warlord that his family had hid him and assumed that some of the Kryptonite that had been removed from his body were jewels. The military arrested Jor-El and the family, who were sentenced to death. The warlord helped the son murder his family and was about to do the same to Jor-El, who vaporized them with his heat vision.

Jor-El asked the kid why he did it but before he got an answer was taken away and forced to watch videos of the worst of humanity.

Back in the Fortress of Solitude, Jor-El tells Kal that humanity does not deserve him and everything he has done for them. He also says that he made a mistake sending him to Earth and he is going to take him away from them forever.

Thoughts on the issue:

Assuming Oz is who he says he is and this is how he came to survive the destruction of Krypton, Doctor Manhattan seems to have played a role in this, probably to play mind games with Superman.

Doctor Manhattan or whoever is manipulating things in the DC Universe is sick, twisted, and a fan of Stanley Kubrick.

Overall, this issue is what I expected it to be, not answering to many important questions, but merely raising some more “why” questions than “Who”

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So we have to wait 2 weeks until the next installments of both of these stories…

Action Comics #989