The latest incarnation of Robin the Boy Wonder from the Batman universe will go a date with another man and explore his sexuality in a new storyline for the DC superhero universe due out this week, Polygon.com reports.
The character, Tim Drake, will become the first LGBTQ member of Batman’s posse in fifteen years; Batwoman revealed she was a lesbian in a mid-2000s story line. Drake will accept an invitation from his old friend Bernard to go out on a date, after a dinner they were having got interrupted by some sort of event that needed a superhero’s response. In the “Sum of Our Parts” storyline, Robin must save Bernard, who is kidnapped by a new villain, and Bernard doesn’t know his friend Tim Drake is Robin.
“When Dave [Wielgosz] (my editor for Batman: Urban Legends) reached out about doing another Tim story, I was thrilled,” writer Meghan Fitzmartin told Polygon via email. “We talked about where Tim Drake has been vs where he was at the time and came to the conclusion that it needed to be a story about identity and discovery. What was next for Boy Wonder?”
The character of Tim Drake frequently wrestles with his own uncertainty over his personality and ethos, and this is another storyline developed to explore that internal strife.
The Batman universe has hosted a number of LGBTQ characters, but they tend to be lesbians or bisexual females. Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Catwoman have all had lesbian affairs in the comic pages, as have some ancillary characters like female police officers. The sexuality of characters has translated to television versions, as adaptations on the CW Network have included the lesbian relationships of the female lead characters.