#blehh11

i don't know why i started formatting this like a countdown but i guess im rolling with it. TOP! FIVE! TIMKON! MOMENTS!

5. tim trying to shield kon from kryptonite radiation with his cape, like a dumbass (tt03 #100) (the only good thing in tt03 #100)

4. tim taping wendy for kon while he was in hypertime so kon wouldn't whine about missing any episodes (sb94 #65)

3. kon going to tim seeking normalcy and reassurance when he scared himself with his own powers (sb94 #85)

2. graduation day closet scene (tt/yj graduation day)

1. ROBIN KON? HEY? HELLO? IS ANYONE SEEING THIS? HELLO? IS ANYONE SEEING THIS (sb94 #61)

...AND:

honorable mention: tim? watching kon swim? alone? at the beginning of tt03? and kon? reacting? like he does that? regularly?? as if thats? a normal? thing? for bros? to do?

not entirely, because tim is A Team-Up Guy who generally does not do well on his own (the beginning of rr09 is about his mental health spiralling, and even then he still goes and befriends the people trying to kill him), and i think long-term he wouldn't be happy being that separate from everyone he loves and works well with. and tim does love gotham and he does see it as his home, but i also think that tim isn't able to stay in the hero business the same way he has since becoming robin after rr09.

because he is immunocompromised and getting into fistfights on the streets and running around in the sewers is, unfortunately, a really great way for him to wind up in the icu with a scary case of sepsis one day. which i am certain he finds out the hard way and then has a really messy and painful "tfw the disability is disabling" arc (lots of tim & babs here, btw) about figuring out what to do with himself after that. and i think a physical transition is a big part of that.

SO YES i do think getting out of gotham could be good for him much like it was for dick, which is to say he could benefit from moving to a different city that has his loved ones but isn't gotham. i also think it is a great thematic way to signal his transition from robin/red robin/a hero who does work on the ground, towards more of like a tech guy like john henry irons between apokolips now and 52. and also oracle's backup for the rare occasions when she actually sleeps. it also gives him a chance to work on his civilian life in a way he has Not done since he broke up with zoanne, which he sorely needs.

this is kind of tough bc my top 3 are SO easy and then i have to ponder what 4 and 5 are. let's see!

tim drake: robin. i HATE this book. i hate this book so FUCKING MUCH i cannot express how angry reading it made me. the only reason i finished all 10 issues is the power of spite. it sucks. its literally the worst comic ive ever read and i mean that from the bottom of my fucking heart

jeph loeb's supergirl (the beginning of the '05 run). when i say the misogyny oozes and drips from the page, i mean it. he can't go like three panels without making someone comment on this sixteen year old girl's breasts. i WILL kill this man one day.

batgirl (2008). she would not FUCKING SAY THAT

"house of kent" arc in rebirth action comics tbh. you ever read a story that feels like it actively hates readers who try to engage with it and think about what it's saying for more than 0.4 seconds

i prefer him starting as superman in metropolis, and if he did any stuff as superboy it was entirely with losh in the future - no one in smallville or in general on earth in the 20th century knew. i do think he should've developed his powers gradually while growing up rather than them all hitting when he turned 18 for whatever reason (thanks, byrne), and i really like superman: birthright's interpretation of ma especially being into researching alien stuff in the hopes of trying to help him understand more of his origins.

outside of triangle era......... god that's hard because honestly i don't think any other superman run i've read slaps nearly as hard as triangle era. that being said, here are a couple of other good, short superman stories:

superman smashes the klan (elseworld, obviously, but good)

superman: birthright (a 21st century origin story)

superman: red and blue (anthology of unrelated but good issues)

superman: up in the sky (6 issue mini. space adventure.)

superman for all seasons (also kinda origin story ish)

team superman (90s superfam oneshot thats dear to me)

superman: the last god of krypton (single issue. GORGEOUS.)

9. worst part of canon

i dunk on the man a lot but i genuinely truly from the bottom of my heart mean this, at least wrt superboy-related canon. like the fact that i don't think he knows how to read, and the extreme heterosexuality, misogyny, and fun bonus homophobia aside, and the fact that he just has such a "my way or the highway" attitude towards writing. like. why the FUCK did he canonize a whole set of arcs based on the eugenicist concept of "what if there's a gene that makes you a bad person"? and why did no editor stop him at any point in there? jesus christ.

10. worst part of fanon

uh .......... all of it? 💀

i guess that's too easy an answer. hmmm. i think the things that piss me off the most are a) jtodd copaganda ("killing criminals is praxis as long as youre killing the RIGHT criminals!!!! im a leftist btw its in my bio XD") or b) the obsession with nuclear family roles and shovel talks and "no metas in gotham" and just all of that really, really weird way they all roll it into "what if... batman was homophobic and/or racist to a teenager... and we all laughed about it?"

OH MAN. LMAO okay so with the caveat that some of these i acknowledge there was other stuff going on at dc/a writer just needed bruce to be a dick for someone else's plot, and i don't hate batman so much as i am frustrated at how inconsistent he is:

tim's 16th birthday incident

that editorial mandate or whatever it was that made it so that across books he had to insist that hal jordan was beyond redemption, despite how weird and ooc that seems

that time he said kon was a weapon grown in a test tube after kon got mind controlled

that time he was a dick to connor hawke and called him incapable/not good enough to work with him for no reason, despite them both being JLA members