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11 August 2021

Batman’s sidekick Robin comes out as bisexual in DC Comic’s latest book

Writer Meghan Fitzmartin, has said she wanted to "pay tribute to the fact that sexuality is a journey".

By Alastair James

Words: Alastair James; pictures: DC Comics

Batman’s sidekick Robin has just come out as bisexual one of the latest installments of the DC comic series Batman: Urban Legends.

Robin – whose real name in the comic series is Tim Drake – came out in a tender moment with his friend Bernard, who asks Tim (not knowing Tim and Robin are one and the same) on a date.

Robin is now the latest superhero character to come out as LGBTQ, with others including Batwoman and Marvel’s Loki.

“The only story it can be”

In the DC anthology series, Drake and Bernard are having dinner when they’re interrupted by the villain Chaos Monster, who kidnaps the latter. While Robin rescues his friend, Bernard wishes he and Drake (Robin’s alter-ego) could have finished their date.

Later in the comic, according to Entertainment Weekly, the two agree to go on another date with Bernard asking, “Tim Drake… do you want to go on a date with me?” Drake replies: “Yeah… Yeah, I think I want that.”

The writer of the series, Meghan Fitzmartin, has been speaking to Polygon about the storyline and how it came about. She told the website she was thrilled when editor Dave Wielgosz reached out, and they discussed “that it needed to be a story about identity and discovery.”

Emailing Wielgosz she told him that this story was “the only story it can be” and was then given the green light.

Tweeting about the story, Fitzmartin said that her goal was “to show just how much God loves you. You are so incredibly loved and important and seen.”

Fitzmartin has also been keen to point out that the character of Drake has yet to put a label on himself (not that he needs to) and that it doesn’t delegitimize the characters’ former relationships telling Polygon, “I wanted to pay tribute to the fact that sexuality is a journey.”

Fans have been celebrating the news, with one tweeting it was “one of the greatest things DC has ever done.”

The DC comics universe has been coming more and more LGBTQ-inclusive over the last few years.

Kate Kane as Batwoman was canonically queer from 2006, according to Polygon, while villains Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn have been written as queer in the last decade.

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