This book is losing me fast.  As an owner of everything with Tim Drake at the lead this book saddens to get the character so wrong.  The character has every right to be angry and morose, but the point of Tim Drake as a character was he never let into those feelings.  The anti Jason Todd has now become just another former sidekick fighting against the nature of the hero he is.  Chris Yost is a great writer of teen characters as his work with the New Xmen showed, but Tim Drake has never been just another teen character.

I enjoy the idea of Tim Drake as Red Robin, but what doesn’t make sense is this chase that seems to have no true focus.  It would have been far better story wise if this quest was started by Al Ghul at the beggining.  If he was drawn in by Al Ghul’s belief that Batman is alive rather thatn Al Ghul becoming odd benafactor midway through.  The story is also hurt by the choice of making this story trade paper friendly rather than issue friendly. 

Considering how much I enjoyed Dick Tim scenes back when Chuck Dixon was writing them in Nightwing, this scene has none of the warmth and true bond these two characters come out.  Having this come out the same week as Darkest Night Batman where the two team so easily, whether that is before or after this series moment,  seems out of place.  No two characters understand each other more than Tim and Dick, and I truly doubt choosing Damien would tear them so assunder. 

The worst part of this issue is it’s somehow called a conclusion of the first storyline.  How this story is a conclusion to anything is beyond me.  At no point is there any conclusion or jump off point of a new storyline.   It actually seems like the first three issues are just prologue, but who could say well that concluded this storyline has no tangible understanding of what an ending is. 

Tim Drake has long been one of my favorite characters and between this and how wrongly he was used at the end of his Teen Titans run the character is truly lost.  This series needs to bring him back in frm the cold and fast.