Did you know you can move onto other brainrots and STILL be stuck brainrotting on the old thing too? My brain is a decaying piece of wood that has become an essential breeding ground for several species of rot. One of them is still the BatFam variety, so onto the next member!
Initial traces of Carrie Kelley, my child! Be honest, how many of you who have seen the Nightwing and Red Hood posts thought that I was doing Tim next? Well HA! Joke’s on you, I make the rules here! I have a very specific order in my head, and I will stick to that order!
Carrie is technically an elseworld’s Robin from The Dark Knight Returns, but Robin is my favorite superhero, and anyone who has been Robin will get my attention (yes Robin. Not Batman or Nightwing or any of the individual characters who have been Robins. Robin as a hero, regardless of who it is, is my favorite). At this point, she’s actually graduated to Catgirl and then her own iteration of Batwoman, but in my head, she’s the same age as Damian or younger, so she gets to stay Robin in my art for a bit.
I did two traces here because, unlike other Batfam characters, Carrie is in so few comics that I can’t just FIND a perfect, full body action pose from an angle that I like. The first trace is by far the most popular and easy to find picture of her, but it has her hair blowing around in the wind. This is a Problem, you see, because Carrie’s hair is a special challenge for me. In The Dark Knight Returns, she has this very distinctive hair shape that I do not like looking at OR drawing. So I knew the pose I used for my reference was going to need to be a pose where I could update her hairstyle. But, I also needed a full body, and that first photo is iconic, so two for the price of one again.
Stylization time! Carrie was honestly really easy to stylize, her hair is just a bit of a nightmare for me. I finally got a handle on it after the complete project, but it took a WHILE! Anyway, I more or less just lifted her updated hairstyle from her Batwoman costume and some cosplayers. And no, I’m not giving her pants. Damian and Tim are edgy Robins, they can have pants. Dick, Jason, and Carrie are not edgy Robins, so they get short shorts. I did give up on coloring her sleeves green. Too much of one color for me to effectively handle when her gloves overlap her sleeves. Also, I need to draw more characters with capes. They’re so fun to draw!
Characterization pose! In the comics, Carrie wears her goggles as a civilian too. I interpret this as her needing glasses, so I gave her regular glasses instead because wearing the same distinctive goggles you wear as a superhero is maybe not the best way to keep your identity secret. Comics Carrie has like one friend that you don’t see after she puts on the costume, and her parents don’t remember they have a kid, so it’s not like she has a whole lot of people to be hiding her identity from, but it’s the thought that counts. Schoolmates and random civilians and nosy reporters and all that.
I put her in a Girl Scout uniform for her civvy outfit because I think that it’s important to her character. The whole reason Batman took her on was because she was 1) crazy/traumatized/determined enough to buy herself a Robin costume, fight petty crime on her own, and follow him into dangerous situations and 2) used her Girl Scout first aid training to save batman’s life and splint his arm after he got his sh*t rocked in an ill-advised fight. I figured a salute, even if it’s a bit of a sassy one, was a good pose for her not just because of this, but also because The Dark Knight Returns is a very depressing comic, and so Batman calls her “good soldier.”
If you saw the first two posts, you may notice that I did not trace the hero text for this one, and that I used the same font for both names. This is because 1) I didn’t feel like the regular Robin font with the spiky R fits Carrie’s vibe, but she doesn’t have any comics covers of her own I can steal from and 2) I feel like Carrie’s personality is the same as Robin and Carrie. Unlike with almost everyone else, there’s no posturing, no distinction, no divide there. So the same font works for both personas.
Nightwing Edition
Red Hood Edition
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New chapter of my fic is here! I really love this chapter, mostly because it has Carrie Kelley in a lot of it. But anyways, massive trigger warning for this chapter! Be sure to read all of them before reading! I try to be as accurate and sensitive as possible when covering serious topics and themes so as always I encourage comments on accurate critique of my work if needed! Without further ado, please enjoy Chapter 7 of With The Bat: A Robins Gotta Fly.
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