What should DC do with Tim Drake?

The Bat Family is big. It’s great, it’s a natural continuation of Batman’s story, but it’s big. Arguably too big. Even excluding the more superfluous vigilantes, the “core” family has at least eight members: Batman, three different Batgirls and four different Robins (now with various hero identities). That’s a lot of characters, all in the same city and with a similar hero niche, to balance. It can be done and, before the New 52, DC did balance them reasonably well. But it’s not easy and the storylines can often become overcrowded. There are, subsequently, occasional calls to slim down the Bat Family. It’s a non-starter. Which characters would you eliminate? They all have long histories and large established fanbases. You can’t just get rid of them. Still, whenever the point is raised, eyes invariably fall on Tim Drake, the third (and best) Robin. There are, as indicated, a lot of Robins. The main four, in order, are Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne. It’s often suggested (I suspect, to reveal my biases, by Damian fans) that Tim is the least unique and interesting Robin. Dick Grayson, the argument goes, is the original and archetypal Robin. Jason Todd is the ‘bad’ Robin who got killed and returned as a criminal/anti-hero. Damian Wayne is Batman’s biological son and a violent product of his League of Assassins upbringing. Tim Drake, meanwhile, is just Robin and nothing more. So, it’s sometimes said that if the Bat Family needs to be slimmed down, Tim’s the one who should go.

This argument is unfair to Tim. Despite their similarities, the Bat Family members all have unique features and their own niche. The key to balancing the Bat Family is to emphasise their specific character traits. Tim’s no exception, and contrary to the above, he is different to the other Robins. It’s often suggested, in his defence, that Tim is the Detective. This is not particularly unique; everyone in the Bat Family does detective work, but there’s more to Tim than just that. Tim, often described by writers and fans alike as the best Robin, is arguably more of an archetypal Robin than even the original Robin, Dick Grayson. This was by design. After Jason Todd’s less-than-successful stint as Robin, the writer Marv Wolfman created Tim to be the perfect sidekick. It worked, and for decades, Tim was incredibly popular. He was also the first Robin to have his own book. It’s perhaps not surprising that DC has found it difficult to move him out of the sidekick role. So, starting with Damian’s introduction and becoming apparent with the New 52 reboot, Tim has often appeared redundant, especially since he began sharing the Robin mantle with Damian. A lot of film and TV adaptions don’t even include Tim, and the comics haven’t known what to do with him since the failure of the 2011 New 52 Teen Titans comic (which reinvented Tim’s generation of sidekicks for the worse). He was briefly killed off during DC Rebirth (he got better), was renamed after a Duck during the attempted Young Justice comic revival, and his recent solo book didn’t do very well either (I’ve not read it and so can’t speak to its quality). He recently came out as Bi, which led to a brief uptick in interest, but he’s back to obscurity now.

This is not an exclusively Tim problem and was not caused by him being the most generic Robin. It’s been a common fate for most of Tim’s sidekick generation and has even affected some of the least generic sidekicks. It’s a shame. They’re great characters, and the 90s Young Justice comic, which focused on them, was incredible. In retrospect, though, it was a predictable outcome. In the early 2000s, there was a concerted effort by DC to make their output ‘dark and energy’. To put it mildly, this is not the ‘vibe’ of Tim’s sidekick generation. It subsequently led to mischaracterisation and a general derailment of their stories. In short, they went from being fun and unique characters to being fairly generic ‘dark and edgy’ characters. This, combined with the subsequent introduction of new sidekicks (often the children and descendants of the prominent superheroes), led to the general displacement of their characters. There’s some ‘middle-child’ syndrome going on here. But their displacement doesn’t mean they don’t have a place in DC’s lore. Finding that place will require some work, especially since the New 52 disrupted their natural character evolution, but it can be done. The key (I’d argue) is to refocus on their earlier and more unique pre- ‘dark and edgy’ characterisations. Doing this for Tim should naturally help balance the Bat Family’s many characters and make it less cumbersome. In other words, Tim’s key character traits, which initially made him so popular, need to be identified and reasserted.

So, what is Tim’s core characterisation? What was it that made him the perfect sidekick and a great detective? What was it that made him a better Robin than even the original Robin? To go out on a limb, Tim is (to my mind) the Robin most similar to Bruce, albeit with one very substantial difference. On the surface level, to repeat, Tim is often described as the detective Robin; he figures out Batman’s identity from newsreel footage. That’s already a marked similarity to Bruce; Batman is fundamentally the ‘superhero detective’. To go one step further, Tim is (I’d say) every bit as smart as Bruce, every bit as calculating as Bruce and every bit as focused as Bruce. He just doesn’t have the same experience and hence fills the apprentice role. More than that, Tim also shares Batman’s sense of morality, his sense of justice and, crucially, his all-encompassing and utterly self-destructive sense of duty. The writer Marv Wolfman said, when he created Tim, that Tim doesn’t want to be Batman and Tim himself implies, in his earlier comics, that he’s only Robin because Batman (and Gotham more generally) needs a Robin. If there weren’t a need for Robin, he’d stop doing it, and his life would probably get a lot easier. He often enjoys being Robin, but right from the start it’s caused him no end of grief. Tim, similar to Batman, does it out of duty. Because if they don’t protect the people of Gotham, who will?

But that’s only their similarities. The critical difference between Bruce and Tim (I think) is that Bruce is deeply traumatised and Tim isn’t. The murder of his parents and the long-standing trauma of it, has caused Bruce to close himself off to everything and everyone. That’s why the Bat Family is important to his story. The natural character evolution for an emotionally closed-off and self-isolating superhero is to slowly open himself up to others and to heal from his trauma. In the short term, however, this trauma means that for Bruce, there is nothing but duty. There is nothing but Batman. He has no problem whatsoever making the sacrifices necessary to be Batman and has no personal objection to getting killed while doing it. Tim doesn’t have that trauma. He still has a normal everyday life and still wants a normal life. That is, in part, why he’s such a good sidekick to Bruce. He completely understands the logic behind Bruce’s schemes, plans and actions. So he’ll be careful and follow every order. But he still has a foot in the real world and recognises the more problematic and self-destructive elements of Bruce’s behaviour. He thereby brings a degree of levity that compels Batman to act in a more measured way and engage with humanity more than he otherwise would. And this is ultimately what Batman needs Robin to do, and it’s a fact that Tim understands.

This lack of trauma is arguably Tim’s most unique feature amongst the Robins. It also has a lot of story potential. It creates an inner conflict for Tim. For Batman, there is duty and practically nothing else. This is partially true of the other Robins as well. Tim, by contrast, is torn between his sense of duty and his desire for a normal life. This means that his character progression will go in one of two directions. He might entirely give himself over to duty and pretty much become Batman in the process. Tim had a very popular comic in 2009 called Red Robin, set after Bruce’s apparent death (he also got better). The comic sees him leave the sidekick role and fall into the ‘dark superhero detective’ niche that Batman personally fills. In other words, he sort of turns into Batman. Notably, this occurred in the aftermath of DC’s ‘dark and edgy’ phase, during which nearly everyone in Tim’s personal life was killed off, introducing that element of trauma. Unsurprisingly, he began to act more like Bruce. Alternatively, and on a more upbeat note, Tim’s desire for a normal life could win out. In which case (as much as it pains me to say it), he would semi-retire from being a superhero. In all likelihood, he’d become a regular detective but still put the mask on to deal with corruption or major crises, of which Gotham has many. That could be a pretty great comic in itself.

All of this has probably been said before. But given Tim’s current status as the most superfluous member of the core Bat Family, it doesn’t hurt to restate it. Refocusing on Tim’s core character traits and allowing him to fulfill his most natural roles within the Bat Family will make his character feel more unique and, in that way, help the Bat Family feel less bloated.

– Dexter