Tim Drake

• 1. Introduction

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  Tim Drake was a small boy in the audience at a circus on the night Dick Grayson's parents were murdered. His own mother and father had just asked the Flying Graysons to pose for a photograph with them. That moment gave the two boys a brief bond. Tim Drake grew up to become a superhero in DC Comics, usually seen beside Batman. In 2011, IGN placed him 32nd in its Top 100 Comic Book Heroes. How does a child in the stands end up in the Robin costume? Why would a publisher decide that Batman needed a new partner at all? And what happens to a sidekick when someone else inherits his name?

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• 2. Built To Replace

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  Batman #436, dated August 1989, introduced the third Robin, created by writer Marv Wolfman and penciler Pat Broderick. DC had just killed off Jason Todd, the second Robin, in the story A Death in the Family. The newcomer took his first name from Tim Burton, director of the film then due out in 1989. Wolfman wanted him to stand apart from Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. His answer was a high intellect, a strong sense of justice and a family outside Batman's own.

  The story A Lonely Place of Dying explained how a boy became Robin. It ran as a crossover between the series Batman and New Titans, written by Wolfman. George Pérez and Jim Aparo penciled it, with Mike DeCarlo inking Aparo's pages. In it, Tim introduces himself to Dick Grayson and impresses him with his skills. Grayson, and later Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's butler, then back Tim's request to become Batman's partner.

  By the age of nine, Tim had already worked out that Bruce Wayne was Batman and that Dick Grayson was Robin. A gymnastic maneuver he saw Robin perform matched one he remembered Grayson doing at the Haly Circus. At thirteen, he watched Batman grow reckless and violent after the Joker murdered Jason Todd. Reasoning that "Batman needs a Robin", Tim first asked Dick, by then known as Nightwing, to take the role again. Dick refused. Tim's actions in an encounter with Two-Face led both Dick and Alfred to see him as a possible third Robin.

  Batman agreed to train him and use his help in the Batcave. He kept Tim out of the field, because he did not want a repeat of Jason's fate. Only after Tim rescued him from the Scarecrow did Batman enlist him, at the age of fourteen. That training was more intensive than any earlier Robin received. For the first year of his regular appearances, Tim remained a supporting character without a costume.

  Neal Adams redesigned the entire Robin costume for Tim, with the exception of the new "R" logo by Norm Breyfogle. The result had a red torso, yellow stitching and belt, black boots, and green short sleeves, gloves and pants. Its cape was made of Kevlar and Nomex, black outside and yellow inside. Unlike earlier costumes, it included an armored tunic and gorget, long boots, an emergency "R" shuriken and a collapsible bo staff. Breyfogle recalled that fans pointed to the double-page splash where the costume first appears. He told them Adams had designed it, adding, "The 'R' symbol and the staff were all that was mine."

  Writer Alan Grant and Breyfogle had once believed that their own creation, Anarky, might become the third Robin. They quickly backed the editorial decision to focus on Tim instead.

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• 3. Year Of The Bat

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  Alan Grant told an interviewer in 2007 that Detective Comics sold far more once the Batman movie arrived. In his words, "when the Batman movie came out, the sales went up, if I recall correctly, from around 75,000 to about 675,000." The film, together with the new Tim Drake storylines by Grant and Breyfogle, lifted both Batman and Detective Comics.

  Capital and Diamond City Distributors tracked the surge in preorders, and 1989-90 became known as the Year of the Bat. The Year One-inspired series Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight took four of the five top preorder spots. The one exception, in third place, was Batman #442, which concluded A Lonely Place of Dying. Even the revival of the Joker and the Penguin in the main titles could not dislodge that pattern for long.

  Late in 1990, vendors were under-ordering, so DC pushed Batman #457 and the first part of the Robin miniseries into second and third printings. That miniseries pitted a solo Robin against the Joker, answering fan demands for a rematch since A Death in the Family. In 1991, Chris Claremont, Jim Lee and Scott Williams's X-Men and Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld's X-Force climbed the preorder rankings. Once again Tim Drake interrupted them. A variant issue of the Robin sequel took third place, wedged between variants of X-Force and X-Men.

  Grant later said that issues featuring Robin sold better, because "Robin did have his fans." The sequels Robin II: The Joker's Wild!, from December 1991 to February 1992, and Robin III: Cry of the Huntress, from December 1992 to March 1993, were both written by Chuck Dixon. Their success led DC to launch the first ongoing monthly Robin series in its history. That series ran for over 15 years and ended with issue #183. Its final nine issues were written by Fabian Nicieza and tied into the Batman R.I.P. storyline.

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• 4. Fear And Grief

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  In the nightmares that Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle gave Tim, a lullaby echoed across a cemetery for dead parents. The words were "My Mummy's dead...My Mummy's Dead...I can't get it through my head." The nightmares began in the storyline Rite of Passage, which ran in Detective Comics.

  In that four-issue arc, Tim matches wits with Anarky. He also joins an investigation into a supposed Haitian Vodou cult. Batman reveals it to be a front for extortion. Cult leaders murder Tim's mother, and his father is left in a coma on a ventilator. The arc ends with a child of one of the cult's Haitian followers orphaned, unknowingly, by Batman himself.

  The scholar Erica McCrystal reads these stories as an argument about vigilantism. In her view, Grant presented Batman's crusade as therapeutic for children of trauma, though the healing needs a delicate integration process. Bruce Wayne, a former child of trauma, guided other victims down a path of righteousness. Tim faced his fears in Rite of Passage and in the follow-up, Identity Crisis. He overcame them somewhat distant from Bruce Wayne, and not as an orphan. By the end of Identity Crisis, he had proven himself capable by deducing the role of fear in a series of violent crimes.

  Lauren R. O'Connor points to another source of his depth. Writers such as Grant and Dixon could draw on an established lexicon of teenage behavior, including parental conflict, hormonal urges and identity formation. When Dick Grayson was introduced, the idea of the teenager was still nascent. Dixon showed Tim engaging in adolescent intimacy but stopped short of overt consummation. That choice preserved what one critic calls Robin's "estrangement from sex", a feature dating back to the Grayson years.

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• 5. Detective, Leader, Friend

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  A genius with an IQ of 142, Tim is written as the sharpest thinker among Batman's male proteges. He has skills in forensic science and criminology, and he is highly skilled at computer operation and hacking. His knowledge of biology, engineering and genetics was enough to attempt re-cloning Superboy and to design a base for the Bat-Family. He is also fluent in Cantonese, Russian, Spanish and German.

  Batman trained him primarily, with additional teaching from Dick Grayson, Henri Ducard, Cassandra Cain and Lady Shiva. Like Batman, he has no inherent superpowers. His martial arts include Aikido, Karate, Boxing, Judo, Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Krav Maga. He also knows esoteric Tibetan styles, among them healing arts that use pressure points.

  Mike Mullins of Newsarama noted that Tim is not the most proficient combatant of the Robins. He took up the bo staff to gain an edge that Batman does not need. Tim almost always tries to analyze a problem and outthink his opponent, though he can win a fight when necessary.

  Peter David's Young Justice series made Tim a core team member from 1998 to 2003. Geoff Johns's Teen Titans then used him as a prominent member from 2003 to 2011. He succeeded Dick Grayson as leader of the Teen Titans and led Young Justice. He has a close friendship with Superboy.

  His closest romantic pairing has been with Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler. At first Tim saw her as reckless for operating without Batman's guidance. The two eventually became romantically involved. When Tim's father discovered his identity and Tim retired for a time, Stephanie briefly took over as Robin.

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• 6. Red Robin And Reboots

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  In 2009, the miniseries Batman: Battle for the Cowl ended Tim's run as Robin. Dick Grayson had taken over as Batman after Bruce's apparent death. Dick fired Tim from the role and gave it to Damian Wayne, because he considered himself and Tim equals. Tim believed Bruce was still alive and adopted the identity of Red Robin. He left Gotham City on a worldwide search.

  The ongoing series Red Robin launched in late 2009, written by Christopher Yost for twelve issues and then by Fabian Nicieza. In Iraq, Tim found proof that Bruce was alive and lost in time. He was then caught up with Ra's al Ghul's assassins and an enemy group called the Council of Spiders. Ra's put him in charge of the League of Assassins, and Tim used the post to plan its destruction. Lucius Fox's daughter Tamara, known as Tam, was sent to bring him home.

  His red and black costume had begun earlier as a tribute to Superboy, after Superboy's death in Infinite Crisis. The Red Robin version carried a black and gold utility belt holding his bo staff and throwing discs.

  In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. Teen Titans (vol. 4) #0 gave Tim a new origin that removed his ties to Dick Grayson. This Tim hacked the Penguin's bank account and donated millions of dollars to draw Batman's attention. The Witness Protection Program renamed him Tim Drake. He chose Red Robin rather than Robin out of respect for Jason Todd. His new costume included rocket-powered wings designed by Virgil Hawkins, also known as Static.

  In the weekly series Futures End, a version of Tim from five years ahead put on Terry McGinnis's suit and became the new Batman. That future Tim went on to star in the series Batman Beyond.

  Under DC Rebirth in 2016, James Tynion IV made Tim the center of a team book in Detective Comics. He hacked a swarm of Bat-Drones so that he would be their sole target, and the second wave apparently killed him. In fact, Mr. Oz had teleported him away and kept him prisoner. Oz turned out to be Jor-El.

  Later, lost in the multiverse with Young Justice, Tim took the name Drake during an attack by his Earth-3 counterpart. In 2019, he returned to Robin, and his single "R" logo came back with the original costume.

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• 7. A Landmark Reveal

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  Batman: Urban Legends #6, from August 2021, brought Tim Drake widespread media attention. In a story by Meghan Fitzmartin, Tim reconnects with Bernard Dowd, a friend from high school. Tim and Stephanie Brown have already broken up off-panel. When Bernard is kidnapped, Tim goes to rescue him. During the rescue, Bernard says Tim helped him come out and understand himself. That prompts Tim to realize he is a bisexual man, and Bernard later asks him on a date. Tim accepts.

  The reveal made Tim one of the most prominent LGBT characters in comic books. He received a story in DC Pride 2022 and his own Tim Drake: Pride Special. DC then announced an ongoing series, Tim Drake: Robin, written by Fitzmartin. It launched on the 27th of September 2022 and ran 10 issues, ending on the 27th of June 2023. It was nominated for Outstanding Comic Book at the 34th GLAAD Media Awards.

  In that series, Tim lives on a houseboat in the Gotham marina while trying to forge his own path away from Batman. He is framed for a crime he did not commit while investigating murders of marina residents. Darcy Thomas, who uses the name Sparrow, and Detective Williams help him. Their search leads to a metahuman who uses the codename Moriarty and calls himself Tim's nemesis. Tim defeats Moriarty and saves Bernard, and the couple confirm their commitment.

  Tim also appears in Chip Zdarsky's Batman, starting with issue #125, and in the backup story "The Toy Box" from issue #131. There he meets Zur-En-Arrh and learns of Failsafe, a robot built in case Batman ever killed someone. After Failsafe sends Batman to another universe, Tim crosses multiple universes to rescue him. He persuades Bruce to rely on his family again. Bruce then builds a new base for the Bat-family, which he calls Pennyworth Manor.

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• 8. Screens, Games, Collections

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  In the DC Animated Universe, Robin first appears in The New Batman Adventures, voiced by Mathew Valencia. This Tim is rebellious, originally a street thief whose father, Steven Drake, was killed by Two-Face. In the film Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Dean Stockwell voices him as an adult. Flashbacks show the Joker and Harley Quinn kidnapping, torturing and brainwashing him into a miniature version of the Joker nicknamed Joker Jr.

  Cameron Bowen voices Robin in the animated series Young Justice, which ran from 2010 to 2022. Jay Lycurgo portrays him in Titans, which ran from 2018 to 2023. This version starts as a delivery boy who idolizes Batman. In the fourth season, he becomes Robin and enters a relationship with Bernard Fitzmartin, a S.T.A.R. Labs scientist.

  The Batman: Arkham games made Robin darker and grittier than his comic counterpart, a decision by the producers to match the series' tone. In those games he dates, and later marries, Barbara Gordon. Troy Baker voices him in Batman: Arkham City, and Matthew Mercer voices him in Batman: Arkham Knight. Elsewhere, he is a playable character in Gotham Knights, voiced by Sloane Morgan Siegel. He is also an outfit in Fortnite: Battle Royale, where his Red Robin suit is an unlockable style.

  On the shelf, the story is more uneven. Robin (vol. 4) #23-120 were never fully republished in trade paperback until 2026. Starting in 2024, DC began releasing the compendium collections called Robin: Tim Drake. For the first time, they reprint Robin (vol. 4) issues that had never appeared in trade paperback.

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