Welcome to From the Batman News Desk, a new series of op-eds and articles covering various aspects of Batman history. Each week one of the Batman News writers will share their thoughts on Batman characters and concepts across comics, film, television, and more.
Fans and detractors alike could probably all agree that Tim Drake is far from the height of his popularity, and has been for a long time. He used to be one of DC's most successful characters. After becoming the third Robin in 1989, Tim went on to popularize the mantle for an entire generation of fans. For almost 20 years he was the Robin, serving as Batman's trusted sidekick while also leading his own team of teenage heroes. He even had his own solo series that lasted for 183 issues (plus annuals, specials, and mini-series).
Nowadays, he struggles to hold a title for more than a few issues, and editorial seems at a total loss what to do with the character or even what he should be called. Ever since the New 52 hit, Tim has been shuffled around from one short lived team-up to the next. He did have one solo series in Tim Drake: Robin, but it was so unpopular that it was cancelled after only ten issues. Sometimes he's Red Robin, sometimes he's just Robin again (but not the main one, that's still Damian), and sometimes he's the brilliantly named "Drake". He's a character without a home or identity.
So what happened?
Maybe the answer is a simple as the fact that he got replaced as Robin back in 2009. We should just blame Grant Morrison and go home. Except that doesn't give the whole picture, does it? After all, Tim has two other former-Robin "siblings" that don't have nearly the same identity crisis that he does. Dick Grayson has been rocking the Nightwing mantle since '84, and Jason Todd has found his niche as the bad boy pseudo-Punisher of the bat family in Red Hood. That still leaves the frustrating question of why Tim specifically has struggled so much since growing out of being (the only) Robin.
The real problem has always been there, lying under the surface like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. However, to truly understand the source of Tim's modern day woes, we need to go all the way back to the 1980s. Dick Grayson was spending far more time with the wildly popular Teen Titans than with Batman, and DC decided that he needed a new identity to reflect that. That's when his new "Nightwing" persona came in, disco suit and all.
Of course, Batman still needs a Robin, so Jason Todd was created to fill that role. Initially, he had a personality very similar to Dick's (with a circus performer background to match), but with a radically different costume. When Crisis on Infinite Earths hit in 1985 and reset DC canon, he had the more familiar costume but they decided to shake up his characterization. Now, he was a kid who grew up on the streets and was caught trying to steal the tires of the Batmobile. Coupled with this new origin was a far more impulsive and rebellious personality.
Suffice it to say, it did not go over well. Jason was so unpopular that fans voted to have him killed off. DC was now back in the same situation as before, needing a new Robin for Batman. Finally, this brings us to Tim Drake. After the turmoil and anger that resulted from the whole Jason Todd fiasco, they were not going to make the same mistake twice in a row. Aside from coming from a rich family with a still-living father, Tim was written almost exactly the same as Dick was back when he was Robin. He was amiable, enthusiastic, smart, a charismatic leader, made light-hearted jokes, and served as an easy self-insert for any young, teenage boy readers. The biggest diversion from formula was honestly the radical addition of pants.
This, ultimately, is what doomed Tim Drake. Don't get me wrong, while he was Robin it was fine. There's a reason the formula worked for four decades with Dick Grayson and then another two with Tim. The problem comes when he no longer holds that title. Now you've got two largely similar ex-Robins both trying to make it on their own. Whatever role Tim finds for himself will always feel a little too much like "Nightwing, but slightly different".
For a while, comics have tried to differentiate them a bit by leaning into Tim's nerdy and "detective" aspects, but go back and read some Grayson Robin comics from the 70s-80s; he was also very much a young boy genius detective. He was, after all, Batman's protégé. It's only been more recently that some writers have retroactively made Dick more of a free-spirited airhead, partially to make more room for Tim. Unless you take that to the extreme and make each Robin a single defining personality trait à la the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tim is going to have a really hard time setting himself apart from Dick.
It's funny, because one of Nightwing's biggest struggles as a character has been stepping outside of Batman's shadow. This, despite the fact that he has a totally different personality. Simply being his former sidekick and fighting crime in a similar manner can make him feel like diet-Batman. Even Blüdhaven often comes across as almost-Gotham. So when Tim also became an independent hero, you had that same issue doubled. He was a copy of a copy. Even Tim's angle of trying to live up to the expectations set by Dick as Robin starts to look similar to Dick's need to live up to Batman.
What certainly didn't help was the way Tim stopped being Robin. Rather than making the decision himself to follow his own career like Dick, or dramatically dying and coming back to life like Jason, Tim was pushed out of the role. Like a bad break-up, Tim never really got closure that would let him move on as his own man. Even his earliest stories as Red Robin were trying to find Bruce. In everything but name (which was still pretty darn close), he was filling the role of Robin.
Part of this was because, at the time, Damian was believed to be a temporary thing. When Dick became the new Batman in Bruce's absence, he just didn't want Tim as his sidekick because he considered him his equal. Even Morrison was planning on killing off Damian by the end of their run. "Red Robin" might have seemed like a holding pattern pseudo-identity, but that's because it was. As soon as Damian went away, Tim could just slide right back into being Bruce's Robin.
Then tragedy struck, or at least tragedy for Tim. Damian ended up being really popular. Who would've thought, given how poorly the last petulant Robin went. I guess that's what happens when you have the legendary Grant Morrison writing your character arc. When he inevitably died, Batman and Robin didn't become a Bruce and Tim book, it became a book about Bruce trying to get Damian back. Eventually Damian did return, and the roles of both Robin and former-Robin were once again filled by him and Dick.
Suddenly, Tim was stuck with this position that was never even meant to last forever, caught between being almost Robin and being almost Nightwing. Lately, DC has been trying to just make him Robin again, but that's not a solution to the problem. So long as Damian is the "main" Robin, Tim will just be the also-Robin who sometimes shows up to help. It's arguably a worse fate than being the also-Nightwing of Red Robin. At least then it didn't feel like a grown man wearing his high school varsity jacket to relive the glory days.
All of that brings us to today. Tim was a character designed to recapture what made the original Robin work and return "Batman and Robin" to a recognizable status quo. When that role was taken away from him, he had nowhere to go. Everything about him was intended to be a throwback to Dick Grayson now that he was off on his own as Nightwing. There was nothing built in that would easily allow him to transition to a new identity beyond that. He was Robin and only Robin. In fact one of his most unique traits was that he "chose" to be Robin. All of that fell apart when a new Robin only three apples tall turned out to be an unexpected hit and stuck around, leaving Tim without a home.
Maybe one day a clever writer will come up with a new identity for Tim that isn't just copying what someone else is already doing, but until that day he'll just be floating around in the background reminding people that he's still here.
Next week: somehow Batman Begins is 20?!
