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Robin III |
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| Alias: Tim Drake |
Titans Member
Joined: Teen Titans (third series) #1 [2003] |
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| Robin III Quick Bio: Tim Drake learned the secret identity of Batman and petitioned to become the new Robin. At first reluctant, Batman eventually conceded and trained Tim to become the newest Boy Wonder. |
Batman Needs A Robin
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| Tim Drake meets Dick Grayson for the first time in NEW TITANS #60 [1989]. |
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Young Timothy Drake and his parents went to Haly's Circus on the day that Dick Grayson's parents were killed. Tim got his picture taken with the Flying Graysons and was anxious to see their act - especially Dick's part in it. The young boy witnessed the Graysons' fatal plunge and saw the Batman comforting Dick afterward.
For years, Tim was plagued by nightmares about the Graysons' accident, until one day, the nine-year-old Tim saw a news broadcast in which a security camera filmed Batman and Robin battling the Penguin. Robin executed quadruple somersault, and Tim knew it could only be Dick Grayson doing it. Tim took his findings to their inevitable conclusion: Bruce Wayne was Batman. Tim followed the Dynamic Duo's careers closely. He knew when Dick became Nightwing and when Bruce Wayne adopted Jason Todd. Once again, Tim deduced that the new Robin was Jason. Tim then read of Jason's death, which meant that Robin was dead, and noticed with alarm that Batman seemed to be going off the deep end. He photographed Batman's sloppiness in order to prove to Dick that Batman needs a Robin.
When Dick left the Titans for a short time in order to find himself, Tim broke into Dick's apartment and deduced that Dick must have went to Haly's Circus. Tim followed Dick to the scene of his parents' death, and, after Dick wrapped up a murder mystery, convinced Dick that Batman was in trouble.
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Tim Drake assumes the mantle
of Robin in the now-classic "A Lonely Place of Dying" arc |
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When Dick caught up with Batman, the Caped Crusader admitted that he could use some help, but Two-Face soon trapped both Nightwing and Batman. Tim, dressed as Robin and accompanied by Alfred, came to their rescue. Once Two-Face was defeated, Batman accepted Tim as the new Robin, but only on a trial basis.
Training
Alfred trained Tim for several months, showing the boy how things are done by Batman and himself. Batman then trained Tim just as hard as he had Dick and Jason Todd, after which he sent Tim to Dick Grayson; only a former Robin - could show Tim how to become Batman's partner. Dick nurtured and supported Tim's desire to become Robin, and helped ease him into the role. Dick also has helped Tim in dealing with Bruce's distant manner.
Tim's parents were rarely around; they had left their son at a Gotham boarding school. Consequently, Bruce Wayne made arrangements to have Tim visit him frequently, during which time the boy trained in secret under Batman's watchful eye. Whether his parents should be told never became an issue; while on a business trip to the Caribbean, they were abducted by the Obeah Man, leader of a voodoo cult. Despite Batman's intervention, the Drakes were poisoned by Obeah; Janet was killed and Jack was put into a paralytic coma.
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| Young Justice forms in JLA: WORLD WITHOUT GROWN-UPS #2 [1998] |
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Tim finally proved himself by rescuing Batman from the Scarecrow, at which point he was presented with a new, modified Robin suit and was allowed to travel to Europe to further hone his talents. There, Tim studied combat under teachers unknown even to Batman and learned certain skills that are now uniquely his.
Growing Up
Later, still recovering from his broken back, Bruce asked Dick to substitute for him as Batman for a time. Dick accepted. During this time, Dick established a wonderful partnership with new Robin, Tim Drake. Bruce eventually returned to Gotham to reclaim his role as Batman.
Tim's father, Jack, recovered from his coma. He fell in love with his physical therapist, Dana Winters, and the couple eventually wed. Living with his father and step-mother. Tim found it sometimes difficult to maintain his secret identity. But juggling his personal and super-heroic life became even more complicated when he started dating the Spoiler in his Robin identity.
Tim also assisted the Teen Titans on a few occasions. He helped Atom's team of Titans rescue the man-monster Fringe from the clutches of the Veil. He also helped train Argent following the apparent 'death' of Titan member Joto. Argent offered him membership in the Teen Titans, but Tim declined. Robin also served as a founding member of Young Justice, with Impulse and Superboy.
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Robin lays down
the law in
TEEN TITANS
(third series)
#6 [2004] . |
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Teen Titans
When a mysterious conglomerate known as Optitron offered to sponsor the Titans and Young Justice after summoning them to San Francisco. Before any decisions could be made, a mysterious cybernetic girl known as Indigo emerged from the future. Unwittingly, she somehow activated a rogue Superman android, resulting in the deaths of Troia and Omen. At Troia's funeral, Nightwing disbanded the Titans. Meanwhile, members of Young Justice, especially Wonder Girl, felt responsible for the tragic deaths. This led Wonder Girl, Robin, Impulse and Superboy to form a new group of Teen Titans under the guidance of the more experienced Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy.
Recently, Tim Drake's life has been full of emotional upheaval. When his father - Jack Drake - learned of his dual identity, he forced him to give up the Robin mantle for a time. But just as Jack came to terms with his son's life as a super-hero, he was killed by Captain Boomerang during the murder mystery surrounding the death of Sue Dibny. Compounding that tragedy, Tim's girlfriend - the hero known as Spoiler - was killed by Black Mask when a "War Games" initiative was activated in Gotham City. Despite these tragedies, Tim is determined to continue his Robin career.
When Tim was orphaned, Bruce Wayne officially adopted him as his son.
Robin is a superb crime-fighter, trained in martial arts and acrobatics. His other talents include detective work, computer science, healing skills, and analytical thinking. His costume, fireproof and bulletproof, contains numerous weapons that help him in his fight against crime, the most notable of which are his sling and his collapsible staff.
DC Universe Role-Playing Games: Sourcebooks and Manuals [ West End Games], DC Secret Files, supplemented by titanstower.com
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New Titans #60-61, Batman #440-442 [1989]: "A Lonely Place of Dying" Speedy rejoins the group at Nightwing's request; Timothy Drake helps Batman and Nightwing defeat Two-Face, and Batman soon agrees to let Timothy become the new Robin. First appearance and origin of Tim Drake Robin.
Detective Comics #618-621 [1990]: "Rite of Passage" storyline, focusing on Tim Drake; Death of Janet Drake, Tim's mother.
Batman #457 [1990]: First "official" Tim as Robin appearance.
Nightwing #6, 25: Robin guest stars and the two 'brothers' bond.
Teen Titans #1 [2003]: What do teenage super-heroes do on the weekends? They hang with the Teen Titans! The invitations go out to a handful of reluctant heroes: Superboy, Robin, Impulse and Wonder Girl. Walk into the new Titans Tower with Cyborg and Starfire as they gather together the next generation of Titans. First Robin III as a Teen Titan.
Robin Timeline: Closing the “One Year Later” Gap
DC's "One Year Later" event occurred March of 2006. In Teen Titans #33, Superboy and Nightwing are in the thick of the Infinite Crisis world-shattering event. With Teen Titans #34, a full year has passed since the Crisis. The events of that "missing year" were revealed in various DC books throughout 2006-2007. Here’s a list of major events revealed during the “Missing Year:”
 The Titans aid the heroes during the Infinite Crisis. While saving the universe from Superboy-Prime and Alexander Luthor, Superboy is killed in battle. [IC #1-7]
Tim Drake and Dick Grayson leave to travel the world with Bruce Wayne. [IC #7]
Nightwing and Robin return to Gotham, where they discover its been overrun by Intergang. While Robin heads back to Europe to locate Bruce Wayne, Nightwing meets Batwoman. [52w30]
Tim Drake has located Bruce Wayne and Diana in Nanda Parabat. [52w47]
Black Adam ignites World War III. [52w49]
Deathstroke plants seeds of doubt with Batgirl, and invites her to join him. [WWIIIp2: THE VALIANT] Deathstroke begins injecting Batgirl with his "Deathstroke serum," which causes psychosis. [TT #43-44] Batgirl takes control of the League of Assassins and plots the death of Nyssa. [R #150]
Robin gets a false summons in Budapest to return to Gotham to aid Cassandra [Batgirl] Cain. The request was from Cassandra herself, in an effort to test the Teen Wonder – and recruit him to rule the League of Assassins at her side. [R #148-152]
Robin adapts a new red-and-black costume as a tribute to Superboy. [52w51]
Robin returns and rejoins the Teen Titans. The only active members are Beast Boy, Ravager and Kid Devil. [TT #34] Beast Boy quits the team to aid the Doom Patrol. [TT #34]
Robin experiments with cloning in an attempt to bring back Superboy. [TT #34]
A large group of heroes - including a powerless Bart Allen, Donna Troy (as Wonder Woman), Wonder Girl, Robin, Ravager and Kid Devil - gather to mourn Superboy, Terra and Young Frankenstein. Donna comforts Wonder Girl. Robin reaches out to Wonder Girl, but she either ignores him or doesn't hear him. Ravager meets Kid Devil for the first time. Kid Devil is anxious to meet Robin. [52w51]
Robin invites Wonder Girl to rejoin the team several times, but she refuses. [TT #34]
"One Year Later" begins. A rebuilt Cyborg awakens. The only active Titans members are Robin, Ravager and Kid Devil. Wendy and Marvin have become caretakers of Titans Tower. The team encounters the new Brotherhood of Evil. Wonder Girl is angered at Robin for abandoning his friends after Superboy’s death. [TT #34]
For a complete timeline of the "one year gap," click here.
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Boy Wondering
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| A 2004 commission of Robin by Ale Garza. |
Fifty years after the original first appeared, a new Robin takes flight.
An article from Comics Scene Magazine #17 [1991]
As Tim Drake has discovered, enthusiasm and a flimsy, garish outfit aren't enough to transform an energetic child into a suitable squire for the Dark Knight. But given the ever-increasing viciousness of Gotham's criminals, to say nothing of the still-fresh memory of Jason Todd's death, it isn't surprising that Batman plans not to repeat past mistakes. Instead, he prefers that others provide the newest Robin with a more effective costume and more thorough training.
Designed by Neal Adams, who had earlier created the outfit the Dick Grayson of Earth-2 ultimately wore, Tim Drake's uniform features a camouflage-oriented cloak, a Kevlar vest and an assortment of compartments filled with weapons, food and electronic hardware. But while it's certainly now geared towards keeping its wearer alive, there was a more basic reason for deviating from the brightly-hued suit worn by Robins past, according to Denny O'Neil, editor of the Batman titles.
"It was a very dated costume" he explains. "We thought we could make it a little more modern, a little classier maybe, a little more appropriate to a teenager than to a little kid. Also, we did want an excuse to put the hi-tech stuff in. This is the age of computers, after all.
"One of the problems with the old costume was that it wasn't really very practical for a dark, night character. One of Neal's inspirations was the reversible cape so you preserve the bright Robin motif, and yet, there's a certain logic to being able to cover up. And hell, school kids wear bulletproof vests these days. It seems to me that if I were in any kind of crime-fighting business, I would certainly want to do that. As for computer links, I really don't know what they are, but Elliot Brown, who did
the technology part of this, assures us that they would work. I'm perfectly willing to take his word for it."
The new Robin costume will soon be seen on action figures, lunch boxes and other products in stores across the country as well as, DC hopes, on movie screens in Batman II. After all, with all its protective gear and built-in equipment, this battle-ready Robin appears to have taken his cue from the film's heavily armored Batman.
"I don't know if it [the costume] was influenced [by the movie's]," says O'Neil, "but that probably played some part in the designer's thinking. We got about 15 different designs, and we, I swear, Scout's honor, liked this one the best. We sent them out to [Batman director] Tim Burton, and this was the one he liked best. So, it was a real consensus that this is the one we ought to go with. Some of the others were interesting, but we wanted to preserve the traditional Robin look and yet update it."
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| A 2004 commission of Robin by ROBIN artist, Pete Woods. |
However, a reputation built up by others over a half-century was not something Tim Drake needed to inherit and so, given the task of furthering the latest Robin's training, writer Chuck Dixon, along with penciler Tom Lyle and inker Bob Smith, devised a five-issue "Trial" to make a man out of the Boy Wonder.
"No matter who Robin is, he's generally considered just a sidekick," Dixon reasons, "and I thought it would be challenging to deal with a sidekick as a primary character in a mini-series. And everybody seemed to have disliked Robin II so much that it was also a challenge to make a Robin people would like. Alan Grant had laid some great groundwork in Detective for Tim Drake to be a really neat character, and as I talked to Denny O'Neil and Dan Raspier, I got even more interested in the direction they wanted the mini-series to take, a coming-of-age story with lots of fistfights.
"Tim Drake has a lot, of self-doubt whether or not he can fill Robin's shoes, whether he could be a competent sidekick for Batman.
"He's not overconfident, which was obviously the problem with the previous Robin. He's not full of the wisecracks, although a transformation comes over him when he puts the costume on. He's pretty much a loner, which makes him match up with Batman. I always said Dick Grayson was much more sociable than Tim Drake. I mean, Dick Grayson, as they put him in college, was kind of hip. I don't think Tim Drake will ever be kind of hip. He's brainy, into computers, into books. He's like a really super-athletic nerd in many ways.
And just as his mentor once set off around the globe to complete his crime-fighting education, so too does the young hero take his leave of the United States to add to his own. "It was John Lennon who said, 'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans,' " Dixon recalls. "Robin plans to go to Paris to hone his martial arts skill and gain some confidence. And he never gets there. He begins to learn with the old master, that doesn't work out, and he immediately finds himself involved in a world-spanning conspiracy run by a knighted English nobleman who's also King Snake, dreaded Asian underworld figure. He becomes involved with a renegade Drug Enforcement Agency agent and Lady Shiva, and the three of them travel from France to Hong Kong, battling the King Snake and his hench-person Lynx, who I hope will be Robin's female nemesis, his Catwoman, along the way."
In the end, though, it matters little whether Tim Drake will be able to capture King Snake. It is the wandering attentions of readers he will have to arrest, and to Batman fans who've long taken his role for granted, he will need to prove that he is capable of supporting both his own title for a brief time and their interest over what DC would like to be many long years.
"I really think he can," says Chuck Dixon. "Robin had a run in Star-Spangled Comics back in the early '50s, and they were some really good stories, better than the Batman stories at the time. Robin as a character, and this Robin in particular, I think he's strong enough. Readers will get a kick out of him. He's no Hardy Boy."
"We tried to build Tim Drake carefully from the ground up to make him likable and, within the confines of our art form, believable. We have a gut feeling that you get when you've been doing it for 25 years that he will be popular and that we'll probably do other mini-series," remarks Denny ONeil. "I think he'll certainly be more popular than Jason.
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