Tim Drake isn’t hard at all to write. I’ve been writing him in short stories between my friends and I for eight years now, and I can tell you, it’s fairly easy. This also heavily ties into another argument a lot of people make against him, which is: “Dick is the pretty boy, acrobatic comedian, Jason is the badass, bad boy, rebel that kills, Damian is the actual son. What’s Tim have?”
Think of Tim as a mix between Bruce, Oracle and Spider-Man.
He’s got the intelligence and detective skills of Batman, the technology skills and knowledge of Oracle, and the nerdy and social awkwardness of Spider-Man. He’s like if Bruce and Oracle had an autistic son with depression and anxiety, and there you go. That’s Tim Drake. He’s not hard to write out.
Were you bullied growing up? Did you like comics growing up? Did people make fun of you and give you grief for liking comics? Did that depress you? Did or do you have trouble in social situations? Have you ever experienced anxiety in some shape or form? Did you look up to Batman or literally any other comic book character? Hell, did you look up to ANYBODY at all growing up? Did you want to be more like someone growing up? Did or do you ever feel like you’re not good enough? Do you or did you ever feel like you were living in someone’s shadow? Have you ever felt the need to prove yourself? Have you ever experienced loss and pain? Have you ever felt good about yourself for getting something, anything at all, you wanted? That right there is how you write Tim Drake, boyo.
Tim Drake is the nerdy, autistic, depressed, anxious and tech-savvy member of the Batfamily, just as Dick is the pretty boy, comedic acrobat, Jason is the hardcore, rough and tough bad boy, and Damian is the son.
Tim Drake is us. Minus the constantly cracking jokes and sharing memes. You wanna know how to write Tim Drake? Write yourself, basically. Cut back some of the jokes, and write out how you would be as Robin. That’s really it. It’s pretty much it.
“What’s he done special?”
- Well, uh… For starters, he figured out Batman’s identity.
Everybody else had to be told. Dick, Jason, Damian, Steph, Babs, and others had to be told that Bruce Wayne is Batman, and Tim found it out on himself at nine years old. Not only that, he found out the identities of other heroes too like Superman, The Flash, Nightwing and Green Lantern. - In the New52, he was actually able to hurt Trigon by stabbing him in the eyes.
- Multiple times, Dick and Jason both flat out said that Tim was a far better Robin than them.
- Dick even told Tim that he was a better leader in the Teen Titans than he was.
- Bruce Wayne himself flat out said that Tim WILL BE a better Batman than him based on his detective skills and just how smart he is and the only person capable of taking up the cowl properly.
- Tim was able to hold his own against Lady Shiva, one of the deadliest killers in the DC universe and gained her respect, which hardly anyone else has.
- Lady Shiva respected him so much as a fighter that she taught him her own special fighting style that only three or five people in the whole DC universe knew, and he mastered it.
- When Darkseid hit Batman with the Omega Sanction to send him through time and everybody thought he was dead, Tim was the only person to actually find out that Bruce was alive and helped bring him back to the present.
- Ra’s al Ghul himself even respected him and sought out his help when dealing with a rival ninja cult that was giving the League of Assassins trouble, and he kicked their asses.
- Ra’s al Ghul respected Tim so much, that he even saw and agreed that he was the best Robin and thought he’d be the best Batman and that he was the second best detective in the DC universe (Bruce being first).
- In the more recent comics, Tim Drake even built his own fully functioning Artificial Intelligence! He built Brother Eye and modified him so much that Brother Eye, Tim’s creation. was able to make modifications and stuff to buildings.
Don’t try that stuff on me that Tim’s boring or he’s bland or he’s hard to write.
. From Jason trying to kill him for replacing him, Dick firing him as Robin and Damian constantly telling him he’s worthless because he isnt “bruces real son”, he thinks he’s expendable! For a comics example, when he sacrificed himself and “died” in detective comics 940 because he felt his sacrifice would be the one that hurt the family the least
