My Favorite Little Shit 💖

I understand that the Red Robin run has us all in a chokehold, but I think we sometimes miss the forest for the trees. What makes it truly tragic isn't the fact that Tim is a really depressed and anxious person, but the opposite. Tim is a nerd who loves friendship and justice. He has tons of friends and contrasts a post-Jason Bruce who is withdrawn and depressed by being very outgoing and personable. That's his whole thing as a character, he exists to act as a liaison between Batman and the world.

When Red Robin starts, his father has just died, his best friend has just died, his girlfriend has just died, his mentor and some other friends have disappeared from the map, his older brother is juggling the Batman mantle and a poor ten yo Damian that has just lost his father. This is Tim at his worst mentally. He's a character built on interaction and he has no one to interact with. Add to it his canonical mental health issues, well the guy is going through it.

He pours his entire soul into the search for Bruce because he needs a fucking win. The man is spiraling the entire run. The true angst of Red Robin is not that he's a sad little mew mew, but that he isn't. We come to know him as this little guy who loves making friends and forcing Bruce to open up to others, and now we have to see him alone and desperate. He's very similar to Dick in that aspect, the drama hits you harder because you know how he is normally. And the parallels to Bruce at the start of his run as Robin are just brutal: someone wrecked by grief, alone, pouring all their energy and focus into work as an escape... And even in the middle of his crash out arc, he still ends up making friends. That's who Tim Drake is, and that's why he acts like that after losing so many people he holds dear.

This panel kills me every time

the way dick and babs share the same mannerisms ughhh

The Robins(and 1 signal) + The Onion/Reductress headlines

Other batfam

Maybe draw some Tim and bruce?? Id love u forever

Bonus points for missing spleen

Sick Tim and worried Bruce! Here you go!

here’s the other way i make bruce a grandpa: dick has one

Heard we were drawing these two being brothers

Batman: Legends of the dark knight #125

Tim comparing Bruce and Jim’s situation to a divorcing couple is both hilarious and too accurate, he and Babs are really acting like children of divorce lol

The fact that edgeworth’s office is on the 12th floor will never not be funny to me. There’s no way girlypop’s taking the elevator so is he like?? Just walking up and down 12 flights of stairs everyday ???

The Many Post-Crisis Christmases of Tim Drake

Yes, everyone gets a few Holiday issues over the years, but Tim’s got his own special levels of trauma associated with the holiday.

A round up of every time Tim appears in comics about Christmas, sorted by year:

1990: Identity Crisis - Batman #455-457 aka Janet Drake’s funeral. Janet is buried on Christmas Eve. Jack’s still in a coma. Tim is living with Bruce at this point. Tim spends a lot of this storyline having nightmares and worrying by Jason’s memorial case. At the very end, Bruce and Alfred give Tim his personal Robin costume and Tim goes out officially as Robin for the first time.

1996: Holiday Bash I – “Just Another Night” it’s just a small mention here, but given future events it’s worth noting. Tim leaves a Christmas card for Alfred, and Jack takes Tim to the Caribbean for the holidays. Very in line with Tim’s behaviour during this period, where he’s noted for giving Babs thank you notes.

1998: Holiday Bash III – “Alone for the Holidays” aka the single point in canon that supports Neglected Sad Boi Tim Drake. Tim is, as the title implies, alone for the holidays and moping about it. Jack and Dana are trapped in Chicago because the airport is closed due to snow (Why Jack and Dana are in Chicago is left to the reader). Babs and Dick call Tim over to the Clock Tower for a Loners Christmas Party. It will never not be funny to me that Alfred and Harold are at this Loners Party, but Bruce isn’t. Only a TRUE committed loner misses the family loners Christmas party.

1999: Endgame, No Man’s Land (LotDK #126, Batman #574, ‘Tec #741). If you are unfamiliar with this classic story, Joker kidnaps 36 babies on Christmas Eve in No Man’s Land and threatens to blow them all up. Tim gets called away from Christmas dinner with Jack (as a note, Tim’s outside NML at the dinner, then immediately dives inside for this. Never bother trying to make sense of how often Tim got in and out of Gotham during NML) and is helping track down the babies. It’s…traumatic for everyone involved.

2001: Young Justice #40. The Night Before Doomsday. This is the story where Santa dies and Young Justice find themselves having to deliver all the presents on his behalf.

2006: Slayride, ‘Tec #826. Tim is running away from a group of drug dealers and is offered a ride by a passing car. The car is driven by Joker. Tim gets tied up with Christmas lights and eventually distracts him via an argument with Joker about the Marx Brothers.

2008: “It’s a Wonderful Night” and “The Night Before Christmas”, DCU Holiday Special #1 2008. Two reminders that Tim has a hard time at Christmas in one!

“It’s a Wonderful Night” is a tear jerker where Dick goes looking for Tim to deliver a Christmas present. He finds him at a cinema watching a showing of It’s a Wonderful Life. Captain Boomerang Jnr is also there. Tim and Owen bond over their dead dads both liking the movie (which…given their dads killed each other, is a thing) and Dick gives Tim his old Robin costume. You WILL cry.

“The Night Before Christmas” is a Titans story, particularly notable as far as Tim goes in that Tim and Cassie talk about how the holidays remind Tim of the people he’s lost (and look, for perfectly good reasons, given the above).