Hmmmnnnnrgh

Hmmmnnnnrgh

Lookity look, I am an avid fan of what some may call “comic books.” I am also a fan of fanfiction.

I like to read the comics that inspire people to write! Comic books inspire writers inspire artists inspire comics inspire writers and on and on! It’s beautiful. The way the world is meant to be.

Anyway, that isn’t important. What is important is the blatant misunderstanding of Tim Drake’s parents.

Now look, I am with you one hundred percent if you want to make a story where Tim’s parent(s) is decent. That’s fun, I love those stories. But, at the same time, you have to understand that those are AU.

I haven’t read every single comic that Tim Drake has ever featured in, nor have I read every single comic either Jack or Janet Drake has featured in. What I have read, is quite a bit, so I will try my best to explain.

There’s a certain page going around from 90’s Young Justice where Tim is talking to his dad while his dad tries to make coffee. The whole scene is played as a joke, but also, it shows an important difference between Tim and the other members of Young Justice.

I don’t know if this will make sense, but we see a lot of parents in Young Justice. Cissie’s mom is trying to be better, while Cissie is making her work for her forgiveness. Cassie’s mom is pretty cool, she’s worried about her daughter but lets Cassie be a superhero because Cassie is brave and it makes her happy (and Cassie would’ve snuck out to do it if she wasn’t given permission).

Bart’s parents are in the future, but we see him hang out with Max a lot, and they have some realy touching moments of old man vs ADHD child. Kon hangs out with Superman, even though Superman is super uncomfortable around Kon, but we see Superman really try to make an effort to spend time with Kon and understand him.

Tim is a more difficult case.

We see Tim’s dad in the aforementioned page. That’s about it. Any other time family is brought up, Nightwing is his go-to for big bro and Batman is his parental figure. We get a reference to Tim’s dad when Bart says something about getting Tim in trouble with his dad and Tim thinks he’s talking about Jack before realizing he meant Batman.

But more than that, Jack doesn’t have any parental scenes with Tim. Bruce gets all of those. Bruce learns to ease up from being an overbearing parent, Bruce tells Tim he’s proud of him, Bruce spends hours at a computer trying to figure out what happened to Tim. Bruce gets the parental moments.

The panels with Jack in them make me uncomfortable, as someone who stays home to care for my mom. The whole scene is sort of like a joke, where Tim acts more like a father and Jack acts more like a son. That’s why you have the narrative positioning of Tim seated at the table, reading the newspaper, rambling about current events, not even having to look up to warn Jack that he’s about to drink rat poison. Jack is supposed to take the role of tired teenager, slow thinking, not really paying attention, wandering the kitchen. It’s a reversal of the typical father-son role you would see in movies or tv.

It’s making fun of Jack for being less grown up than his fifteen-year-old son.

It makes me uncomfortable because Tim acts as the caretaker in that scene. And, it’s hard to be your parent’s caretaker. It’s hard to see your parent act weird or childish. When Cissie’s mom acts self-destructive and childish, Cissie gets taken away by Child Protective Services. When Tim’s dad almost accidentally drinks rat poison, Tim is in charge of making sure he doesn’t. Do you get it? It’s hard to explain, I don’t know how to explain it… it just makes me feel uneasy.

Then, there’s the scene where Jack tears Tim’s tv off the wall and breaks it. That just is abuse. There’s no debate.

But there are subtle things in the comics. Tim becomes Robin and his parents don’t find out until after Janet has been dead for a few years. And it isn’t like Cassie and her mom, where her mom accepted that Cassie was going to fight crime, there isn’t much she can do to stop her, and so she would rather let her daughter go, because then Cassie trusts her enough to talk to her. She deems it more important for Cassie to trust her, and she knows Cassie is a reckless teenager, and she wants to keep that line open. So she lets Cassie go as long as Cassie tells her what’s happening. And we see how it affects Cassie’s mom, how scared she gets, how worried she is, how relieved she is when Cassie comes home because that means she’s safe.

Tim’s dad makes him give up Robin. He doesn’t think about Tim, he thinks about his idea of Tim. The Tim in his mind is a well-mannered young boy who studies and has a handful of friends. It doesn’t jibe with the reality that Tim is a well-mannered young boy who kicks criminals in the face and finds himself falling from tall heights worryingly often. Tim’s dad doesn’t understand why Tim wants to be Robin, and Tim has to push and push and push to be Robin again.

There’s little things. Tim was capable of jumping on the first flight to Hawaii with Alfred in World’s Finest Three, presumably he was gone for at least a day, and nobody was too concerned about it. Tim was turned into an adult in that age swap arc with the Young Justice, but we only ever see how he speaks with Bruce. Everyone else has a scene of them either confronting a loved one in their aged up or down form (Bart, Wally, Cassie) or has Superboy pretend to be him to talk to Lois (Superman). In fact, we see a scene like that where Bruce (Robin) makes Tim (Batman) talk to Commissioner Gordon. But, we never see Tim even think about confronting his dad like that.

Tim apparently has all the free time in the world to fight bad guys and almost die every other day, and people think his parents weren’t neglectful. When Tim’s dad does die, Tim gets adopted by Bruce, and sure, he says it hurt when Jack died, but he even said that he felt kind of empty about it. Then Bruce died, and he felt completely different, despite viewing them both as his fathers.

This is long and rambling, and I’m sorry, but I need you to understand that when people say Tim’s parents are abusive, they aren’t pulling it out of nowhere. Neglect is abuse. A kid having to take care of their parent with no one to take care of them is neglectful. Yelling and screaming and throwing things is abuse. Maybe Tim’s parents don’t leave physical scars, but they don’t treat him well. They aren’t good parents.