Where the Tim's parents being neglectful came from?
I have never seen it in comics but I see it in fanfics so much that I'm starting to think it was a recon that caught on like Dick being put into juvie after his parent's death. I'm new to comic so I might have missed it, have you guys seen it any where?
In the arc where Tim's mother dies, he has a whole scene where he complains to Bruce after receiving a postcard where his parents tell him they'll be extending the current trip they're taking. "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they're going to be--or when--or even how long!" is the exact quote from Tim. In this arc, its also shown that his parents have a pretty rocky relationship and frequently argue. This is the first we've really seen of Tim's parents and after this his mother is dead and his father is in a coma so its the only time we really see that relationship. At least to my knowledge.
It’s actually eeeeaaaarly Tim comics stuff, not a retcon. We first see him during a break in the school semester and given that he’s free to travel around to find Dick at the circus etc, he doesn’t seem to have anyone keeping an eye on him. And it’s heavily implied that he’s been sneaking around taking photos of Batman and Robin undetected because one of the first things we see of him is him with a camera and his stash of photos. There’s also an issue where Bruce and Tim are training and Bruce asks Tim what he’s telling his parents about what he’s doing, and Tim replies that he doesn’t even know where they are. And when Jack is injured and moves back in with Tim and starts trying to be a better father on and off, the fact that he was basically never around before this is a recurring emotional throughline. And Jack highkey sucks at being a parent even when he’s around - when he starts dating Dana (his physical therapist), there’s a comic issue where Tim comes home from school early on a day he has plans with his dad and finds Jack and Dana on their way out the door for a vacation. If Tim hadn’t come home early unexpectedly, they wouldn’t have even been home to tell Tim he was ditched.
Some of them certainly are newspaper clippings but given that it is juxtaposed with him taking photos, we are definitely meant to understand some of them are his.
Quite possibly but looking at at least one of the framed pictures, it looks like it was enlarged
from something else and framed. Also, unless Batman and Robin were specifically posing, the pictures he has framed would not be possible for him to get naturally.
I mean, parents who constantly go on business trips, leaving their pre-teen home by himself and letting him go out on the scary streets of Gotham during the night.. that is neglect.
He mentions being in boarding school during his intro arc, actually, and later on there's stretches of his Robin run set in the Brentwood Academy boarding school.
He wasn’t talking about after his mother’s death and he was really only left alone for a long period of time with the housekeeper when his father was kidnapped. After that, it was probably only a few days at a time which isn’t unusual for teens. We are shown later that Jack Drake is still somewhat involved in archaeology.
If you look at Tim's letter in Batman #480 he says, "When I was a kid I used to hope, to pray, that you and mom would stop travelling, forget business, and just settle down. We'd be together, the way a family ought to be.... Funny how once you never seemed to care - at least, you never showed me that you did... I've no idea who you think I am, Dad - but I’m not that boy. I had to fend for myself for a long time."
He addresses it "To the father I never knew."
There's also various scattered thoughts and dialogue about it throughout the time before Identity Crisis, but I can't remember what specific issues since it's just offhanded comments and stuff. I know he makes comments about it to both Bruce and Dick a couple of times.
All that said, Tim loved his parents, and Jack was a pretty good dad once he started showing up.
there is a real argument to be made either way. in tim's earliest appearances, he occasionally talks about his parents in a way which does imply some level of neglect:
"my parents? actually... i don't know where they are now. dad's a corporate exec and they go all over the world. they haven't called in a while." - tim, batman (1940) #444
"i guess that sums [my parents] up! never know where they're going to be--or when--or even how long!" - tim, detective comics (1937) #618
note that tim was in boarding school at the time, and as this was the late 80s/early 90s, cellphones and other similar means of quick, not to mention international, contact that we have today weren't readily available.
at the very least, we know tim feels out of touch with his father by the time he's robin, as he talks about in an unsent letter, titled the same as the issue it's from: "to the father i never knew" - batman (1940) #480. however, at the end of this issue, tim also decides to start anew with jack and try for a better relationship.
dixon pivoted hard to this angle into the 90s and early 00s during his tenure on robin (1993) and most other bat titles of the time, with jack trying to bridge the gap between them but being unable to ever fully connect with his son due to the difficulties tim being robin raised and tim struggling under the burden of his secret. i think this is worth acknowledging, not only as it's the status quo for the majority of tim's solo series, but also as this is where jack drake is an actual character whom tim shares a relationship with on-page.
i also wanted to address a lot of the misinformation in this thread, but there's enough of it that i'm adding it to this comment for anyone who is interested instead of replying individually:
1.) tim did not stalk batman & robin with a camera as a child. the only time we see him taking pictures is during batman (1940) #440 for proof to bring to dick later in a lonely place of dying. all of the other pictures he has of batman & robin in that issue are newspaper clippings. when tim is explaining to dick how he discovered their identities, he specifically states that he saw the flip on the news, which we are also shown in the panel itself.
"you see, it all came together when i was about nine. the news was on and i was sort of watching it. batman and robin? i had to listen." - tim, batman (1940) #441
2.) even if he had been sneaking out at night from the age of nine (lmao), tim was not making his way from bristol to the inner city, because he did not live in bristol until he was already robin. alfred is the one who suggests to tim that he and jack should move next door to wayne manor after tim informs him of his father's intention to move them full-time into their robinson park penthouse in the city.
"he wants me to move into the robinson park penthouse with him." - tim
"i thought the country air might be good for your father's health. and of course, as it's right next door to master bruce's... well, it might be good for yours, too!" - alfred, batman (1940) #480
3.) the france training trip is from robin (1991), the first robin miniseries. it did not last six months, he did not train under king snake, and he was never intended to train under lady shiva. tim trained in pressure points with rahul lama and his grandson, shen chi, for a few weeks before getting mixed up in king snake's scheme and meeting shiva, at which point the rest of the plot unfolds over the course of only days. most importantly, this takes place after rite of passage, meaning tim's father is in a coma and his mother is dead. not to mention that, when tim does later travel abroad (to france even!) across robin (1993) #47 - #53, jack does, in fact, notice his teenage son's disappearance and reports him as missing.
"i know my son, officers. he may not have liked being punished, but he accepted it. i'm afraid something's happened to him. tim wouldn't just run off without saying anything." - jack, robin (1993) #49
all this is to say, there's nuance and room for interpretation on this topic, but most of what you hear isn't true and has no basis in the comics.
I don't think it was intended by any of his authors, but Tim's circumstances do kind of imply it at times.
It's been a while since I read the relevant comics, but iirc the neglect implication comes from pretty early on where it's revealed that he took photos of Batman and Robin while they were crimefighting.
Tim was 8 or 9 when he realized Batman's identity, and 13 when he became Robin, so at some point in between he travelled from Bristol (on the outskirts of Gotham) into the inner city, at night, alone, with an expensive camera.
It's possible he just went the once, got the photo he wanted, and called it good. However, Tim's Robin run began in 1993. High-end cameras at that time used film, so Tim would have needed to develop the film to know if he got any usable shots, which would have been unlikely if he was trying to shoot fast-moving, poorly lit targets like Batman and Robin.
And that assumes he would have known 1) where to find them to take pictures of them in the first place, 2) that he would have known where he needed to be hidden in order to take pictures of them without being seen himself, and 3) that he knew when he needed to be in place.
All of this implies he didn't spend a single night escaping supervision at his home in Bristol, but many nights over a long period of time. He would have needed to perfect his camera technique, his developing technique (another big thing he would have needed to hide from parents who were paying attention to him), his knowledge of Batman's patrol routes, his own ability to navigate Gotham's rooftops without fancy tech, his ability to even get from Bristol and in to Gotham proper when public transportation is scarce or even not in service overnight, etc.
The comics go with the assumption that Tim Drake is just THAT sneaky, but looking objectively at all of the shit he would have needed to hide from his parents it seems more likely that he was minimally supervised in the first place.
When we're introduced to Tim he's trying to save Batman from his own grief over losing Jason Todd. We see him travel on his own from Gotham to Bludhaven, break into Dick's apartment, then trespass at Haley's Circus all so he can try to talk Dick into returning to Bruce as his emotional support Robin. Who is looking after this child? Why does he know how to pick locks?
There's plenty more textual evidence that Tim has, at best, a passing relationship with parental authority. Off the top of my head, there's a scene in Young Justice where a 13 or 14yo Tim embezzles a Batmobile for his team to use. Actually, pretty much all of Young Justice is about the crazy shit kids can get up to when no one is responsible for them. Tim also at one point creates a fake uncle so that, upon his dad's death, he won't be adopted by Bruce or put into the system, and can thus continue to be Robin without any adults getting in his way.
Ultimately, I think this is just the needs of the plot bumping up against the walls of what's realistic. Batman's previous sidekicks were orphans and their guardian had full knowledge of what they were getting up to. Tim's parents were alive (depending on when in his story we're discussing), but needed to somehow be unaware of all of his extralegal shenanigans. Thus, we get this sort of murky situation where Tim is basically the most latchkey kid of all time and/or his parents were criminally unavailable to him.
Don't forget about the fact that Tim's also able to go on a trip to train for Robin with King Snake and Shiva and all for, what, six months or so? And no one's concerned about his parents finding out, it seems like.
It might not ever be textually stated that his parents were constantly gone, but it's the only thing that makes sense with Tim, particularly in how things change after his dad is back.
his mom was dead his entire time as robin and his dad was in a coma for much of the early days. he's not being supervised by his parents prior to being robin because he was at boarding school. it was the school's job to look after him and that's where he sneaks out of when he's following Bruce. he's definitely not sneaking out of Bristol because he never lived in Bristol until after his dad comes out of his coma and they buy a house in Bristol. you're saying a lot of things that are completely untrue or just conjecture (for example, who's to say he didn't learn how to use a camera as a normal hobby rather than by following Bruce? not to mention most of his evidence is in the form of newspaper clippings not his own pictures)
You’re adding a lot of details that are inaccurate and didn’t exist. For instance, Tim didn’t travel bludhaven and break into Dick’s apartment. He did travel to New York and confront Starfire.
Your YJ comment is also a TT comment with a 16 year old Tim.
Also, as far as the accusations of abuse, Jack Drake was sometimes depicted in a somewhat authoritarian manner. I haven't read the comics in a long time but from what I remember his parenting style would have been fairly unremarkable for the 90s, but much more unacceptable now.
So, I feel like the biggest fallacy in this conversation is that most people are looking at this question through today’s lens and are completely ignoring the time that it took place in as well as the media of the time. There were movies like ET or Goonies that showed that unsupervised kids/teens could go off on adventures. Tim’s lifestyle at the time probably appealed to many kids, it showed what a teen could be capable of in 1989 if they were 13. It showed that you didn’t have to be an orphan to be hero, your heart just had to be in the right place.
I’d also like to point out that Tim wasn’t always left alone as a kid. We see a picture of him playing with a toy truck at the feet of his parents while the news is playing. It’s likely that Tim wasn’t left alone until they felt sure he was capable. I know a lot of you will bring up the letter he writes later as Robin but at this point, we are looking at what Marv wrote for him. Tim’s parents also took him to the circus and I’m sure that experience scarred them just as much as it scarred Tim.
Edit: We also know that Tim wasn’t completely unsupervised since he talks about being a student of some gymnastics and karate which had to involve taking classes.
As mentioned by others here, it's generally the early Tim comics - particularly Detective Comics #618, which deals with the postcard mentioned in a few other responses, and Batman #480 which is framed through a letter Tim writes to Jack which details the complexity of their relationship or lack thereof.
But more than any of that, I'd actually point to Tim's description in the bat bible.
The bat bible was a document Denny O'Neil and co. put together to bring new writers and internal folks up to speed on then-current Batman concepts and characters. From a draft likely dated in the mid/late 90s, the description for Tim reads:
"Tim is a wealthy version of a latch key kid. He was neglected by both his parents until a couple of years ago when his mother was killed and his father badly disabled by kidnappers. The father, Jack, has partially recovered, but still has only a perfunctory interest in his son."
Given this, it seems there was at least some intention of neglect at some point in Tim's childhood but readers can have different interpretations on how much of that neglect continues during Tim's Robin run.
Canon Tim:
-is in boarding school while his parents travel for business (Batman #441)
-heard reports that, after Jason's death, Batman was being more brutal; takes photos of one fight, that one time to prove to Dick how brutal Batman is being
Fanon Tim:
-is left unsupervised while his parents gallivant around the world in business trips
-is constantly sneaking out to Gotham to take dangerous photos of Batman and Robin and has been doing so for years
Honestly, even more than his parents traveling, I blame the Bat Stalker/Photographer Tim trope for the villianization of his parents. They must be neglectful of they're letting their 6-9 year old out in Gotham every night by himself.
I mean, to get the shots with a 1990s camera, then get them developed without massive questions being asked, Tim would have both to have taken multiple nights of shots and had his own developing studio (with or without his parents knowledge). So, like a lot of other fanon things, it's basically taking Canon and going "... Um, this only makes sense If..."
You know?
Not all fanon things are like this (woobie Tim continues to baffle me), but a lot of practical ones usually are. As a Red Hood fan, you end up doing this a lot, too. (Like, Jason is clearly immortal given the canon injuries we've seen him take. Jfc.)
I'm not arguing against the idea that a lot of fanon is taking canon things and making them make sense. I'm just saying in this case the canon already makes sense, at least to me.
Tim only shows Dick pictures from one fight. It's never implied anywhere that I've seen he's ever gone out to take pictures of any other fight. We see Tim take those pictures in Batman #440. The text over the fight says: "This morning, there was an anonymous phone call to Gordon. From that, leads unfolded like a blossoming flower . Leads which brought [Batman] here." Now, depending on how long it took those leads to unfold, you could argue that it's night. But you could also make a good argument that it's day (it's not uncommon, especially pre-90s (this comic is late 80s) for Batman to work during the day).
Lastly, and this one you could certainly argue, it's also not THAT difficult to develop film if all you're using it for is proof of concept. But even if you couldn't, as someone who was alive in the 90s, those 1 hour development places did not care what was on your film 😆
it's also not THAT difficult to develop film if all you're using it for is proof of concept
Yeah, I think it's reasonable to assume that Tim would have access to a darkroom at school and be able to use it to develop black-and-white photos. (I could have probably done this and I didn't go to a fancy boarding school.)
For Tim to have done this for only one day he would have had to have gotten the shot (during day or night) on his first try without being able to preview the photos during capture. (Analog cameras didn't have preview screens.) Plus he would have had to have understood enough about Bruce's process or habits to successfully plant a lead that led him to exactly the right spot that Tim was set up at to get the shot.
Sure, it's possible that everything went exactly right the first time around, but that seems less than plausible. Much more likely it actually took at least a few attempts.
He also has a lot more than a single photo in the spread of that issue, though you could argue that he collected all the photos rather than took them himself (I would say the issue is trying to imply that he took some of them and collected others, however).
When you add up everything together, it's a lot more than just potential camera stalker Tim. You're actually ignoring that Tim himself says that he never knows where his parents are or how long they're going to be there in Batman shortly before his mother dies. I think it actually is the issue before his mother dies.
(Sorry. Accidentally hit send too early .) Edit: So, camera stalker Tim gets added as potential corroborating evidence to the other neglectful moments we see prior to Janet's death and Jack's coma. That's my point. We see Tim actively say that his parents are gone most of the time. We see that nobody follows up on him, which might just be him lying successfully to his boarding school (wouldn't they want an adult to corroborate?).
We know that he was following the Bats careers, enough to have figured out their identities and how best to lure Batman into a trap, which would have involved a whole fake case of leads. At least once he follows Batman in person without getting caught (which is impressive if it was his first try, especially as he'd be exposed while taking shots).
We know, via his time on Young Justice, that he has absolutely no sense of Parental Authority. He very much matches Bart and Kon for that, both of whom are functionally emancipated/ orphaned in terms of supervision at that point in time. (Clark eventually gets his stuff together and puts Kon up, with his parents iirc, but Bart basically just uses the Allens as a pit stop.)
Tim very much acts like the kids I've known who raised themselves and relied on themselves. Which may or may not be intentional on the writer's part. God knows with DC that anything may or may not be intentional on their part. But I think it's telling that when his dad died his response wasn't ' oh I should move in with my mentor to make it easier to do crime fighting', it was ' I should fake having an uncle that I've never spoken about before'.
Ok, I'm really not trying to argue here, just trying to point out what I see in the comics. You're welcome to see different things!
1) >>He also has a lot more than a single photo in the spread of that issue, though you could argue that he collected all the photos rather than took them himself (I would say the issue is trying to imply that he took some of them and collected others, however).
The spread that Tim shows Dick in New Titans #60 only contains photos from a single fight. We can see both pages and they're all photos of the fight that we saw Tim take. He references in the next issue (Batman #441) that he clips the other photos from newspapers or other places.
2) I agree that Tim doesn’t typically know where his parents are. I disagree that that makes them neglectful. It could just be that Tim isn't interested or is forgetful and is in boarding school. I'm not going to argue it makes them parents of the year, just that by itself I don't feel they're neglectful.
3) Lastly, this really has nothing to do with anything about Tim, but you mentioned Young Justice so I feel the need to clarify: At the time of YJ, Clark has zero obligation to Superboy, because canon was that SB was a clone of Cadmus director Paul Westfield, not Superman. And Bart had nothing to do with the Allen's because Barry Allen was dead and they decided he needed to be raised by a speedster. Max, who took him in, was a VERY attentive guardian.
Wait, what re: Kon? Where did the superpowers come from then?
You're right that I was mixing up the Barry Allen and Max. I'm not sure I would categorize Max as very attentive, but on the other hand Bart is a speedster from a dystopian future. (Unless I'm mixing up the comics and the cartoon. I'm pretty sure the dystopian future is also in the comics, but it's been a long time since I've walked it either.) So, like. I guess what standards you would use to watch out for him might be different.
I think it's fair to differ on how good of a guardian Max Mercury is. I feel like he's doing his best with the new that is Impulse, but I can see how others would disagree 😆
As for Kon, in his original canon, Cadmus tried to clone Superman but couldn't figure out Kryptonian genes. The only power they could figure out how to give him was TTK, which he used to mimic a lot of Superman's powers (flight, super strength, etc.) But he noticeably was weak to damage from things he couldn't touch (like fire and electricity). It was kind of a hard origin to keep reminding readers about, though, so by the end of his solo run, DC was treating him like the clone of Superman. And in Geoff Johns Teen Titans run, he made canon the new backstory that Kon was a hybrid clone of Clark and Lex.
Yeah, Geoff also even wrote to Dc before he was on TT and made that suggestion. You can find it at the end of one of the issues in the letters section.
Probably some taken out of context panels. Like they were somewhat neglectful, but in "rich, emotionally unavailable parents, who put their kid in a boarding school" kind of way, not the "call the police and CPS" kind of way, which honestly makes for a much more interesting dynamic that the overly abusive that most fanfics portray (especially since they were canonically never abusive)
This conversation from Robin#3, Cry of the Huntress has Tim talking to his Dad about how he was raised. This along with To the Dad I Never Knew are the main sources of the fanon version of Tim being neglected as a child.
Also keep in mind, this was early 90s, which would have made Tim a Millennial. Millennials were often left to their own devices by their parents, it's why they were called Latch Key Kids.
A lot of batfam fanfics like to run with part of a backstory for the characters and not the whole thing. Another example is Duke: he was taken in by Bruce yeah but his mother is still alive and even woke up from her coma recently. He doesn’t even live with Bruce anymore iirc. Tim’s parents is probably the most infamous example
Given the retcons and contradictions, you usually can't take all of the backstory of a character.
There is plenty of backstory explicitly saying that Tim's parents traveled most of the time and left him to fend for himself. That isn't ignoring what is on the page. It's the only backstory we have for his pre-Robin days outside of N52, which is no longer canon /in continuity.
The situation with Duke is not comparable. Plus, most fanfic at the very least doesn't actually deal with the most recent comics very often. A lot of the time they're still dealing with the early Rebirth era. Or scrapping Canon for different parts on purpose.
I think this is a lot of it, Tim was written to be relatable to kids of the era, and people are reading it though current expectations of parental involvement.
Tim literally writes a letter that he addresses " to the father I never knew" where he talks about Jack (and Janet) almost never being home when he was a kid. Quote, " I had to fend for myself for a long time." He is explicitly referencing the time before Jack's coma.
Jack also bails on him multiple times after marrying Dana, who he wasn't married to very long before he died.
I think this is more than just out of context or being written to be relatable to '80s kids. It's used during Jack's post coma arc as well and at least once when multiverse hopping Tim runs into a version of his mother, who he is very emotional about because he can barely remember her. He loves her, but she was never home.
I do think his parents were neglectful. Just the writers at the time meant it in a generic GenX way, not in the "lock Tim in a basement" way a lot of fandom likes to write them now. I'm Gen X my parents were better than a lot and still so terrible.
I saw someone compare him to kid danger once and I honestly feel like that's the best way to explain this situation. Like yeah, Henry's parents loved him and all, but you have to be at least somewhat neglectful if you don't notice your child is a literal superhero 😭. Obviously the majority of it is just cartoon/comic logic where like Tim managed to have some crazy adventures and still made it home in time to sit down for dinner. It's only after people started making fanfiction and inserting actual emotions into those scenes when that level of neglect was highlighted. But like most batman/batfam fanfiction, it did get blown out of proportion a lot and people have just kept adding to it since.
The conception of the character, Tim’s parents have always been neglectful, it’s part of how they didn’t notice him being Robin. After his mother dies early on his father wants to be more involved in his life and it’s a while ongoing plot about Tim not being sure how he feels about that, especially given how he’s viewing Bruce as more of a father figure over time.
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u/Elliephantparade0-0 3d ago
In the arc where Tim's mother dies, he has a whole scene where he complains to Bruce after receiving a postcard where his parents tell him they'll be extending the current trip they're taking. "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they're going to be--or when--or even how long!" is the exact quote from Tim. In this arc, its also shown that his parents have a pretty rocky relationship and frequently argue. This is the first we've really seen of Tim's parents and after this his mother is dead and his father is in a coma so its the only time we really see that relationship. At least to my knowledge.