In your mind - how old are the Batman characters?

[Tsukiakari1203]

Alfred - 71
Bruce - 40
Kate - 37
Dick - 22
Jason - 21
Tim - 16
Damien - 11
Cassandra - 18
Stephanie - 15
Flamebird - 17

Barbara - 21
Com. Gordon - 56
Harvey Bullock - 43
Renee Montoya - 36

Leslie Thompkins - 61
Selina Kyle - 33
Huntress - 28
Jean Paul Valley - 35
Julia Pennyworth - 43

Harley Quinn - 30
Harvey Dent - 41

Lucius Fox - 54
Luke Fox - 22
Tamara - 16
Tiffany - 12

Flamebird's secret identity is Bette Kane. Also she's Dick's age. They were Teen Titans together and she was Bat-Girl to his Robin back in the day. Do some research!

[Badou]

Really interesting how so many have Dick and Jason so close in age. I guess that is the New 52 influence creeping in. I still look at Jason as being closer in age to Tim than Dick, but I guess DC has just been folding Jason more and more to be part of Dick's generation of characters now.

[Aahz]

Really interesting how so many have Dick and Jason so close in age. I guess that is the New 52 influence creeping in. I still look at Jason as being closer in age to Tim than Dick, but I guess DC has just been folding Jason more and more to be part of Dick's generation of characters now.

Thats also something I find wired, Jason would have had to been almost an adult by the time he became Robin for that to work out.

But that I think that trend started in the comics already before the new 52 in Count Down, when he got teamed up with Kyle and Donna.

[Restingvoice]

Thats also something I find wired, Jason would have had to been almost an adult by the time he became Robin for that to work out.

But that I think that trend started in the comics already before the new 52 in Count Down, when he got teamed up with Kyle and Donna.

In New 52 timeline Jason became active Robin only 3 years before the present day New 52, immediately after Dick went to college and became Discowing.
So he trained for 6 months, became Robin, maybe only for the rest of the 6 months, gets killed, immediately resurrected.
Then he spent a year training with the League of Assassins and All-Caste during which time Tim became Robin.
He returned as Red Hood, bothers Tim a bit, then immediately followed by Damian's arrival, since there was no One Year Later or Infinite Crisis.
Then Dick became Batman for a year, after that, New 52 started.

In Rebirth he got a bit of an extension in back story since he spent some time at Ma Gunn's school before the 6 months training. The rest of the timeline stays the same.

The extension backstory in Rebirth was only there for Jon and Damian's age, with bonus Dick becoming Robin much earlier now, but for Jason and Tim, their Robin tenure is almost as short as New 52.

We know this, especially for Tim, because while he started younger in Rebirth, at age 12-13, he's still 16 in present day, whereas Damian met the family at 10 and he's 13 now. So most of Tim's time growing up, those 3 years, was spent during Damian's time as Robin from his debut through the New 52 stories.

For Jason... sorry, it's kind of hard to explain without mentioning everyone's ages and at what point everyone does what, including the time Jason as a child watching The Flying Graysons and Cassandra still using her New 52 backstory and life, but my conclusion is... Jason has to be only have 2-4 years age difference to Dick.

In Countdown it's only because he's drawn older. He's supposed to still be 19-20 at most, while Donna is in her late twenties.

[Valentis]

Batman - 35

Nightwing - 25

Barbara Gordon - 24

Jason Todd - 23

Tim Drake - 20

Damian -12

Gordon - 55

Alfred - 72

Catwoman - 32

[SiegePerilous02]

Dick getting adopted at 12 makes Bruce being any age under 40 feel weird.

Bruce was pretty young himself when he met Dick, very early 20s. So he's like a little over a decade older than Dick tops.

Dick never ages beyond vague mid-20s so logically Bruce won't age much beyond mid-late 30s. In the Bronze age, they treated the JL characters as being either in their very late 20s or early 30s, while Dick's generation was college aged, so a very wide age gap between generations never makes sense to me.

[Aahz]

Bruce was pretty young himself when he met Dick, very early 20s. So he's like a little over a decade older than Dick tops.

Typically it was more like 25-27.

[SiegePerilous02]

Typically it was more like 25-27.

I think that's more post-Crisis.

Before that, I think Bruce was younger when he started out and Dick joined him very early on. Even before Alfred

[Tzigone]

I think that's more post-Crisis.

Before that, I think Bruce was younger when he started out and Dick joined him very early on. Even before Alfred

Yes, Dick did join him early on (I prefer Dick there before Alfred, myself). How old was he - well, his origin story in 'Tec 33 said his parents died 15 years ago. So do you think he was 7 or 10 or 12 or what when you look at this image?

Thomas Martha 1.jpg
Bruce 1.jpg

He looks 10+ to me, but judging children's ages by appearance in any comic, muchless old ones is always a guessing game. I'm not aware of any pre-1950 references to how old he was when his parents died, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

[SiegePerilous02]

Yes, Dick did join him early on (I prefer Dick there before Alfred, myself). How old was he - well, his origin story in 'Tec 33 said his parents died 15 years ago. So do you think he was 7 or 10 or 12 or what when you look at this image?

Thomas Martha 1.jpg
Bruce 1.jpg

He looks 10+ to me, but judging children's ages by appearance in any comic, muchless old ones is always a guessing game. I'm not aware of any pre-1950 references to how old he was when his parents died, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

There are probably some, but I don't think they are terribly consistent if they do exist. I've definitely seen comics that say Bruce was 8 when he was orphaned, and others where he was 10 and those are just the modern ones. It's always basically "whatever the author says." He could be anywhere from 7-12 in that picture.

Miller said 25 in Year One, but I think Morrison at one point said he viewed Bruce as 21 when he first started because he wanted to squeeze in more of the pre-Crisis history. And that would make more sense since Bruce and Dick have more of brotherly bond than strict father/son to me; this is reflected in their dynamic in the run. Bruce reads as either very late 20s or early 30s when Dick enters college during the Bronze Age (and in BTAS). And while it isn't Bruce, Maggin's Superman novels are set in pre-Crisis Bronze Age continuity, and Clark and Lois are generally around the same age as each other and as Bruce. In that novel Lois is described as "not yet being out of her 20s."

[Tzigone]

And that would make more sense since Bruce and Dick have more of brotherly bond than strict father/son to me; this is reflected in their dynamic in the run.

I just don't think that's how they were depicted in the 1940s comics, particularly in regards to the times Bruce almost loses custody and such. Early 1970s were different. It's all a matter of perception, though. For me, it's very much father/son.


Pre-Crisis Superman is similarly all over the place. Including that one weird one where his seemingly-same-age highschool classmate is having her 21st birthday. They played up the "dad" angle with Jimmy a bit. Which made more sense in the radio show when Jimmy was about 14 (he actually grew up there, so that was kinda cool). We know by 1959 Lori was Clark's "long ago"college sweetheart, but that's too late in the game to have any impact on original intent.

But, as acknowledged in the opening post, it isn't about canon (which I love to try to timeline, even though it's hopeless), but perception. For me, Bruce is a parent to Dick, was 10 when his parents died, became Batman at 25, and gained custody of Dick at 26.

When counting the entire Wayne family, so using relative ages, that means Damian is 13/14, Tim is 20/21, Jason is 21/22 (I prefer the closer gap between then with Jason not 15 when he died), Cass should be two years older than Tim (23/24), though certainly they haven't aged as they should. With Dick 7-8 years older than Jason, so getting close to 30, Barbara 5-7 years older than him (I prefer 7, because of fondness for 1970s Batman Family comics, but will compromise on 5), and Bruce 46-48, depending on if Dick was 10-12. Of course, they aren't currently depicted anything like this. So my headcanon and actual canon vary. Everyone seems to reach a certain age and then either stop aging or get deaged (I think Tim didn't even keep up with Cassie Sandsmark, did he? and Supergirl was certainly aging at a different rate than the other teen heroes in the 1960s and been rebooted in deaged version relative to them since). But when I account for the entire family, folks get older. The three-year jump for Damian is what really did it - I really did perceive all the characters as the ages I had assigned to them before that. And of course, Cass got ejected from the Wayne family altogether for a while.

[SiegePerilous02]

I just don't think that's how they were depicted in the 1940s comics, particularly in regards to the times Bruce almost loses custody and such. Early 1970s were different. It's all a matter of perception, though. For me, it's very much father/son.


Pre-Crisis Superman is similarly all over the place. Including that one weird one where his seemingly-same-age highschool classmate is having her 21st birthday. They played up the "dad" angle with Jimmy a bit. Which made more sense in the radio show when Jimmy was about 14 (he actually grew up there, so that was kinda cool). We know by 1959 Lori was Clark's "long ago"college sweetheart, but that's too late in the game to have any impact on original intent.

But, as acknowledged in the opening post, it isn't about canon (which I love to try to timeline, even though it's hopeless), but perception. For me, Bruce is a parent to Dick, was 10 when his parents died, became Batman at 25, and gained custody of Dick at 26.

Yeah I agree it is perception. For me, since BTAS was my first main exposure (and it was based primarily on the Bronze age comics), they seem more like big brother/little brother with an age gap that isn't that big. Also the 90s films in which Bruce adopted a grown ass man lol, so there's that. So a big age gap will always seem weird to me. Like the casting in the live action Titans show, that is waaaaaay too big of a gap for me and it's distracting.

But I agree that the Golden Age comics read differently and it could be more father/son there (birthday spankings! ). Or maybe to kids back then, characters even in just their early 20s would read as much older father figures to them?

[Frontier]

Yeah I agree it is perception. For me, since BTAS was my first main exposure (and it was based primarily on the Bronze age comics), they seem more like big brother/little brother with an age gap that isn't that big. Also the 90s films in which Bruce adopted a grown ass man lol, so there's that. So a big age gap will always seem weird to me. Like the casting in the live action Titans show, that is waaaaaay too big of a gap for me and it's distracting.

But I agree that the Golden Age comics read differently and it could be more father/son there (birthday spankings! ). Or maybe to kids back then, characters even in just their early 20s would read as much older father figures to them?

Although with B:TAS they just kind of skipped ahead to when Dick was in college despite the fact that he had been a young Robin off-screen.

I've never really gotten this big brother/little brother dynamic. That's just never seemed like their relationship to me.

[Restingvoice]

Golden Age Bruce was born in 1915, debuted in 1939. If it's real time, he's 24 when he first appeared
Dick was born in 1928, debuted in 1940. He's 12.

The Death of The Waynes was in 1924. He was 8.

They're relationship is always the most mixed to me, there's the custody battle and birthday spanking, but there's also how casual they are around each other, like friends and partners. It's like brothers or cool uncle most of the time, but when things get serious, Bruce switch to father mode.

Bronze Age Bruce was 28 and Dick was 18 in To Kill a Legend, The Death of The Waynes happened when he was 8, and Robin I suspected started when they're 22 and 12.
Morrison takes after Silver Age, so if he starts Bruce at 21, 1 year before Dick came in, that fits.

[Tzigone]

Golden Age Bruce was born in 1915, debuted in 1939. If it's real time, he's 24 when he first appeared
Dick was born in 1928, debuted in 1940. He's 12.

But those birth years were established after Earth Two was established, not in actual early published works, right?

Bronze Age Bruce was 28 and Dick was 18 in To Kill a Legend, The Death of The Waynes happened when he was 8, and Robin I suspected started when they're 22 and 12.

Late bronze age, Wolfman has Dick start Robining at 8 and Dick and Donna knowing each other since 13. But, of course, she wasn't even introduced until Dick was 15. Can't recall if he explicitly said the Teen Titans formed at 13 or not. Wally was actually in 9th grade (originally, in silver age verse, not bronze or post-COIE) when he got his powers. Garth was weird - he seemed much younger until they decided he was a teenager for Teen Titans, rather like Damian. Of course, Dick was also a junior just a few months before they decided it was time to ship him off to college. Comic books just do that. At least, DC does.