What's up with the pure hatred for Tim Drake nowadays?

[Will Evans]

Zero sum? I literally said, "at times". Not all the time, but a few times, he has. That doesn't make me a hater, just acknowledging how events have played out. I'm someone that wants every character to be able to have their own niche, to have their own stories told, without stepping on other characters' toes, but still able to crossover with certain story elements too. That includes Tim. But trying to stuff Tim back into the Robin brand, when its already occupied with its own storyline, because "Tim was written to be Robin" or something like that, is stepping on toes. Western comics are not a growing platform, at least not in viable way for the time being. So doing something like that, is going to hurt the brand and both characters, like it or not.

Dick, Jason, even Steph have all found their own niche after Robin (though Steph lost hers, but its still a beloved run as Batgirl, and she's still well regarded as Spoiler). Damian is the current Robin, and finding his own way. Tim has had his time in the role, but misplaced nostalgia, bad writing, and taking not adding anything thats good to him, has held him back. What worked for him in the 90s, isn't working for him now. The less said about Fitzmartin's run, the better. And being the "every man" has clearly gone out the window with no parents, being made angsty/edgy, and other such traits that are either done to death, or are unpopular to read to begin with.

Right now, the best that can be said of Tim's current run, is that Fitzmartin isn't writing him anymore. That's how far his character has fallen.

I have seen Tim fans want to kick other characters out of their own titles so Tim could have their name, in a vain attempt to "renew" him. But if Tim can't move comics as Robin, one of the most well known hero names there is, no chance in hell does he do it as a lesser known name. It may simply be time to shelve Tim until an actual plan for him comes along for him. Maybe have him as a background character for a while, going back to his everyman roots as a college student or private eye.

I’d reveal that Dana, Tim’s stepmother is still alive.
He has to take care of her due to her trauma issues.
Then he gets involved with some mysterious force manipulating her and other trauma victims. It turns
out to be the Obadiah Man, the guy who killed Tim’s mother who we haven’t seen in over 30 years when he was sent to prison.

Give Tim a mystery, that has personal stakes to him, where he can show off his detective skills.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

The art is attractive.

Possible Problem: If Gray Ghost was Bruce Wayne's childhood hero, then Gray Ghost maybe copyrighted (on that Earth).

Tim cannot use the identity of Gray Ghost unless it's in the public domain (on that Earth).

We could change the name to something else. Another member Alpha had "Ghostlight" picked as a moniker.

[scary harpy]

We could change the name to something else. Another member Alpha had "Ghostlight" picked as a moniker.

We are very good at picking new names for Tim...the problem is that DC is lousy at picking new names for Drake.

[Fergus]

I mostly agree with you but I don't see how it's not a problem representative of how DC treats a lot of legacy characters. They screwed him up in the 2000s, he was propped up as the Robin and the successor to Bruce, and then Damian was introduced and they didn't know what to do. Between the New 52 and Rebirth he was absolutely sidelined. Damian was heavily propped up in that time compared to him. It's not like that Teen Titans stint in the new 52 was anything groundbreaking compared to when Damian joined the Titans, even Damian got a death and resurrection storyline that was pretty hokey but still epic and cemented him as a permanent figure in the Batfamily, and even in Rebirth we saw what happened to Tim in Tec. Sure, Ric Grayson sucked, but can we say for sure that Tim's recent showings have been any better?

He's served an important role in the Batfamily for years and there is a compulsion to keep him relevant. Like I posted earlier there are so many ideas of what could be done with the character, but since this is a character whose existence is difficult to justify outside of being Robin, what can be done? Is your suggestion to do away with him entirely? Is he going to be in the way no matter what?

I think it's unfair to say that characters like Damian are sidelined in favor of Tim when one of the two clearly gets the better showings most of the time and given Damian's recent prevalence in outside media that isn't going to change anytime soon. At the very least it just looks like editorial does not want to do away with Tim, they just don't know where his proper place should be.

I asked what's wrong with more than one Robin because Tim as Robin is one of many options for him that could work if done well.

Aside from dilutes the brand [as HsssH already stated] there's nothing wrong with having 2 Robins, however I don't think it's beneficial to Tim joining the ranks of secondary Robins. It was fine for Jarro but for Tim it's just putting off the inevitable. He will have to find a new purpose and identity that's all his own

Tim has been back in the Robin suit for a number of years now.
How has that worked out for him? Never mind this thread.
If Tim had been limboed at the end of the Bendis YJ run this thread wouldn't exist and his character would have been saved all the damage it took since future state.

What's wrong with shelving a character until the management knows what to do with him?

The dislike of Tim isn't recent thing. I vaguely recall rumblings during the Red Robin series era.

Around rebirth is when I noticed that there was far more anti-Tim sentiments/posts online than there were anti-Damian/anti Jason [the 2 Robins that ont he past used to get the most hate]

The hate stems from his fans behaviour online, the way they present him&the other Bats in creative works [mainly on A03 fics and and the same handful of incorrect Tim ' canon facts' keeps circulating so much so that reddit now has an auto generated response for a couple of them [and yet they persist]

Tim's lack of direction / relevance/ inability to find identity that's not Robin isn't the reason for the Tim hate. They are reasons why the character became a meme.

The hate is by association to an obnoxious and often entitled fanbase.

labelling legitimate criticisms as hate is another example of the type of antics that;s turning people against the character.
critical assessment of a character isn't being a hater.

[skyvolt2000]

What's wrong with shelving a character until the management knows what to do with him?

The FEAR of out of sight and out of mind.

Lets look at Hal Jordan-he was MIA in outside media from 1986-2011. What happened in outside media during that time? A show with a Green Lantern named John Stewart that a generation of kids saw. Then you get a Hal Jordan movie in 2011 and animated series and folks are asking WHO is this guy and where is John?

Lets take Barry-gone 20+ years. Came back and HOW did that work for WALLY? Who got erased and now we got a black one in Wallace. What character are you going to bury for Tim? Duke already been buried outside of Wayne Family Adventures.

Lets take Synch-who was killed off in 2001 in Generation X. He comes back in 2019. HELLO pushback from other fans of characters that feel like he is taking page time from their favorites mainly ROGUE. With comments that border line racist.

Lets take the X-Academy kids-we are in year 15 of waiting for management to do something with them.

Once upon a time John Stewart spent 14 years on the shelf.

The FEAR of someone going to take his slot or REALLY make him obsolete is the issue. Same issue with Duke Thomas.
Getting stuck on pin ups, variant covers, the 6 page story in a celebration one shot or background gets you WHAT? An unsellable character.

Or worst a character being used that shouldn't be. See Bendis Legion. Why make Lightning Lad black when you have Tyroc, Invisible Kid, Xs and Kid Quantum. Excluding Tyroc-we are looking at almost 20 years since those others have been seen. Tyroc it's 12 years.

They rather put out a crappy Tim Drake series than shelf him. It's better to fail 20 times than wait.

We saw it with Supergirl. Kara got killed off. Matrix Supergirl showed up. Matrix had the most successful solo run. Guess who came back? Kara.
We saw it with Babs. While we didn't get a Batgirl until Cass-she was around made an impact as Oracle.

Shelving is not an option to them.

[MarkRodriguez09]

Honestly give him a new codename if Red Robin sounds too lame, have him have better action packed detective stories and his own series. Maybe get him back with Steph, whether she's Spoiler or Batgirl now.

[Bat-Meal]

Honestly give him a new codename if Red Robin sounds too lame, have him have better action packed detective stories and his own series. Maybe get him back with Steph, whether she's Spoiler or Batgirl now.

He's not popular enough to sell on his own anymore. And the time for putting him in a book with Steph might have passed. Might be best that he guest stars in places for a while to gradually build him back up again. IMHO he needs more interesting flaws - he's too much of a goody-two-shoes and Dick and Babs already have that covered.

The rest of the family goes something like this:

Jason - rebellious
Damian - arrogance/elitism/overconfidence
Steph - underdog
Cass - strict to the Batman-rules with little room for nuance
Duke - ???
Kate - sabotaging relationships/pushing people away. Plus, that whole hesitation cliche' when emotionally overwhelmed

[NOCTPHOENIX]

Tim's flaw is his willingness to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of continuing to help people (especially his civilian life) and sometimes going into the ends justify the means mentality, which RR really dwelt into.

[Bat-Meal]

Tim's flaw is his willingness to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of continuing to help people (especially his civilian life) and sometimes going into the ends justify the means mentality, which RR really dwelt into.

So kind of Peter Parker without the financial struggles (which is a big part of that).

[Fergus]

Tim's flaw is his willingness to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of continuing to help people (especially his civilian life) and sometimes going into the ends justify the means mentality, which RR really dwelt into.

That's something every heroes who patrols rather than chilling every night does.

Tim's end's justifies the means mentality isn't usually framed as a negative. He was willing to work with a fascist in Rebirth and even parroted the virtues of a police state but that was hand waved.

[Bat-Meal]

That's something every heroes who patrols rather than chilling every night does.

Tim's end's justifies the means mentality isn't usually framed as a negative. He was willing to work with a fascist in Rebirth and even parroted the virtues of a police state but that was hand waved.

Agreed.

Self-sacrifice is generally considered a virtue rather than a flaw - which brings us back to Tim's lack of interesting flaws.

Not that Steph being an underdog is a character flaw so much either for that matter: but there was that time she lost it whilst grieving (for Tim's 'death') and attacked the rest of the Gotham Knights unprovoked - so she's got flaws.

And as another example Kate's penchant for sabotaging her own relationships with others doesn't help said others or herself - she's just a bit dense when it comes to other people's feelings. Or in other words, she decides she wants to do something and doesn't bother telling those it affects about it, because she wants to do it anyway - and she either lacks the emotional intelligence to see the eventual consequences or doesn't care enough about the relationship to keep it intack. There are main examples of this in both her original solo and the Tynion 'Tec run - both of which got her into trouble and upset those around her. But there are also some smaller examples of her just doing what she wants to do that lacked any consequences (letting a minor character GF believe she was cheating, or breaking a promise to Batman so she could join Killer Croc and gang to fight bad guys).

She won't compromise on what she wants, which I guess makes her selfish considering relationships require some level of compromise from both parties. Actually yeah, I can think of multiple examples where Batman was the one to compromise to placate her, but I can't think of an example where she's compromised for him. Lol, she's such a jerk. And I'm fine with that, but if writers ever want to give her some charcter growth, well maybe have her learn to think of her peers feelings before she does something mean.

[Fergus]

The FEAR of out of sight and out of mind.

Lets look at Hal Jordan-he was MIA in outside media from 1986-2011. What happened in outside media during that time? A show with a Green Lantern named John Stewart that a generation of kids saw. Then you get a Hal Jordan movie in 2011 and animated series and folks are asking WHO is this guy and where is John?

Lets take Barry-gone 20+ years. Came back and HOW did that work for WALLY? Who got erased and now we got a black one in Wallace. What character are you going to bury for Tim? Duke already been buried outside of Wayne Family Adventures.

Lets take Synch-who was killed off in 2001 in Generation X. He comes back in 2019. HELLO pushback from other fans of characters that feel like he is taking page time from their favorites mainly ROGUE. With comments that border line racist.

Lets take the X-Academy kids-we are in year 15 of waiting for management to do something with them.

Once upon a time John Stewart spent 14 years on the shelf.

The FEAR of someone going to take his slot or REALLY make him obsolete is the issue. Same issue with Duke Thomas.
Getting stuck on pin ups, variant covers, the 6 page story in a celebration one shot or background gets you WHAT? An unsellable character.

Or worst a character being used that shouldn't be. See Bendis Legion. Why make Lightning Lad black when you have Tyroc, Invisible Kid, Xs and Kid Quantum. Excluding Tyroc-we are looking at almost 20 years since those others have been seen. Tyroc it's 12 years.

They rather put out a crappy Tim Drake series than shelf him. It's better to fail 20 times than wait.

We saw it with Supergirl. Kara got killed off. Matrix Supergirl showed up. Matrix had the most successful solo run. Guess who came back? Kara.
We saw it with Babs. While we didn't get a Batgirl until Cass-she was around made an impact as Oracle.

Shelving is not an option to them.

I can understand the fear, It's just that Tim seems to be degrading by the day all the while his hatedom keeps growing.

I just think that out of sight out of mind would also benefit the character.

[Fergus]

Agreed.

Self-sacrifice is generally considered a virtue rather than a flaw - which brings us back to Tim's lack of interesting flaws.

Not that Steph being an underdog is a character flaw so much either for that matter: but there was that time she lost it whilst grieving (for Tim's 'death') and attacked the rest of the Gotham Knights unprovoked - so she's got flaws.

And as another example Kate's penchant for sabotaging her own relationships with others doesn't help said others or herself - she's just a bit dense when it comes to other people's feelings. Or in other words, she decides she wants to do something and doesn't bother telling those it affects about it, because she wants to do it anyway - and she either lacks the emotional intelligence to see the eventual consequences or doesn't care enough about the relationship to keep it intack. There are main examples of this in both her original solo and the Tynion 'Tec run - both of which got her into trouble and upset those around her. But there are also some smaller examples of her just doing what she wants to do that lacked any consequences (letting a minor character GF believe she was cheating, or breaking a promise to Batman so she could join Killer Croc and gang to fight bad guys).

She won't compromise on what she wants, which I guess makes her selfish considering relationships require some level of compromise from both parties. Actually yeah, I can think of multiple examples where Batman was the one to compromise to placate her, but I can't think of an example where she's compromised for him. Lol, she's such a jerk. And I'm fine with that, but if writers ever want to give her some charcter growth, well maybe have her learn to think of her peers feelings before she does something mean.

Yeah, i think that modern readers appreciate flaws. Not only does it humanise and make characters more relatable, it also makes their development easy to track.

Heck even failure can be interesting. A character that the narrative always sides with / has zero struggles aside from the mystery of the week gets boring fast.

[Bat-Meal]

Yeah, i think that modern readers appreciate flaws. Not only does it humanise and make characters more relatable, it also makes their development easy to track.

Heck even failure can be interesting. A character that the narrative always sides with / has zero struggles aside from the mystery of the week gets boring fast.

Yep, look at the contrast between Damian and Tim, one character is clearly flawed which makes him interesting and creates story potential, while the other character is one that many writers keep telling us is perfect but isn't doing so well sales-wise.

To use another example from the old (Tynion) 'Tec run, since I know that run very well: when Jacob betrays the Gotham Knights Kate, who is the default leader in Bruce's absence freezes-up (which is thing she does when overwhelmed), but Tim steps in immediately and starts issueing orders and gets them out of trouble. That's plenty enough to show how good a leader he is, but then on top of that he also gives her a pep talk to boost her confidence, and hands leadership back to her.

I would have been fine with him berating her for freezing-up like that when they were surrounded and needed leadership. Or, just being reluctant to hand leadership of the group back, or refusing to even do so. These would all be perfectly logical responses to the situation IMHO. Or, he could have even given her some flak for showing him to their hideout in the first place - since it was her lack of confidence that led her seek out her father's help.

[Konja7]

Not that Steph being an underdog is a character flaw so much either for that matter: but there was that time she lost it whilst grieving (for Tim's 'death') and attacked the rest of the Gotham Knights unprovoked - so she's got flaws.

However, people really dislike these flaws on Stephanie. Many people say they like characters with flaws, but they will feel alienated by the characters if these flaws are too irritating.

Honestly, people don't exactly like flawed characters. They like emotional conflicts, which are often brought by personal flaws, but not always (for example: Peter Parker conflicts are hardly related to his personality).

It's a balance, you have to give the character flaws so that they have interesting conflicts, but these flaws should not alienate the majority of the audience.