InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Spread your wings and fly away"

ar_feiniel_ (ar_feiniel_) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-14 21:28:00

Entry tags:

char: alfred pennyworth, char: batman/bruce wayne, char: robin/red robin/tim drake, creator: alan grant, creator: jim aparo, publisher: dc comics, title: batman

"To the Father I Never Knew..." [Tim Angst]
In Batman 480 Jack Drake was out of his coma and leaving the hospital. Tim struggled between his life as Jack Drake's Son and Robin.

This issue features Tim writing a letter with the snippits appearing throughout. I did my best to keep a lot of the letter in the scans. It's written by Alan Grant and drawn by Jim Aparo.

The issue opens with Tim taking his father to the cemetary to see Janet Drake's grave. When they arrive they see that her grave has been vandalized. Jack gets upset and Tim has to give him some oxygen (he's still got a lot of health issues).

Later at the hospital...

Tim is also introduced to Phil Marin:

While Alfred is driving Tim back to the mansion, Tim spots a couple vandals whose signature (the "Y-Dogs") matches what he saw on his mum's grave earlier.

Tim shows them what happens when you mess with Robin's Mama:

That night Alfred questions whether Tim should remain Robin, saying he should be out socializing and making friends:

Before they go on patrol, Bruce asks Tim if he's sure he's up to it. Tim says yes and Bruce says "That's good enough for me."

Tim suggests they check out the Y-Dogs since the two guys he roughed up earlier had suspiously expensive designer clothes.

While the Y-Dogs are waiting for their boss man to show...

On one hand I like that Bruce is backing off and letting Tim make his own decisions -- it shows respect for Tim's judgement....but on the other hand I sort of want Bruce to smack Tim and say, "You have a chance to be with your father and have something of a normal life -- do you know what I would give for that? Get out of this madness while you still can!"

Turns out the Y-Dogs are working for Phil Marin, who's got them stealing from one of Jack Drake's companies. They plan to blame the theft on Tim when he starts working for the family business. Bruce and Tim do their thing: tie up the crooks and turn them over to the police.

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	superfan1 2009-07-15 02:20 am UTC (link)
	Thank you so very much for posting this issue! :) it was so emotional what tim goes through in the story and glad everthing turn out great. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	ar_feiniel_ 2009-07-15 02:30 am UTC (link)
	Glad you liked it! I'm rather fond of it too. Not a bad find for the 50 cent bin. ;) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	superfan1 2009-07-15 02:58 am UTC (link)
	Nice deal and thanks again. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	nezchan 2009-07-15 02:54 am UTC (link)
	My god, what sort of horrible torture did Tim endure that did that to his head!? Especially that reaction shot on the third scan, I keep expecting him to have a second set of eyes! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	merseybeatler 2009-07-15 03:14 am UTC (link)
	He looks like Boris Karloff! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	nezchan 2009-07-15 03:18 am UTC (link)
	Heck, make his head just a little longer and he'll look like Flaming Carrot! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ar_feiniel_ 2009-07-15 11:44 am UTC (link)
	OMG he does! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jedd_the_jedi 2009-07-15 03:23 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, it's way too long and narrow. Makes him look like a very young Alfred. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	idreading 2009-07-15 03:12 am UTC (link)
	What's with the crazy hunchbacked man and the bulldog? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	jedd_the_jedi 2009-07-15 03:24 am UTC (link)
	The hunchbacked man is Harold, Batman's handyman who was killed in the Hush arc, and the bulldog is Ace the Bat-Hound, a former seeing eye dog for a Native American tribal leader. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	parsimonia 2009-07-15 04:52 am UTC (link)
	Aw, Tim. (Reply to this)

bluefall
2009-07-15 05:13 am UTC (link)

While Tim's adoption into the Wayne family will never cease to vex me, I always have liked the idea of Tim inheriting the company. Dick is doubtless a competent businessman, but it doesn't really fit him; he's a free spirit and his preferred form of responsibility is an intimate, personal one, face-to-face with the people he's helping. Tim, though... Tim's dad wanted him helping to run the family business at fifteen, and everyone said "of course." He's always been in the Blue Beetle vein, really, and between that and the ambivalent attitude he always had toward being Robin, him as the face of the Clan, the guy who holds down the day job and keeps the gear and the charity work going, would be a really natural evolution for him.

Or, you know, it would have been. -_-

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faile_neume
2009-07-15 12:13 pm UTC (link)

I've always assumed that once Tim was adopted, he was going to grow up to run Wayne Enterprises. ~~And I may frequently write fanfic in that vein~~. Jack telling him here that he wants him to work in the business just cements that for me. Everyone just knows Tim will be a great businessman.

Despite everything that has happened recently with Red Robin etc, I still think it's possible for Tim to come back home eventually and patch things up with Dick. He's still calling himself Tim Wayne, after all.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

ladymirth
2009-07-15 06:00 am UTC (link)

Things I love:

1) This is back when Timmy was not drawn as a midget. Of course, I love him as a cuddly midget too, but I like my men to be six footers and the long-awaited growth spurt never happened.

2)Timmy thinks Bruce is the greatest guy in the whole world. That reminds me of something Dick says in a bronze age comic book.

3)They want Tim to go into business - at FOURTEEN!

4)The fact that Bruce, Alfred and Dick feel more like family to him than his own Dad. Well, I don't LOVE that but - d'aww! *cuddles Tim* I suppose this is where the Jack Drake-bashing fanfic originated. Still, he made up for it in later years and even allowed Tim to keep on being Robin once he understood why Tim needed it, which is a pretty damn awesome feat for an ordinary parent. So I still think the character-hate is unwarranted.

5) He spray-spaints "I'm a chump" on the creeps who descreated his mother's grave. Oh, for the days of tempered reactions and screwball humour that this Robin was once known for!

6)That letter. It's so levelly and maturely written, instead of being a typical teenage emo-fest screaming recriminations. Quintessential Timmy.

7)The fact that he writes it out, seals it in an envelope, addresses it and then casually throws it in the fire on his way out. This, in a nutshell is why Tim Drake is such ~~completist freak-boy~~ fascinating character.

Things I do not love:

1)Tim's hair.

I'm glad you posted this. I wanted to post it myself but felt too lazy. =)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	runespoor7 2009-07-15 06:22 am UTC (link)
	Man, I want to know when Tim decided he wasn't going to give this letter to his father. Was it just at the end, or earlier, or?... (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	sistermagpie 2009-07-15 02:28 pm UTC (link)
	My feeling is he was never going to give it to him. He's always kept his secrets. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	toasty_fresh 2009-07-15 09:57 pm UTC (link)
	I figured it was one of those letters that you write but never plan to send, just to get the words and feelings out, as Tim said, of your system. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	runespoor7 2009-07-15 06:20 am UTC (link)
	"But I'm your father, Tim! Not him! Understand, you're all I have left now!" I need to find canon where Jack Drake is written as sympathetic, because this makes me want to stab something through the chest. Way to pull the emotional blackmail bullshit on a fourteen year old. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	darkknightjrk 2009-07-15 07:08 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, that kinda miffed me too--espicially since, according to what Tim mentions earlier, the guy was pretty much jet-setting for most of Tim's childhood. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sistermagpie 2009-07-15 02:19 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, that's a huge one. Which is why I think Tim's absolutely right to stick with Bruce and the Bats. As well-meaning as Jack is it's hard not to see him as at least partly clinging to Tim because he's lost everything else. I don't hate the guy, but if I were Tim I wouldn't ever trust that either. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	blunderbuss 2009-07-15 03:03 pm UTC (link)
	Seriously, what a shitty thing to do. If you're his father, where have you been all this time? Did he give a second's thought to what Tim felt? I hate 'but we're family!' crap. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mysteryfan 2009-07-15 01:59 pm UTC (link)
	I like that Tim is wearing Robin red (Thanks, Aparo!) even when in plainclothes. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	smarmyimp 2009-07-15 02:18 pm UTC (link)
	He's like a Power Ranger. You can just picture him changing into costume by whipping out an extremely cool red and green cellphone and dialing 'ROBIN' on it. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-07-15 07:58 pm UTC (link)
	Right notion, wrong series! :) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	smarmyimp 2009-07-15 09:31 pm UTC (link)
	This is cute, but I still demand Titanranger DCU. (Reply to this) (Parent)

smarmyimp
2009-07-15 02:16 pm UTC (link)

but on the other hand I sort of want Bruce to smack Tim and say, "You have a chance to be with your father and have something of a normal life -- do you know what I would give for that? Get out of this madness while you still can!"

The thing is, Bruce may have an idea that the life Tim would be going back to wouldn't exactly be better for him.

Tim makes a point of saying in the letter that Bruce "knows" how people are... and thus Bruce probably has a pretty decent idea of just how controlling and emotionally manipulative Tim's dad is being at around this time. If he pushed Tim to ditch the tights and just go be with his father, at this particularly sensitive juncture...

Well, there are a lot of possibilities, some of the strongest ones not very good. The most likely is that Tim would spend the best years of his life caring for his invalid father (instead of merely assisting in his care as would be more sensible) and living his father's life for him, rather than his own life, steadily growing more bitter and hating himself for looking forward to the day when his father dies. Another likely possibility is that the resentment could grow and grow until Jack and Tim just had a big blowup, parted on bad terms, and finally leaves Tim with guilt and a feeling that he failed if they didn't manage to fix it before Jack died.

It's become popular in recent years to bring up how hard, how traumatic, how damaging a life connected to the Bat-Family is. We need to remember that very real, relatively common events between normal people can be just as painful and traumatic as any costumed villain's killing spree.

(Reply to this)

sistermagpie
2009-07-15 02:26 pm UTC (link)

I love this so much. For me, Tim's character is way more formed by his early years getting left behind by his parents and thinking about Batman etc. in the ways he did before he officially met them than it is by the spate of deaths they dropped on him. Thank goodness he got out and found this support system--crazy as it is--before Jack woke up and said things like "you're all I've got now."

Thinking of recent events in Red Robin and Tim's reaction to Dick's not even actually firing him, it would have been terrible if Bruce encouraged him to go back to Jack here (as opposed to just being neutral and letting him choose) imo. Tim would on some level have seen that as proof he was somebody Bruce felt like he had to look after and was relieved to hand back to Jack. He already has a hard enough time seeing himself as part of a family. The Bats make him feel like part of one for the first time, but he always feels insecure about it.

This is what I love about Bats in general, the way they all long for a family and can never really feel they won't lose their family again. With Bruce it's more a fear they'll die because he can't protect them from all the evil in the world. With Dick it's more he'll mess up and not be good enough to protect them. But it's still a case of the people going away. Tim's more about people losing interest in him no matter if their legally family.

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psychop_rex
2009-07-16 04:18 am UTC (link)

First, a question I just thought of - Tim's dad was a rich industrialist, right? Like, RICH rich - he lived just down the street from Bruce Wayne, and Wayne is Donald Trump-level rich. So when he died, Tim inherited, yes? So when and if Tim DOES eventually take over Wayne Industries as Bruce Wayne's adopted son, will Drake Industries automatically be absorbed into the fold, making the Wayne empire double overnight? Just a thought.
Second - man, Timmy, you sure got walloped with the unlucky stick, didn't you? You've got a dad who is making up for lost time by overcompensating AND planning out your future career, both at once! It's a good thing you can wallop crooks all night as a stress reliever.

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bariman1987
2009-07-16 08:00 am UTC (link)

The Drakes lost a lot of money between Jack waking up from his coma and his eventual death. Probably both from all the hospital bills and from the crooked CEO here stealing money. They also moved a couple of times to smaller homes and apartments.

Plus, even if the Drake company was pretty big, Wayne Industries/Enterprises/Whatever is ones of the largest companies in the world, rivalling LexCorp. It would be less doubling the Wayne company and more aquiring a new small firm.

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	psychop_rex 2009-07-16 08:15 pm UTC (link)
	Oh. Well, drat. There goes my fantasy of a world-conquering Wayne empire. (Reply to this) (Parent)