Talon

19 years ago - Tim Drake is born In Gotham City, the son of Jack and Janet Drake

14 years ago - 5-year-old Tim Drake witnesses the death of Dick Grayson's parents at Haley's Circus.

5 years ago - 14-year-old Tim Drake, with his mother ill and his father obsessed with finding a cure, deduces Batman's identity & tries to convince Dick Grayson to become Robin again. He begins training as the new Robin, studying under Dinah Lance & Ben Turner, who challenge him and his choices regarding the application of violence. On his first night patrolling, he manages to single-handedly capture Two-Face. He meets Selina Kyle, giving him some insight into Batman. He meets a mysterious little girl names Annie while investigating mysterious deaths on a movie set, deduces that she is a piece of Basil Karlo, and uses her to find him.

4 years ago - 15-year-old Tim Drake is locked out of the batcave by Jean-Paul Valley. He joins Young Justice, meets Stephanie Brown & battles Lonnie Machin for the first time. He works with the Huntress, discovering that she is actually his teacher, Helena Bertinelli. His approval of her helps her standing with Bruce Wayne.

3 years ago - 16-year-old Tim Drake is recruited by Cyborg into the new Teen Titans. He helps Stephanie Brown during her pregnancy.

2 years ago - 17-year-old Tim Drake quits as Robin when his father discovers his secret. He is replaced by Stephanie Brown, but she is beaten while fighting Lester Buchinski to save Leslie Thompkins. When his father is killed by Digger Harkness he returns to the role of Robin with a vengeance, redesigning the costume, hunting Electrocutioner and leaving him hospitalized. He works alongside Lonnie Machin for the first time, despite being ideologically opposed. Jervis Tetch attempts to turn Tim's high school into a twisted version of Wonderland.

1 year ago - 18-year-old Tim Drake joins all the surviving Titans in space to save Donna Troy. He assumes leadership of the Teen Titans.

now - 19-year-old Tim Drake leaves the country to find Bruce Wayne. He adapts his methodology, creating his Talon identity. During his hunt he discovers and is joined by Damian Wayne, who claims the Robin identity for himself. He comes into conflict with an evolving Lonnie Machin, and is assisted by Beryl Hutchinson.

Tim Drake is one of those characters that jumped off the page from the moment he was created. A deliberate attempt to reflect the intellectual elements of Batman's story, he was a character built without the pathos that permeates a lot of the Batman universe, and was all the better for it.

As long as Tim had been Robin there was always a sense that he was destined for bigger things. He never intended to become the new Batman. He was always going to adopt a new personal identity just like Dick Grayson had before him. The decision to make him Red Robin came from that idea, so it certainly wasn't wrong in theory, just misguided in execution. Still, there is so much to love about Tim and his journey, and with only a few minor tweaks we get to give this fantastic character the focus he deserves.

Tim Drake's Comic History

Tim Drake first appeared in 1989, arriving at the doorstep of Dick Grayson in Batman #436 having deduced his secret identity, and insisting that Dick return to the role of Robin, stating that Batman needed a Robin to balance him. Tim went on to be carefully vetted and trained by Bruce, but what is really noteworthy here is the deliberate care that went into constructing this character in the first place. He was deliberately not a carbon copy of Dick Grayson (like Jason Todd was when he was first introduced). He was not the most skilled combatant, but was instead a natural detective. He analyzed problems, outthought opponents. He wasn't driven by the death of his parents; in fact, when he was first introduced his parents were very much alive. Instead, he was motivated by the legacy of Robin itself. He believed in it and wanted to live up to it. He had a personal initiative and drive to do the right thing.

The character really, really worked. He was clever, engaging, and experienced nearly constant character growth for twenty continual years of publication through three miniseries and a 183 issue ongoing series of his own. Not even Dick Grayson has been able to maintain a book for that long.

Our Tim Drake Story

Our version of Tim Drake's story very closely follows the structure of his early years in the comics. It requires a little bit of finagling, because there are decades of content to include and he can't be that much older than 18, but ultimately the broad strokes of his story fit quite well. We followed his initial discovery of Batman & Robin's secret identities and his advanced training, his experience dealing with Jean Paul Valley's replacement Batman, his membership in Young Justice, his relationship with Stephanie Brown, and his invitation into Cyborg's Teen Titans Team.

In the comics, his temporary retirement lead to Stephanie Brown's brief period as Robin. The same year saw Stephanie's supposed death during the War Games saga, and the very real death of Tim's father Jack Drake during Indentity Crisis. This era saw Tim maturing as he returned to his Robin identity, but making it into something much more his own. It was very clear from that moment that Tim was on the verge of maturing into a new character the same way Dick Grayson had matured into Nightwing, which is why it fell flat when he became, simply, Red Robin.

The Case for Talon

The characterization of Tim's post-Robin career was actually fantastic, even when it was completely stripped for parts and rebuilt in the Post-New 52 DC. He was a renegade genius, always a dozen steps ahead of the curve, using his technology to outthink everyone. He might not have been as naturally gifted a combatant as Dick Grayson but he had been trained by the best in the world, and could still hold his own in almost any conflict.  We love almost everything about this identity... but the name.

The Red Robin identity was created in Mark Waid and Alex Ross's genre-defining Kingdom Come miniseries, but the name and costume were introduced to mainstream continuity by some multiverse shenanigans during Final Crisis. It really robbed Tim of what should have been something uniquely his; the crafting of his own superhero identity.

We've very deliberately built a new chapter of Tim's story where he has the chance to do exactly that. He sets of on a world-spanning adventure to find Bruce Wayne, adapting everything about his tactics and methodology, forging something completely new. Talon is a legacy name in DC just like Nightwing was; it's the name of the sidekick of Owlman, Batman's Earth-3 Crime Syndicate doppelganger. It also really fits the new identity of the genius renegade of the extended Bat Family.

Tim & Damian

When Damian Wayne was introduced in 2006, Tim was still Robin. There was a strange period where the two characters seemed to have an almost constant friction with each other; Damian seemed certain that in order to take his rightful place as his father's son, he would have to kill his father's adopted son.

The conflict is fun, and a healthy rivalry will go a long way to establishing Damian's unique new voice in the Bat-Family, but a huge part of what made Tim so well-loved was that he was introduced with the approval of Dick Grayson. We bring Damian into our story by having Tim find him. Before Damian ever attempts to put on the Robin costume, he's already working alongside Tim to disassemble parts of the League of Assassins and find their father. Having Dick, Tim, and Damian all work together in their quest to find Batman really reinforces the fact that they are surrogate brothers, and that can only serve to strengthen their stories.

Talon's Costume

One of the issues with Tim's evolution into Red Robin was the new costume. There have been a few different takes on an adult evolution of Robin over the decades. Famously, there is the Earth-2 variant that was actually Dick Grayson as an adult, still in his Robin identity. The Red Robin costume that Tim wound up wearing came from the same place as the name; from the elseworld's series Kingdom Come. People love that series, but it's a self-contained story written as a deliberate deconstruction of the tropes of DC and every attempt to bring it's designs into the main continuity all feel incorrect. The Red Robin costume, like the name, just isn't something that we can get behind.

Thankfully, after the 2011 New 52 reboot, we saw several pretty innovative new designs for Tim's costume. It kept the bands across his chest, but ditched the heavy cowl in favor of a wing motif, and returned him to a smaller, more tech-based mask. This look actually seemed to grow far more organically from the hero that Tim actually IS; he's a tactician, tech expert, and master detective. This is the costume of a character that will expertly pick apart a problem, and will do so while leading a whole generation of heroes.

Talon's Future

We're really excited by the potential of this new superhero identity for Tim. It feels like something akin to what Nightwing achieved; establishing himself as a unique figure in the tapestry of DC's characters.

As we leave our timeline, Bruce is currently missing, and Tim is on his mission to find him. When he returns, he's going to have a new sense of self and purpose, and be more than ready to lead the current Titans into the future. Within the next year, that team will have a cataclysm that will lead to the eventual assembly of the next generation of Titans, so what will become of Tim and his teammates?

We believe the answer is in the currently defunct team name Young Justice. During their cataclysm, Mount Justice will be transported into Prometheus's pocket dimension, giving these young heroes their own extradimensional headquarters. Tim, Cassie, Connor, Bart, Mia, Kaldur, M'gann, & Virgil will be uniquely situated to evolve their particularly close little family of heroes into something new.

Allies & Teams

Robin