31 Days of Scans - Favorite Origin

I was looking back over these posts and discovered about 10 weeks in, I switched from listing the topic of the day in the title to what day it was. And I didn't remember having made a switch at all. That was a little disconcerting.

Favorite origin. I've thought about this, and I'm not sure I worry too much about origins. I understand how important they can be for the character, defining their motivations, providing a framework to mirror, invert, whatever for villains (Spider-Man as a teenager trying to use his power responsibly, fighting mostly older guys who gained power and immediately used it irresponsibly, for example). But, I don't know, so many of the origins are either tragic, or they're about how the character is some special chosen one type.

I guess I'll say Tim Drake. I'm not sure when exactly I learned his origin. Heck, I didn't even know his initial pitch was to Dick Grayson, for Dick to become Robin again, until I was researching this post. As for the rest, sometime after I'd already seen him in a few comics. He's not initially motivated by any personal tragedy of his own (though he is motivated by Batman's reaction to the death of Jason Todd). You could argue his being able to deduce Batman's identity where so many others can't is kind of a chosen one thing, but in the story it's presented as happening because Tim got really interested in Batman and applied that sort of geeky focus that kids will apply to things they're interested in, whether it's baseball statistics, dinosaurs, astronomy, King Arthur lore, whatever. For Tim it was Batman, which seemed kind of cool.

And it sort of plays up Batman as an inspirational figure to people. Normally comics focus on how he terrifies criminals, and how Bruce Wayne tries to use his fortune to address the causes of crime. But I think it's good to show Batman as someone who, because he stood up to the crime bosses, and the crooked officials and cops, and then continues to face down all the horrors Gotham produces, convinces other people do so as well. They don't all have to put on costumes and fight crime obviously. Gordon works within the system, but in Year One, he was a honest cop looking the other way before Batman. He became the guy who tried hard to clean up the GCPD once he saw there was someone else unafraid to stand up. Tim's another angle on that, someone who believes in what Batman's trying to do and wants to help. I guess that works as well as any.

Tim makes his pitch to Dick in New Titans #60, written by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, penciled by Perez, inked by Bob McLeod, colored by Adrienne Roy, and lettered by John Costanza.