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i believe the official switch from jack & janet as just travelling CEOs--which was their status quo as far as wolfman and grant in tim's introduction (grant was particularly heavy on jack as a CEO who wanted tim to follow his footsteps)--to traveling CEOs who were also archeologists was in robin #11 under dixon

i believe as far as my research goes this was the first time they've ever been implied to be doing more than just business trips/dealing with marital discord while they were gone. my guess would be that dixon a) wasn't entirely sure what they did either because it was fairly vague and ill-defined and decided to define it further based on their outfits in rite of passage (in grant's work with jack he was just a business owner/CEO, the dig costumes are just meant to be travel clothes) and b) at this point in time wanted to establish more mmm "active" neglect wherein jack and janet made more of a choice to follow their passion (vs grant's implication being that their trips had started getting longer and more frequent in the past few years as their marriage declined as a way to try and save their marriage) vs actively stay at home to raise their son and instead sent him to boarding school to particularly play on the more tense jack and tim dynamic he was gunning for in his early tim where he was digging into the tension of jack wanting to be a more active father now after previously being absent. tim mentions that jack and janet gallivanted around the world in cry of the huntress #4 but just says it was for their careers--he doesn't specify what career it was at the time.

as far as the artifact in batgirl goes, there's no evidence that jack is the one who dug it up--or that it was even ever dug up at all! as you mentioned, it belongs to a secret society social club called the ninth legion that both bruce wayne and jack drake are a part of--which is why the members are being targeted, because the villain is looking for this relic

given that the club itself dates back to the "time of the ceasars", the implication is that the staff itself has been safeguarded by them for just as long.

the relic "the eagle" supposedly was the banner of the legion. presumably, it's been passed down within the secret society over the ages which is how it ends up in jack's closet as a member of said society. jack thinks it's just an old, probably fake relic that his club just uses for their secret society based on their history. bruce wayne knows it's real and thinks it's safest as essentially a "fake prop for their secret society" under jack's care because if people don't know it's real, they're not going to look for it and it will remain a harmless prop in their secret society like it always has been in their safeguarding of it. jack is not the one who dug it up, he's just the current caretaker of it. as far as we are ever shown the only relic he ever steals from a dig site is the cursed amulet he gave to dana.

helloooo i figured this would be a good place to ask since youre THE tim drake blog to me, do you know where the jack and janet drake are archeologists thing came from? maybe i just missed something obvious but im really not sure if this is a thing in the comics. they had drake industries and tim said they were traveling on business in early batman comics but he never said what kind of business that i remember. later hes mentioned his dad being away for lectures (i assume jack is the one giving lectures) a few times in robin volume 2. is the archeology stuff one of those things thats mentioned once and the fandom latched on and made it much bigger than it is? or is this actually established as a big thing jack and janet drake did?

I'm so glad you thought to send this to me! It's been really fun digging up the panels I needed for this >:D

I am under the impression that Jack (and presumably Janet) were hobbyist archaeologists and that DI is completely separate from that. It is possible they went to archaeology digs while on work trips, but I do not believe Drake Industries itself is involved in archaeology.

I know Jack is confirmed to be an archaeologist in Robin: 80-Page Giant, but that came out in 2000 and I'm not sure if there is a prior example. It also doesn't seem to be a job for him, rather he seems like a hobbyist.

Robin: 80-Page Giant

That being said, the Drake's interest in art has been evident since the very beginning, with Tim noting that his parents own an Erte piece in Batman (1940) #441. However, as Erte hadn't passed away yet at the time this comic was published, his work wouldn't have been considered historical, and it definitely would not have been involved in any archaeological digs.

Batman (1940) #441

We also see here that Tim is fairly knowledgeable about art, recognizing both a Renoir piece and an Erte piece immediately. It is possible he recognizes the Renoir piece simply because he's a Bruce Wayne superfan and the Erte piece because his parents own something similar, but it is also possible that his parents instilled an interest in art in him at an early age because of their own hobbies.

I also think that Jack might be involved in some sort of historical or archaeological club. In Batgirl (2000) #32 he mentions being part of the "Ninth Legion" and that its members were receiving threats from a woman looking for an ancient Roman artifact, and then it turns out that Jack does own this artifact. I have no way of knowing if he was in this club prior to Janet's death though, or the specifics of what the club is actually for.

Batgirl (2000) #32

Also when they're kidnapped during their trip during Rite of Passage they're wearing clothes that I think would be close to what someone would wear during an archaeological dig? But I'm no expert and these could just be general travel clothing. However, if they were preparing to do business I feel like I would expect them to be wearing something different? Especially since their assistant is dressed completely differently than they are.

Detective Comics (1937) #619

In regards to what DI actually does, I'm pretty sure the only thing we know for sure about what DI is is that they have a medical subsidiary that seems to sell medical supplies.

Batman (1940) #480

However, we also know this isn't the only company owned by DI ("that's one of my dad's companies"). That being said, I don't recall anything in the comics that would suggest DI has anything to do with archaeology, especially since Jack refers to himself as an amateur.

Also important to note that from what I understand, what Jack is doing, just... taking artifacts home and keeping them like he does in Robin: 80-Page Giant and Batgirl (2000) is super illegal and was illegal when these comics were published. It's a bit difficult to say for sure since the laws will be different depending on what country you're in, but here's an article on the development of antique laws during the 1900s if you're curious https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/schultz/intllaw.html. The comics never suggest that this is illegal, so maybe the authors just didn't consider that, but I feel like this is further evidence that DI can't really be involved in archaeology. Even if DI was involved in some sort of illegal antique trade, surely Jack wouldn't just be keeping highly valuable artifacts like the one from Batgirl (2000) in his closet if this was his job, they'd be sold to someone.

Thanks for asking! I had a lot of fun looking into this :]

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anyways we all know that, unlike many of his readers, yost shows a strong grasp of tim's canon history as evidenced by his many call backs and the context sprinkled throughout his red robin run culminating in tim calling in all his friends and the network he built up for himself as robin to help him. one little thing i think is overlooked as far as him being a tim understander is how smart he was in was how he had tim allocate his friends and family:

he had tim give dick the job of ultimately protecting tim, showcasing tim's strong trust in his brotherhood with dick, knowing that dick would always come for him

he had tim give helena the job of protecting lucius and the attorney/the actual switching over of the shares to stop hush from giving away the company--this showcases both tim's high level of trust in helena to take care of arguably one of the most important parts of the plan which makes sense given their extensive history + helena's history in the hush story that he trusts her so much to place her here to protect the family from hush

he sent kon to alfred, wanting to ensure his family's safety with someone he trusts more than anything

he sent cassie to babs, knowing that babs wouldn't really need protection but still he had to send someone so she wouldn't feel left out of his protect the people i love scheme and thought the vibes of greek mythology-adjunct cassie and the all seeing oracle would be funny and thematically appropriate

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i am gonna pull this out of the longer ask answer because i'm still mad about it and it truly deserves a post of its own rather than sitting under a cut-

but a huge thing about lewis's decision to randomly insert an assault story in her childhood, aside from the classism therein, is that it is absolutely framed around the idea that being people are being needlessly too harsh and sensitive about stories where women getting assualted existing, in a post-women in refrigerators world where there was absolutely a conversation about how women being assaulted for shock value in media was a problem we should be trying to tackle and improve upon-

robin #111

we have

steph getting upset about tv show producers having to change a controversial storyline that would have led to a leading female character being needlessly victimized for shock value and conflict

steph being absolutely affronted at the idea that needlessly introducing an assault/rape storyline for a woman might actually be a bad thing

which leads into steph talking about *she* was almost assaulted, which added in a sexual assault history into her past needlessly that previously did not exist, which is absolutely in response to this complaint about the tv writers having to change a terrible story that probably needlessly victimized a female character

like. absolute best case scenario, lewis was trying to say something like "see! steph was almost assaulted but she's ~more than that~ and rape doesn't inherently define a woman's story, stories that delve into the assault of women are good and can be sympathetic, actually, and we should be able to tell the stories we feel called to tell". which. still leave me with the following questions and concerns:

was this necessary?

why was this necessary?

what is randomly inserting a sexual assault backstory into a female character while also complaining about how people have to change stories to avoid needlessly victimizing women actually achieving?

what exactly was the need to randomly add sexual trauma on top of the plenty of other trauma that was already there? how does this help the plight of women in comics? does adding in a history of almost sexual assault on a female character that previous had not had one just to prove she's ~more than that~ actually help the problem? or is randomly adding in a history of sexual assault on a female chatacter who previously had not had one also maybe part of the kind of frequent problem of using rape against female characters for shock value?

honestly the way there is a complaint about the fact that writers had to change a story about sexually assaulting and victimizing a female character immediately followed by pointedly deciding to make a female character a victim of assault.....

was this necessary?

what's the goal here? because i'm picking up the implications and. bye.

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i do still hate jon lewis btw. that man got away with metatextually complaining about how much it sucks and it's unfair for men-who-just-want-to-write-stories that people have complaints about men writing women getting sexually assaulted in those stories and thinks it's wrong for people to stifle men from writing those kinds of stories and thereby infringe on their creativity.

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tim gets kidnapped by the joker and gets villainized into joker junior: boring, overdone, doesn't make sense for comic canon tim

tim gets kidnapped by maxie zeus and gets villainized into timmy drakon: inspired, amazing, no notes

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idk maybe its just the jason todd haterisms in me jumping out but i think making tim and dicks relationship solely about "the guilt dick felt over never being there for jason" really devalues their relationship and all of what they lived through and experienced together

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rip tim u would hate what emission standards are doing to cars these days

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Not Bruce standing in Dick's room because he's lonely

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anyway here is a new poll series/social experiment??? ish for fans of tim drake! or, i guess, people who are neutral or negative about tim drake but have read a lot of his appearances. i will post one poll every day until they are done; this will work best if you vote in every poll you see, although obviously i'm not the boss of you. you can use consistent criteria or not! you can also tell me how you arrived at your answers, and i encourage you to.

i should note that i don't necessarily mean "tim drake is [x]'s oc" in a literal sense, which means that this is probably a bad one to start off with, but i'm going in rough chronological order, so.

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anyways, i'm not going to say tim is a paragon of sensitivity or anything, because he's not, but i do think the graysons' death is an area where he does actively try to at least be somewhat delicate and sensitive about discussing it.

batman #441

like he very much actively does not want to have to tell dick how he knows, and he's very apologetic that bringing it up is hurtful to dick.

secret origins 80 page giant

like honestly. this is actually a very neutral way of telling the story. very bare bones. "it was the best day of my life. then your parents died." which. is objectively true?? and tim is still very apologetic, especially when he realizes how he might be coming across. like. idk. obviously dick is the center of this tragedy, but it is fundamentally like. a super, super terrible and traumatizing thing for a child of indeterminate age (anywhere from 2-7) to witness a death, not just in general, but at a happy place like a circus. hell. it was fundamentally terrible for the adults at the circus to witness this death, bruce and jack and janet and every single person in that audience included. and while it's a little cringey that tim is narrating the worst day to dick's life to dick, this conversation only even came up because dick brought it up to begin with.

and at this point dick and tim have known each other for almost a decade in real time and have been explicitly written as brothers for probably about 4 years real time, so dick probably genuinely doesn't mind talking about this with tim. i do like the idea of how this probably progresses for dick over time. like, at first, dick is probably super, super annoyed at this thirteen year old kid who wormed his way into dick's personal tragedy but then as dick gets to know him and love him and that's his little brother now-

like how much it must crush dick (now that he knows and loves tim) that tim had to experience the same horrible thing that happened to dick and that dick's parent's death happening is what ended up bringing the two of them back together again eventually.

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re: prev ask and tim's foot-in-mouth syndrome — i think people make too much out of tim's "it was terrible for me to see your parents die" monologue in alpod because like, yeah it was objectively a little tactless, but the scene is written so bluntly and gravely because marv wolfman was trying to impress upon the reader just how profound an impact the graysons' death made on tim, and how this defines his character; he did this by way of having tim try to impress upon dick how much of an impression the event made on him.

and the thing is, tim isn't just saying this unprompted. he is very much thinking about how even discussing the story will cause dick pain! he literally tells dick he doesn't want to tell him the story because it will hurt him. dick is the one who insists that tim tell him the entire story, and tim still apologizes to dick both before and after he does so:

a lot of people also seem to believe that tim said something along the lines of ''watching your parents die was the worst thing that ever happened to me'' which. is absolutely not what he said. he never centres his own feelings on the event, and he never implies that it was worse for him than for dick. he only said that — understandably — it was frightening and he had nightmares about it:

and also like. what was tim supposed to say instead of "it gave me nightmares"? what do you want him to say here. "oh yeah my first memory was watching your beloved parents fall to their brutal deaths. but it didn't affect me at all and i actually never cared" ???? come on now

the most objectively tactless or foot-in-mouth line tim has in this entire scene is "my parents [...] forgot all about it [...] but for years i kept having having the same nightmare over and over again." and of course we can argue that it was tasteless for tim to essentially be saying he had imagined himself, somewhat positively, in dick's shoes — but again, this was really wolfman using the medium of character dialogue to emphasize that tim idolizes dick! this entire arc is tim's character introduction; there are multiple instances where the "logical" line is altered in favour of exposition and backstory. wolfman is balancing dialogue with the need to introduce tim drake instead of just having it blandly written out in one long block of third-person text.

all this to say, tim drake absolutely Does have an issue with putting his foot directly into his mouth as a kid, but his backstory scene in a lonely place of dying is not at all a good example of this. luckily there are many others. always remember to be accurate with your tim drake hate

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every time someone claims that the drakes' were definitely the worst offenders of habitual archeological criminals ever for having a maximum of 2 shadily gotten gains (the necklace in the robin 80 page giant, the staff from jack's secret society) when bruce wayne is right there with a cave full of ill-gotten historical objects an angel loses its wings. (remember too how bruce was also a member of the secret society jack was in and blatantly approved of jack keeping the staff in his closet with his golf clubs)

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something i tend to notice in fandom spaces (and am not immune from myself) is for there to be mmm like this tendency to want to give characters flaws but instead of said flaw being a negative trait that may exist within an otherwise likable person/character the flaws usually end up being what i think of as fandom's "acceptable" flaws wherein the flaw is either something relatable (ie/ insecurity) or something pitiful (they're just lashing out for totally justified reasons) rather than anything actually unlikable or nasty. and it's just a bit funny to me because it always ends up like a job interview where you're asked what your weaknesses are but you were told to always turn a negative into a positive so you end up with "i'm just too much of an excellent go-getter" but the character flaw version

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anyways i think sometimes. like with dixon writing women. there's clearly the problem where like. a lot of the characterization ends up having sexist stereotypes because he's. you know. dixon. but then in the desire to distance oneself completely from his sexist roots there's a pendulum swing entirely the other way that pretends that no woman would ever act the way he writes them for the mere reason he's pretty awful when honestly the thing is. sometimes. women. do, in fact, act like that.

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what do you think the dynamic between fanon tim and fanon helena would be if fanon helena existed. who would fanon helena ignore him for. discuss.

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tim, when fanon gives his 20 years of canon relationships and dynamics with other characters to literally every character but him: