Sunday 26 November 2017

Tim Drake is a brilliant idiot


[SPOILERS below for the most recent issue of Detective Comics. No, I don't think the title of this post is a spoiler, just a self-evident statement that's been true since the Nineties]

Sometimes you love a character because they're a precious little cinnamon roll who has done nothing wrong. Sometimes you love a character because they're a self-destructive idiot and you enjoy watching the trainwreck.

So Tim Drake's back from the dead and being an idiot.

The thing about Tim Drake, a thing that I love about him, is that he's an arrogant little son of a bitch. I adore him but he absolutely is. He has that problem of being so often the smartest person in the room that he relies on it and tends to have a massive blindspot for how other people are going to feel about his decisions, especially when he doesn't explain that he's even made a decision.

Right now his decision is to embrace the future he's glimpsed where he becomes Batman. His plan before that was to set up Batman with a team and then swan off to Ivy Town for university and making the world a better place through computer science. As far as Steph Brown, his girlfriend who is very pleased to see him alive again, that's still the plan. Tim is being Tim about thing and changing the plan whilst assuring himself that she'll see how good the new plan is and come around to it without him actually explaining himself.

Yay for emotional honesty in relationships, am I right?

James Tynion really gets Tim's characters because this is the perfect Tim move: its essentially selfless (he's giving up his dreams to alter his destiny and avoid becoming a fascist dickbag); its logical (because fighting this destiny actually causes him to become a fascist dickbag); and, most importantly, its going to explode in his face. Hell, he even has Kate, a woman who admits to being the crappy partner in most of her relationships, telling him he's being an idiot and he's just not listening.

I look forward to seeing the flaming ruins of his arrogant good intentions in the future. 

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