Tim Drake’s Costume through the years
I’ve been thinking about changing comics costumes over the years so I thought I’d go through one of my favorite character’s changing costume
this classic look is Tim’s longest standing look, while different art would make it look different
but the basic look stayed unchanged for a long time, reason being it’s a good costume.
Notes: Tim in the animated Series
When Batman The Animated Series came along in 1992 they used Dick as Robin at first, but for sure they weren’t gonna put him in the green undies, particularly since he was drawn as an older teen/college student. So the show stole Tim’s costume
Now when Batman The Animated Series was rebranded as The New Batman Adventures in 1997 it was more kid friendly and brought in Tim as a young Robin. But how to tell him apart from Dick, well Tim was tiny and clearly a middle schooler but I guess that wasn’t enough because they gave him:
2. the “No touch me, I’m sad” Costume 2007-2009
you can see why I brought up the Animated series yes? Officially any ways this was about Tim being sad about the deaths of.... well everyone he cared about but in particular Superboy he changed his costume to Red, Yellow and Black Superboy’s “colors” though I don’t think T-shirt Conner had yellow in his costume? maybe the yellow was for Bart. But pretty clearly it was meant to bring Tim’s costume in line with the animated series for some reason.
3. Red Robin 1, the condom head 2009
So when DC went a little crazy and made Dick Batman, Damian Robin, rather than the logical choice, make Tim Nightwing, they nicked the idea of Red Robin from Kingdom Come with the costume. now this costume was struggle bus, designed with a beefy middle aged man in mind it always looked awkward on a skinny 16 year old. Also they struggled a little keeping it consistent
and well the cowl... “off brand Dr. Mid-Nite” “like the click top of a pen” and most famously “Captain Condom Head” so comic writers took any excuse to take it off, which did help
In an attempt to do something better they came up with this, though it had a rather pointy mask
that nose guys! also it some versions it had pointed horns coming out of Tim’s long hair. yikes, luckily DC was rebooting all of reality to fix these problems....
5. Red Robin 3 New52′s Vegas Show girl 2011-2016
ah the famous showgirl wings, honestly I like them, but honestly the rest of the outfit is a train wreck
Belts belts belts! it’s very 1990s in that way, random belts everywhere for no reason
when you take the wings away you see how much of an over busy mess this thing was, and the Ts on his shoulders is a little insulting basically declaring he’s only a Titan and nothing else, he doesn’t have an R (or RR)
6. “Red” Robin 4 the Classic redux 2016-2019
With Rebirth DC admitted that honestly Tim had only had one good costume, the classic. While I love the Classic it’s clearly a very 90s look (in a good way) so the was a touch up to give the classic a more 2010s feel.
they finally admitted defeat and ditched the second R and just started calling him Robin, because Red Robin was a failed experiment.
Because DC can’t leave well enough alone they took a perfectly good costume and code name and decided that Tim needed an ugly as hell brown costume and a code name that was dumb and not cool, Drake? seriously? pretty unlikely to last.
non-Comic Tim’s worth mentioning here, Young Justice, again a cartoon Dick Grayson stole a Tim Drake look
So when season 2 brought Tim around they needed a new look for him:
just kinda added sleeves, I guess adding green would have been a war crime? in season 3 they gave him a hood, like say....
Arkham Games Tim who is 400% Beef in a hood and looks nothing at all like Tim Drake.
