Tim Drake’s Name Has a Surprising Inspiration

Comic creator Marv Wolfman recently revealed that director Tim Burton inspired Tim Drake’s name.

In a brief email exchange with PopVerse, Tim Drake co-creator Wolfman confirmed that the name was supposed to be an homage to Burton- who was directing the 1989 Batman movie at the time.

“I believe it was to give a nod to Tim Burton who was of course directing the movie.”

Wolfman and artist Pat Broderick created Tim in an effort to make the third Robin. He first appeared as just Tim in Batman #436, although he didn’t appear in his full Robin regalia until issue #457.

The Origins of Robin as “Jeff”

More interestingly, Tim was originally called Jeff. However, the changeover from Jeff to Tim happened in the late stages of his creation. This led to an amusing typo, there is a panel in Batman #441 where Bruce mistakenly calls Tim “Jeff”.

Naturally, readers at the time totally noticed the typo and wrote in the letters pages about it. Then-editor KC Carlson futility tried to rationalize the typo by saying that Tim’s middle name is Jeff. Then he quickly admitted that it was a mistake and revealed that Jeff was the original name of Tim Drake.

“Actually, his real, full name is Timothy Jeff Drake. Not buying it, huh? Okay, it was a mistake. Actually (for real this time), for a while the new Robin’s civilian name WAS going to be Jeff, until we all changed our mind (not that we all share one mind…). Don’t you just love these behind-the-scenes secrets.”

The typo has been fixed in subsequent reprints of the comic. Incidentally, Tim’s middle name is not Jeff but actually Jackson. So there you go, Bat-trivia lovers.

Source: thePopverse.com

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