I wish that people would remember that Jason is supposed to be a couple months younger than Cass and less than two years older than Tim
Well⌠youâre not wrong.
This is actually a very difficult question (comment?) though, because in all fairness the ages of the batkids are rarely ever stated, and often contradicted.
Iâm too stubborn about factual data to take Shellyâs advice, so letâs delve into forbidden territory and talk about ages. Â She is right, though. Just trying to figure this out I came across so many contradictions and discrepancies that Iâm forced to preamble by saying that ages just arenât static in these comics. Â Weâre talking about almost two decades of canon and dozens of writers, things are bound to get a little murky.
So, starting with Dick.  How old Dick was when his parents died has been contradicted at least three times post-crisis and pre-flashpoint.  He has been stated to be 8, 10, and 12, in different comics.  Personally I prefer 10, just because I feel 8 is too young and 12 too old, but for the sake of this meta Im going to actually go with 12.  This is because 12 is honestly the only age that makes sense when you compare Dickâs age to what Timâs is said to be.
Fans speculate that, at the time of the Graysonsâ deaths, Tim Drake was roughly six-years-old.  This is because his parents are shown worrying that heâs âtoo youngâ for the circus, but heâs also seems obviously old enough to carry full conversations and understand the seriousness of the situation.  He remembers being told that Dick Grayson is one of only three people who can do a quadruple somersault, for instance.
However, six doesnât make sense for Tim, for reasons Iâll explain later. Â So letâs say heâs only five.Â
This gives them a seven year difference, which right now appears fair. Â Flash forward six years when Dick becomes Nightwing, according to Batman #416.
A few months pass, and then Bruce catches a young kid jacking the tires from the Batmobile: insert Jason Todd!  Jasonâs age is never explicitly stated during his time as Robin, but we know two things:
1) He is a fifth grade drop out (Batman #410)2) He is younger than 16 when he dies (New Teen Titans vol2 #26)
This means Jason has to be somewhere between 12 and 14 at the time he met Bruce. Letâs go with 13.
So far the âJason and Tim are two years apartâ theory is holding up.  The next milestone is Jasonâs death.  We donât know how old Jason was by them stating his age, but we do know that by the time Tim became Robin a several months (but less than a year) later, he was 13.
So at letâs edge on the safe side and say that it Tim wasnât yet thirteen (or had just turned 13) when Jason died, and therefore most likely turned thirteen sometime between Jasonâs death and Tim becoming Robin. That would put him at or near 12 when Jason died, which gives us:
This canât be right, because we know from Batman #410 that Jason trained for 6 months before donning the cape, and was Robin for more than a year, according to Batman #416.  He canât have only been 14.  This means one of a few things:
Either Jason is actually fifteen when he dies (and Tim was still 13, but almost 14 when he became Robin), or Jason is at least three years older than Tim.  Since weâre trying to keep them only two years apart, lets go with the former.
Okay, now what?  Well, we know how much time passes between Jasonâs death and his âmental resurrectionâ (when Talia pushed him into the Lazarus pit) from Lost Days and Batman Annual 25.
Jason is buried for 6 months. (Batman Annual 25)Jason digs out and is comatose in a hospital for a year. (Batman Annual 25)Jason escapes the hospital and wanders the streets for:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â One year (Batman Annual 25)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Five months (Lost Days #1)Jason is picked up by Talia and stays with her for a year (Lost Days #1)Jason spends an undisclosed amount of time training.
Since Lost Days came out after Batman Annual 25, and both were written by the same writer (Winick), letâs take Lost Days as the âretconâ, and therefore accurate.  That would mean three years passed between Jasonâs death and his resurrection to full cognitive ability.  After this, Jason went on a training spree to learn the things Batman never taught him.  We donât know exactly how long that lasted, but we do know it was several months.  A month on guns, five weeks on toxins, three weeks on assassination, a month on transport, and undisclosed amounts of time with bombs, surveillance, small arms, close combat, and gang control (at least around one month each).
So letâs be generous and say that it only took a year for Jason to learn what he knows. Â That leaves us with:
This matches Detective Comics 790, where Bruce mourns Jasonâs death with Cass on what would have been Jasonâs 18th birthday (this takes place before Bruce finds out Jason is still alive), but it does force us into another contradiction.  Jason Todd came back to life in 2006, but itâs years later, in 2010, that Tim Drake tells us heâs just become and emancipated minor, which means he cant be older than 17 in 2010.
Now of course real time and comic book time pass differently, but there is absolutely no way that all of the events between Under the Hood and Red Robin #12 happened in less than a year. Â Just a few of the major arcs that all took place between these events include:
The Resurrection of Raâs Al Ghul
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader
And thatâs not even all of them. Â I call bs on anyone who tries to tell me all of that went down in less than a year.
This forces us into a corner. Â Jason couldnât have been older than 15 when he died (being that we know he hadnât turned 16 yet), but Tim couldnât have been older than 12, in order for him to still be young enough for become an emancipated minor in Red Robin #12. Â The more logical explanation, then, becomes that during the events of Under the Hood:
Are you confused yet?  Good, that goes to show how confusing this is.  Iâd say that, at the time of flashpoint when the DCU was rebooted, the prevailing facts would put Dick at five years older than Jason, and Jason at three years older than Tim.  Iâm not even going to start in on Cass, because things are already convoluted enough as it is.
Is this definitive?  Hell no.  The fact is, ages are commonly changed and contradicted in comics.  On top of that, the logical method I just used is flawed in that we donât know the specific date and year of birth for most of these characters, nor what month in time all these different events take place.  That has a huge bearing on our ability to know their ages in relation to each other.
Take myself and theflyingwonder as example.  Iâm a year older than her, in that I was borrn in 1991, and she in 1992.  Right now, our ages reflect that.  Iâm 23 and sheâs 22.  Come her birthday in July, however, sheâll become 23 while Iâm still 23, up until my birthday when I turn 24. These discrepancies mean that there is no way to accurately tell how old someone is relative to someone else just by looking at their ages.
Iâd love to be able to say that we absolutely know how much older Dick is than Jason, or Jason than Tim, but the truth is thereâs just no definitive, absolute proof of that.  Writers have, and will continue to, adjust charactersâ ages in their storylines, and even when trying to look at things from the perspective of âwhat makes the most sense,â nothing is static.  Thereâs instances here that Iâve left out, just because they throw too much of a wrench in an already muddled timeline.
