This is "Foundationed Deep," a feature where we look at particular odd/strange/interesting instances of retroactively connecting different comic book characters (for instance, Uncanny X-Men #268 retroactively established that Wolverine knew both Captain America and the Black Widow from World War II).
Today, I'm doing a bit of a different route with this feature. Rather than retroactively showing a connection between characters, I'm showing how Tim Fox was retroactively re-envisioned after Flashpoint to become a whole new character, one who could truly take on the mantle of the Bat.
In Batman #101 (by James Tynion IV, Guillem March and Tomeu Morey), Lucius Fox called his children together to discuss the fact that Fox was now the owner of the entire Wayne Family fortune (entrusted to him by Bruce Wayne after the events of Joker War). This reunion involved a little referenced member of the Fox family, Timothy, who now wants to be called Jace...
In the mixed-up world of the Fox family (which has gone through some strange continuity changes over the years), Luke Fox and his sister Tam Fox have been the main Fox siblings of the past decade or so, with Tam being a recurring character in the Red Robin series and Luke becoming Batwing. However, Tiffany has also been in the picture, as well, but not a fourth sibling. The reintroduction of Tim/Jace set up the brilliant new Future State series, Future State: The Next Batman by John Ridley, Nick Derington and Tamra Bonvillain), where we see in the first issue that Jace is an outcast in the future two, fighting with the "good" brother, Luke, in the future at the bedside of Tam Fox.
However, in the second issue (by Ridley, Laura Braga, Derington and Asif Prianto), we discover that in the future, when Gotham City needed a Batman, it wasn't the "good" brother who stood up, but Tim/Jace!
The interesting thing, though, is that all of this involves going back retroactively to the early days of the Fox siblings and also basically ignoring the last Tim Fox story that Len Wein ever wrote. You see, back when the Fox sibling debuted, Tim was pretty much the MAIN Fox sibling!
Len Wein took over writing duties on Batman in late 1978, as part of a process that led to Wein leaving Marvel entirely (as the company was not happy that one of its main writers was now writing one of DC's biggest titles) and right away, he added to the legacy of the Batman Universe by adding a business manager for Bruce Wane named Lucius Fox in Batman #307 (by Wein, John Calnan and Dick Giordano).
Six issues later, Wein, Irv Novick and Frank McLaughlin introduced us to Fox's children, including Tim, who Lucius clearly had some problems with...
Over time, we see Tim join a gang, but it turns out that his interest in the gang was based on the idea that they were going to fight back against the slumlords like Bruce Wayne who were making Gotham City such a terrible place to live. In a lot of ways, then, Tim's goals were noble, but his methods were not great, especially since it turned out that the gang that he was working with was actually working for an old business rival of Bruce Wayne's named Gregorian Falstaff, who framed Bruce Wayne as a slumlord to get Tim to go along with their plans, as the idea was to frame Tim for blowing up Bruce Wayne's offices, thus also taking Lucius Fox out of the picture, as well, as he would be distraught over his son.
In the end, Lucius reconciled with his son (even though Lucius was almost killed by Tim's gang) as Lucius understands that his son was manipulated to be against Lucius and Bruce Wayne. When last we saw them, they were tentatively working together. However, that was not the LAST we saw of them.
Tim showed up again in DC Retroactive: Batman-The '70s #1, these special comics that DC did before wiping out continuity for the New 52. DC had old writers and artists get together to do new stories set in the past. Wein, Tom Mandrake and Wes Hartman did a story that introduced a new version of the old Batman foes, The Terrible Trio. They turned out to be financed by Talia Al-Ghul as part of some inherently unresolved plan of hers, as obviously the story was in a special meant to come out right before a continuity rewipe.
During the story, we see that Tim, now older, still has a bad relationship with Lucius and in the end, it is revealed that Tim was one of the Terrible Trio, and his only real excuse is that Lucius did not pay enough attention to him...
One of the interesting aspects of John Ridley choosing to use Tim Fox as the Batman in Future State, it sure seems to suggest that we will see Tim/Jace Fox set up in the future as a major DC character and if he ever shows up in other media, then Ridley will cleverly have found a way to give Len Wein's estate some money from the use of the character. Famously, Wein made more money off of Lucius Fox's creation than he ever did for Wolverine, once noting, “When I work for DC, anything I create I get a piece of,” said Wein. “Lucius Fox, for example, who was in the last trilogy of Batman movies played by Morgan Freeman, bought my new house. At Marvel, I did see a check off ‘The Wolverine,’ the current film. But as a rule I don’t any of the ancillary money off of all of the toys and soaps and shampoos and skateboards and God knows what else that features the character.”
So if Tim Fox becomes a major character in the future, then it could be that the Len Wein Estate will be compensated accordingly, which would be nice to see.
If anyone has a suggestion for a more traditional Foundationed Deep (retroactive connections between characters), feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.
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