Read more about Timothy Hunter at: Wikipedia

Official Site: DC/Vertigo

Timothy Hunter, is a fictional character, a comic book sorcerer published by DC Comics. He first appeared in The Books of Magic vol. 1 #1 (January 1990), and was created by Neil Gaiman and John Bolton.

Tim Hunter was created by writer Neil Gaiman when DC Comics asked him to come up with a four issue prestige-format series "about our magic characters". Drawing on a childhood spent working his way through the children's section in his local library and a childhood love of magic and fantasy stories such as T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Gaiman's story was structured to use different artists for each issue, and it was the artist for the first issue - John Bolton - who designed Tim's appearance, basing him on his own son. When The Books of Magic was initially released over 1990-91, it proved very popular and led Vertigo Executive Editor Karen Berger to make it a regular ongoing series under editor Stuart Moore.

Initially, the editors had a difficult time finding someone to write the series, with Tim Hunter proving a tricky character to get right: although he already appeared in a mini-series, the character's main function was to bear witness to the past, present and future of magic in the DC universe and so did not offer a writer much detail to work with. Karen Berger eventually settled on writer John Ney Rieber to continue Tim's story,

While Rieber's personal connection to Tim gave the character a sense of realism, it also was a source of frustration for the writer: he later said "I've found it difficult to like Tim now and then. Of course he gets on my nerves. He's a lot like someone I spent years learning not to be". This dislike led to a perceived decline in the quality of the book as Rieber wrote his final batch of issues, with the character of Tim often sidelined in the stories in favor of his girlfriend, Molly. This preference also affected Tim's character in other ways, as Rieber requested that Molly not be used in the book after his departure to allow him to develop his own projects using her - causing the in-story break up of the two young lovers that led to them not seeing each other for many years.

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