Sir Timothy Hunter

Creation

Sir Timothy Hunter was created by writer John Ney Rieber and artist Peter Snejbjerg in The Books of Magic issue 5 in 1994.

Origin

Sir Timothy Hunter is seemingly a future, alternative universe version of Tim Hunter, the teen sorcerer.

However, he is actually the real body of Tim Hunter, but without his soul. Tim considers Sir Timothy a husk. Unknown to Sir Timothy, Tim transferred his soul into the body of the demon Barbatos (who also did not know) after Tim defeated the Other. Sir Timothy then went through life thinking he was Barbatos’s master, but he was really his slave.

Major Story Arcs

Sir Timothy’s life began when Tim removed his soul from his body and transferred it into Barbatos. We do not know the details of what happened to him between then and many years in the future, but he is Barbatos’s slave the whole time. We next see Sir Timothy in 2012, in the in-universe timeline of the comic, which followed the actual passing of time for much of its run. This is 18 years after Tim first gains his magic and comes into contact with Sir Timothy, as described below, in 1994. Tim was 13 in 1994, so Sir Timothy is 31 in 2012.

In 2012, Sir Timothy remembers that in 2005 or 2006, he made a deal with a demon, Raum, the first of several pacts he made with demons where he exchanged memories for power. As time goes on, he forgot more and more about who he really was. However, this is a manipulated memory created by Barbatos, who is actually the demon Tim sold his memory to, and much earlier than 2005.

Sir Timothy believes he lives a life of power, riches, and influence. He has seemingly been fighting a magic war on many fronts. One of his main goals has been to create a copy of Molly who is true to his memory of her, and who still loves him. He has a whole magic lab full of copies, but they never turn out quite right.

However, Barbatos has been manipulating his actions and his perceptions. He has been using his power to fight, but under Barbatos’s directive. (It is unclear who Barbatos is having him fight.)

Tim’s world starts coming apart. According to Barbatos, it is because the Tims that would grow to become Sir Timothy may be changing, and so this timeline is insecure.

Sir Timothy and Barbatos travel to the past to see if he can fix it. He plans to bring Tim to his Formatory, where he trains Mollys to act like his memory of Molly, and he will train Tim to be himself.

He waits outside a cemetery to kidnap Tim in 1994, but Tim’s magic friends Khara and Nikki waylay him and temporarily stick Sir Timothy in place while Tim gets away, oblivious to his danger.

Sir Timothy returns to the future, only to find his Mollys gone and his mansion a rotting attic.

When Martyn, a magician of the Cold Flame in Tim’s time, tries to manipulate the boy in order to use his power, Sir Timothy appears in his mirror. He shrinks Martyn down to miniature size and then kills him for his impertinence at trying to do what Sir Timothy wants to do, i..e manipulate Tim and his power.

Sir Timothy returns to his own time, and wanders the streets of London. It is increasingly clear that his fame and power are illusions, and he is actually homeless. He lives in a cardboard box in an alley, and we can now see that he is under Barbatos’s psychological and magical control.

Some time later, still in 2012, Sir Timothy visits a pawn shop trying to sell magical items in order to get some money to survive. He sometimes understands his debased condition at this point, and sometimes does not. The owner, Mr. Chiang, recognizing the Sir Timothy is under the control of a demon, gives him some money and tells him to see his brother about getting a job at his restaurant. Barbatos, however, manages to distract Sir Timothy from these plans by suggesting they make a new Molly. Barbatos sends some emissaries, a group of pink Tyrannosaurs, to the present to catch Molly, Khara, and Nikki.

The creatures bring Khara and Nikki to Sir Timothy’s box in 2012, imprisoned in magic trash cans, and Barbatos also tricks Khara’s lover, the angel Araquel, to come rescue them, thereby breaking his vows to heaven. Barbatos then blackmails Araquel into keeping Tim’s various friends away from him for a period of time.

The pink T. rexes also capture Molly and bring her to hell under the tutelage of Sir Timothy’s demon-like governess, Vuall.

It is now 2013. Sir Timothy chats with Khara and Nikki, glad to have someone else to talk to besides Barbatos. He still often thinks his cardboard box is a mansion. Khara and Nikki try to get out of their chains, and accidentally drop the younger Tim’s Stone of Opening, which they got from him a while ago. Sir Timothy picks it up and it heals his perception, so that he can see he’s been in a box. He lets Khara and Nikki go.

Sir Timothy wanders the streets. His brain is clearly unfogged by outside control, but he is not entirely aware of who he is. He runs into Sir Derek Sutler. Sutler is now homeless, but when he was younger Sir Timothy liked his music. He gives him a shopping cart full of cash.

He enters Mr. Chiang’s pawnshop again. Oddly, considering that the date when he was in the pawn shop before was August 1, 2012, and it is now 2013, he apologizes for not showing up at the restaurant “yesterday.” He and Chiang discuss Barbatos, and Sir Timothy says he wants to buy a box to imprison the demon. Chiang, however, suggests that he ignore Barbatos, and instead consider life as a dragon, due to his characteristics of being prideful, self-absorbed, avaricious, and reclusive. Chiang and some of the objects in his shop then turn into dragons.

Sir Timothy can’t decide, and he passes out, but as he does, a turtle wearing glasses like he wore as a teen pops out of his head. They turn out to be “fear-tinted” glasses. Sir Timothy breaks them and feels more confident. He agrees to become a dragon, and is transformed.

He and the other dragons play Go Fish and he enjoys himself for the first time in a while. Khara and Nikki come in, and ask for Tim’s help. They want to find Araquel and imprison Barbatos for what he did to both Araquel and Sir Timothy.

Meanwhile, after Vuall tried to shape Molly to her and Barbatos’s will, Molly defied Vuall. Tim finds Molly. Barbatos has traveled to this time from 2012, and tries to convince a bunch of demons in hell to agree to his plan to seduce Earth via Happy Crisps junk food. Araquel finds him and is about to kill him when Sir Timothy appears (again, in the past, in hell), still in the form of a dragon. He tells Araquel that Khara and Nikki are safe, and where to find them, so the angel leaves.

Barbatos is held prisoner by Tim’s Golem, Happy. Sir Timothy admits that “I pretended to be his master, once. Half my life, I pretended. One pretends things like that, when one’s a slave.” Tim and Molly show up, and Sir Timothy is overjoyed to see the real Molly, the way she is supposed to be, for the first time in many years. However, Barbatos manages to grab a magic book and transports them all into a magical story land.

In this story land, Barbatos is able to manipulate Tim, Molly, and Sir Timothy into living out various story roles again and again.

Sir Timothy-the-dragon and Molly are in a metal castle with a treasure horde. The story wants them to believe they are in a classic princess captured by a dragon scenario. However, Molly won’t believe it, and Sir Timothy just wants to have a pleasant time with Molly. He finally tells her what he had done with all his Molly clones, and asks her to dress in a princess gown for him. She does, and finally believes she’s a princess.

Tim figures out what’s going on and traps Barbatos in a magical metal giant’s hand. However, their fight collapsed the metal castle, and traps Sir Timothy and Molly underneath its rubble. Sir Timothy holds up the ceiling to protect Molly. Molly realizes who she is again, and Sir Timothy tells her the story of who he really is, and how he came to be that way. He makes Molly promise to never let Tim talk to demons, and especially never to sell a memory to a demon.

Sir Timothy uses his fire breath to burn a tunnel so Molly can escape. However, it apparently uses up the rest of Sir Timothy’s life force, and he dies. Molly, however, now feels badly for him and says goodbye as he dies.

Molly makes Tim promise to never talk to demons, as Sir Timothy requested, and he does.

Much later, Tim is fighting his Other, a sort of doppelganger of Tim who Tim accidentally created and who contains many shards of Tim’s real soul. Tim originally hoped that the Other would grow into Sir Timothy, but now he knows that won’t happen. Tim makes a deal with the Barbatos of this time–a younger Barbatos than the one who has enslaved Sir Timothy–where he will sell Barbatos a memory in order to get the power to defeat the Other. Tim does this knowing the consequences that Molly told him about.

However, Tim hides his soul in the memory that he gives to Barbatos. The deletion of this memory, which is the memory of Tim creating the Other, destroys the Other. Tim’s collected soul now hides inside Barbatos without the demon’s knowledge.

Tim’s body acts blankly and as if he has no idea who he is. Barbatos, not knowing what happened, assumes that when Tim sold his memory, he also sold control of his soul, and proceeds to manipulate Tim. This presumably leads to the life of Sir Timothy that we’ve already seen.

However, Tim calls the body that Barbatos controls a husk, since it is without a soul. That is why it is so easy to manipulate, and why it is so similar to a dragon.

Tim also, in the moments before he loses his memory, creates an alternate world. It is this world that Sir Timothy and Barbatos live in for the next 13 years, so that they can’t hurt anyone.

40 years after Tim defeats the Other (and 27 years after Sir Timothy eventually wakes up from Barbatos’s control), the older Barbatos, who had last been seen held in the giant metal hand in the story book realm, is released from the hand. He goes to Hell and finds out that he is now a laughingstock. He travels back in time to right before Tim defeats the Other. Now both Barbatoses are in the same place.

Younger Barbatos flies into the house to find pre-enslaved Tim and get his memory. Older Barbatos—the one who already enslaved Sir Timothy and was trapped in the hand—now hears another voice in his head. It’s Tim, whose soul has been in there the whole time since younger Barbatos first enslaved him after taking Tim’s memory.

Tim’s soul forces older Barbatos to watch from a place of hiding as the younger Barbatos buys Tim’s memory and has Tim’s soul hidden inside him. Younger Barbatos leaves with now-soulless soon-to-be-Sir Timothy. Tim’s soul then takes over Barbatos’s body, reshaping it to look like Tim’s old body. Tim’s soul is now free and in control of the body he made from Barbatos, at the same time that his old soulless body goes off to become a slave. Thus Sir Timothy’s life begins.

Powers & Abilities

Sir Timothy is a wizard of great power. He presumably has all the powers of Tim Hunter as an Opener.

We don’t see him use too many powers. He demonstrates telekinesis, when he opens a door with a gestures. He creates a magical lab in which he creates copies of Molly. He shrinks and kills the powerful sorcerer Martyn with no difficulty. He creates a sentient talking cart. He releases Khara and Nikki from their magical imprisonment. He is capable of traveling through time. He is able to use Tim’s Stone of Opening.

As a dragon, he has superhuman strength and fire breath. He says he can’t use magic properly as a dragon, although he did travel in time in that shape.