Bird's-Eye View
The new issue of All-Star Batman & Robin gives me an excuse to talk about the titular Boy Wonder.
To me Robin is a fascinating concept. Equal parts wish-fulfillment and marketing plan, ostensibly he was created so that kids of the 1940s could imagine themselves swinging through the streets of Gotham, punching out crooks alongside the Batman. Problem was, as Jules Feiffer and others pointed out, kids wanted to be Batman. Even today, the appeal of Batman starts with the notion that anyone could train themselves to be him – not his short-pantsed partner.
For decades, Robin got a bad rap. In the ‘50s, when DC was trying to make Batman unquestionably straight, his sidekick fretted that Batwoman, Catwoman, or Vicki Vale would break up the Dynamic Duo. (Would Dr. Wertham have made such a stink if it had just been Bruce and Alfred in Wayne Manor?) The ‘60s linked him forever with “Holy --!” exclamations. The ‘70s gave him Casey Kasem’s voice. The infamous phone-poll stunt killed him in the ‘80s; and in the ‘90s, his name became half of the title of a franchise-killing movie.
Similarly, over the years, the message has come through that Batman is better off working solo. Ever since the end of 1969, when the one-two punch of Dick Grayson’s move to college and Denny O’Neil’s pairing with Neal Adams combined to change the Batman mythology at its core, readers have been living in a post-Dynamic Duo world. If that sounds more serious that it deserves to, it still represents an excuse for Batman and Robin’s handlers to ignore a valuable source of dramatic tension.
Bruce and Dick started out as father and son, but as the years went by and Dick’s age and experience creeped closer to Bruce’s, they were written more as big brother-little brother. Today, Batman and Nightwing aren’t quite equals (at least in Batman’s eyes), but they are closer to peers. More to the point, though, both Dick and Jason Todd were opportunities to examine the Batman origin from a different angle – by showing Batman actually raising a boy who’d been through a trauma similar to his. In effect, by training Dick and Jason to fight back against the kind of monsters who robbed them of their parents, Batman was rewriting his own childhood. Discarded lore even holds that the Robin costume was designed by a teenaged Bruce Wayne.
And yet, the relationship’s potential took a back seat to the superficialities of being a Boy Wonder. Carrie Kelly aside, no self-respecting Dark Knight would be seen with a red-and-yellow pixie dogging his steps. If Robin wasn’t supposed to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, what use did he have in an increasingly somber Gotham City? Ultimately, the death of Jason Todd allowed DC to remake Robin for the 1990s and beyond, giving him a bulletproof suit with a black cape and (thank heaven!) long pants. Unlike his predecessors, Tim Drake never lived at Wayne Manor, and before long he was emancipated from Batman’s shadow too. Now Robin is free to market himself, whether in a solo book, as a Teen Titan, or just making some old fanboys happy with a few periodic appearances alongside his mentor.
Sarcasm notwithstanding, I am not arguing that Dick Grayson should don green shorts again. Dick’s maturation into Nightwing was a bit of comics history ingenious in its conception and almost flawless in its execution. However, the other side of that story recognized that Batman needs the counterbalance of a Robin – specifically, someone who can see Batman’s life through younger eyes.
Unfortunately, DC may well think those “younger eyes” would only mock one of its most lucrative assets – but (to mix metaphors a little) that’s a shortsighted perspective. Robin is a reader-identification character whose usefulness isn’t necessarily limited to young readers. After all, the majority of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures were told from Watson’s perspective – and Holmes emerged as a somewhat mysterious, larger-than-life figure. Stilted, bombastic, and excessive as it is, Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman & Robin apparently intends to take a similar approach, both to build up the young Dick Grayson and add that critical air of mystery to his dark guardian. For that reason I’m still curious as to where Miller wants to take it.
The Robin concept isn’t perfect. Neither is an eyeglass-based disguise or a snag-free cape. Superhero comics are filled with those kinds of suspension-of-disbelief elements, to me the idea of a kid sidekick is just another one of those. Robin in particular represents the lighter side of a milieu fascinated with its own darkness, where sometimes it feels like the darkness exists for its own sake. Robin doesn’t need to be in every Bat-adventure, but without him, Batman could easily become an isolated, misanthropic parody of his former self. Who’d want to read about that?
To me Robin is a fascinating concept. Equal parts wish-fulfillment and marketing plan, ostensibly he was created so that kids of the 1940s could imagine themselves swinging through the streets of Gotham, punching out crooks alongside the Batman. Problem was, as Jules Feiffer and others pointed out, kids wanted to be Batman. Even today, the appeal of Batman starts with the notion that anyone could train themselves to be him – not his short-pantsed partner.
For decades, Robin got a bad rap. In the ‘50s, when DC was trying to make Batman unquestionably straight, his sidekick fretted that Batwoman, Catwoman, or Vicki Vale would break up the Dynamic Duo. (Would Dr. Wertham have made such a stink if it had just been Bruce and Alfred in Wayne Manor?) The ‘60s linked him forever with “Holy --!” exclamations. The ‘70s gave him Casey Kasem’s voice. The infamous phone-poll stunt killed him in the ‘80s; and in the ‘90s, his name became half of the title of a franchise-killing movie.
Similarly, over the years, the message has come through that Batman is better off working solo. Ever since the end of 1969, when the one-two punch of Dick Grayson’s move to college and Denny O’Neil’s pairing with Neal Adams combined to change the Batman mythology at its core, readers have been living in a post-Dynamic Duo world. If that sounds more serious that it deserves to, it still represents an excuse for Batman and Robin’s handlers to ignore a valuable source of dramatic tension.
Bruce and Dick started out as father and son, but as the years went by and Dick’s age and experience creeped closer to Bruce’s, they were written more as big brother-little brother. Today, Batman and Nightwing aren’t quite equals (at least in Batman’s eyes), but they are closer to peers. More to the point, though, both Dick and Jason Todd were opportunities to examine the Batman origin from a different angle – by showing Batman actually raising a boy who’d been through a trauma similar to his. In effect, by training Dick and Jason to fight back against the kind of monsters who robbed them of their parents, Batman was rewriting his own childhood. Discarded lore even holds that the Robin costume was designed by a teenaged Bruce Wayne.
And yet, the relationship’s potential took a back seat to the superficialities of being a Boy Wonder. Carrie Kelly aside, no self-respecting Dark Knight would be seen with a red-and-yellow pixie dogging his steps. If Robin wasn’t supposed to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, what use did he have in an increasingly somber Gotham City? Ultimately, the death of Jason Todd allowed DC to remake Robin for the 1990s and beyond, giving him a bulletproof suit with a black cape and (thank heaven!) long pants. Unlike his predecessors, Tim Drake never lived at Wayne Manor, and before long he was emancipated from Batman’s shadow too. Now Robin is free to market himself, whether in a solo book, as a Teen Titan, or just making some old fanboys happy with a few periodic appearances alongside his mentor.
Sarcasm notwithstanding, I am not arguing that Dick Grayson should don green shorts again. Dick’s maturation into Nightwing was a bit of comics history ingenious in its conception and almost flawless in its execution. However, the other side of that story recognized that Batman needs the counterbalance of a Robin – specifically, someone who can see Batman’s life through younger eyes.
Unfortunately, DC may well think those “younger eyes” would only mock one of its most lucrative assets – but (to mix metaphors a little) that’s a shortsighted perspective. Robin is a reader-identification character whose usefulness isn’t necessarily limited to young readers. After all, the majority of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures were told from Watson’s perspective – and Holmes emerged as a somewhat mysterious, larger-than-life figure. Stilted, bombastic, and excessive as it is, Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman & Robin apparently intends to take a similar approach, both to build up the young Dick Grayson and add that critical air of mystery to his dark guardian. For that reason I’m still curious as to where Miller wants to take it.
The Robin concept isn’t perfect. Neither is an eyeglass-based disguise or a snag-free cape. Superhero comics are filled with those kinds of suspension-of-disbelief elements, to me the idea of a kid sidekick is just another one of those. Robin in particular represents the lighter side of a milieu fascinated with its own darkness, where sometimes it feels like the darkness exists for its own sake. Robin doesn’t need to be in every Bat-adventure, but without him, Batman could easily become an isolated, misanthropic parody of his former self. Who’d want to read about that?
posted by Tom Bondurant @ 10:22 AM
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