Robin—Batman’s teenage sidekick, in various iterations—seems, on the face of it, like a wholly terrible idea. There’s not only the moral issues in letting an underage boy go out at night, fighting against armed thugs and the occasional superhuman criminal, but also the fact that it’s hard to see how he could be terribly effective—he is, athletic prowess notwithstanding, still not a grown man, up against people trying to kill him (and succeeding, at least in one case, though I understand that was walked back later).
So, what does Batman need Robin for? Is there any attempt to provide insight in both the necessity and justification of Robin? Some Elseworlds story where Batman decides against throwing underage boys into the maw of crime, and becomes totally detached from humanity, or whatnot? Why is there a Robin, and why is it OK for there to be one?
Robin was added by the writers to lighten the tone of the stories and to give the readers someone with whom to identify. At the time, comic books were aimed at a juvenile market.
I’ve seen them float the idea that he’s going to do it anyway — which you or I might shrug off, but which Bruce Wayne is going to 100% believe — and that his odds of surviving go up if he does that next to Batman instead of working solo.
Also, there’s the bit where Tim Drake deduced that Bruce Wayne (a) is Batman, and (b) pretty much kept it together when Dick Grayson was a cheerful quipster, but got real grim real fast when he was out Batmanning alone. And so Tim took on the role of Robin so Batman wouldn’t sink all the way into dark obsessive violence.
This pretty much nails it, and also explains the presence of all those other, apparently superfluous kid sidekicks in comics in the Golden and Silver ages.
Robin was introduced just about a year after Batman himself. He’s one of the oldest elements of the Batman mythos, aside from Batman himself. He predates the Batcave (though not the Batmobile), Alfred, and the Bat Signal, If Robin isn’t “canon”, what is?
Note that having a sidekick helps with exposition. Instead of Batman having thought balloons around his head all the time, he gets to talk with someone.
Not having a sidekick and being very thoughtful about stuff fits certain superhero personas but not (traditional) Batman.
The choice of a teenage sidekick is commercial, as mentioned.
Jason and Damien, it was to get them onto a less criminal path than they were on (Damien being groomed to take over the League of Assassins, Jason being a street punk).
Yeah, but back in the Golden Age (before Stan Lee was the editor-in-charge) you had Toro, the sidekick to the Human Torch. And Captain America had Bucky.
also, as ftg points out, a secondary character gives the main character someone to talk to, so he seems less schizophrenic. So Stan Lee may have hated Kid Sidekicks, but The Hulk still had Rick Jones (who only really lacked a costume).
Of course, Robin is essential to the Batman mythos. Also, there are very good narrative reasons for including a (teenage) sidekick—audience identification and exposition, as already mentioned, among them. But I was asking about an in universe justification—why does Batman, Bruce Wayne, take on underage boys to engage violent criminals? Not: Why did DC decide to include a crime-fighting boy wonder in its title?
One reason given so far is to keep them from worse fates. Is there anything else? I just found out there’s a ‘Robin: Year One’ arc. Does this go in any depth regarding the reasons behind Robin being Robin?
Various writers have tried - and mostly failed - to explain Robin.
Damien probably has the best explanation, because he is already trained as a murderous ninja assassin and there are many storylines that emphasize Batman trying to restrain him. It’s pretty clear that without Batman’s intervention, he would become a supervillain (and in ‘Injustice,’ he certainly does).
As for the rest… It usually the explanation centers on the fact that super-heroing is hard work and it’s not something a single individual could realistically accomplish. We have to accept right off the bat (ha) that nothing about Batman is realistic in the first place, but there are practical reasons that Batman requires an assistant. This is very much the reason for the Carrie Kelley version. She rescues Batman from certain death and insists on being a sidekick, and Batman tolerates (and later accepts) her because he needs her assistance. Many other comics have emphasized that importance of the Bat-Family (eg Oracle, Gordon, Alfred, Huntress, etc etc), and point out that despite Batman’s demeanor he can’t actually succeed by himself.
The obvious problem with this explanation is: Why does Robin have to be a child? Why can’t Batman recruit other adult super-heroes as his assistants? Frank Miller tried - and failed - to address this in ‘All-Star Batman and Robin,’ and the answer basically boils down to the fact that Miller’s Batman is fucking insane. Batman -in this interpretation - is just plain incapable of cooperating with anyone, so the only acceptable option is to recruit is a child that he can brainwash and mold in his own image.
Maybe Robin the character can be justified, but there is no justification for the ridiculous costume he was forced to endure. You’d have to be a special kind of kid to willingly dress like that.
I wasn’t around in 1940, but I’m willing to bet the attitude toward teenage males in an America just coming out of the Depression and gearing up for war was a lot different than it is today.
Carrie Kelley was 13 when she first appeared as Robin in The Dark Knight Returns. Dick Grayson was 8 years old when his parents were killed. You can assume some years of training passed before he debuted as Robin.
In one story, Nightwing says he was an extrovert and a fan of Errol Flynn movies, and laments switching to more somber clothes when he grew up.
Comic books are always very vague about character’s ages. In the early comics, Robin was quite a bit shorter than Batman. I think high school, possibly junior high school. He stayed that way for about 30 years. Then in the late 1970s or early 1980s, they had him graduate from high school and move away to college.
