Entry tags:

char: batman/bruce wayne, char: batman/dick grayson, char: robin/bruce wayne jr, creator: bill finger, creator: sheldon moldoff, title: batman

A few weeks ago, "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" featured the story "The Knights of Tomorrow", which details an imaginary story written by Alfred which postulates what happens when Dick takes over as Batman, and Bruce and Selina Kyle-Wayne's son Damian becomes the new Robin...

It is in fact an amalgam of the current Batman story, and one from a loooooong time before, April 1960 to be precise, Batman 131, which is the first of two stories I know which feature the concept. I'll post the second one soon, and if there are others I'll try and find them.

The story is also notable for yet another "Context is for the weak" panels reflective of a more innocent time and before the meaning-shift of a few words...





The cover does much of the exposition for us... The big II's on their costumes are a rather blatant touch, a shame perhaps that Dick wasn't able to work something like that into his Batman costume in Morrison's arc.



We start with a memoir



Bruce Jr? A mite egotistical there Bruce, though at least it wasn't another Thomas I suppose.

Kathy is dead set against it as a plan, but when Bruce and Dick promise to train him thoroughly before allowing him out, she relents, a little...



I like Dick realising "Oh GOD! I've got a kid to look after, and it's Bruce's KID! If anything happens to him Bruce will KILL me, and that's if Kathy doesn't get to me first!!"



Gee, Bruce Sr is looking like a REAL geezer here, given he shouldn't be much more than about 40.

Alas for Junior, he lassos a movie propr to swing on, not realising that it's only papier mache and won't bear his weaight. The whole thing collapses allowing the criminals to escape. It was an honest, rookie mistake, but Dick's reassurances don't make him feel much better.



So, Dick grew up to be a reporter, Clark would be so smug proud!

Later, Bruce Jr shows up to a lunch meeting with Dick, but he's not around and has left a clue for him, which tells our new young Robin where he's gone. Dick has crossed out some of the letters on a coin - "One Cent - United States of America"

So, with "On (s)cent - Ted Tate Mica" he races back to the Batcave and heads out to Gotham's mica quarry.



That's okay Kathy, I imagine Bruce is in a corset which would make Shatner envious.

Bruce Junior finds the hideout and gets past the guards where he finds Dick in a position one might have thought he would outgrow as Batman, but lets be honest, you can take the Boy out of the Hostage, but you can't take the Hostage out of the Boy... or Man.







And so it was... at least in Alfred's story, which we then find out isn't a memoir, but a piece of speculative fiction that Alfred has been writing to wile away his free time. Sure, the only ones who can be allowed to read it are Bruce and Dick, but Alfred feels that he may write another one someday....

And so he did.... Coming soon; "Batman II meets - The Son of the Joker"