How not to write the Dynamic Duo dynamic - Robin and Batman #2

[icon_uk]

I pondered long and hard about whether to post this and I'm still not quite sure I made the right choice.

I genuinely don't like posting scans from comics I vehemently disagree with, it's a lot less fun than I normally aim for, and yet sometimes, something seems just SO off that I feel it needs to be looked at.

Case in point, this scene from "Robin and Batman #2" by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen


Now Robin has, for most of his existence, been a difficult character to justify. He's a kid, regularly fighting murderous criminals, and only really works in the fantastical realm of comics. If you look too closely at the concept the seams show, and they are problematic.

If a grown man comes across a traumatised, vengeful child with anger issues, then the correct course of action is to give them a (mutually consented upon) hug, a safe environment to live in, and lots of therapy. You don't put them in a costume and let them to fight killer clowns and mobsters whilst armed with some boomerangs. But that's what Batman does with Dick Grayson.

Now in the original situation it was just ignored. Bruce took in Dick Grayson and let him become Robin to catch the criminals who killed his parents. He cares about Dick (and later Jason, and Tim and so on and so on) and wants what's best for them even WHEN they're being beaten up by killers with ice cannons, a villain with a duality fetish, murderous shapeshifters or a puzzle based guy who plays hangman with real rope!

Bruce loves his kids, would do aything for them and, like any good parent/guardian, wants them to have a better life than he did, and that doesn't clash with the concept of child endangerment because the laws of comics say it doesn't.

With more recent iterations, which take Batman more/too seriously, this becomes a serious issue because how can you admire your realistic, grim "Dark Knight" seriously when he has a pre-teenage kid fighting superpowered psychopaths by his side? Because that's clearly the only improbable aspect of a grown non-superpowered man in a furry cosplay with a 12 foot long cape fighting supercriminals.

The ultimate extension of this is probably Frank Miller's "All Star Batman and Robin", which has Bruce leaving Dick in the Batcave and expecting him to eat rats to survive if necessary. And that's about as low as it is possible to imagine the bar being set. And yet....

In #2 of "Robin and Batman", for his 12th birthday, Batman takes Robin up to the Justce League satellite, where he meets his idols, and also gets to meet and hang out with the other sidekicks for the first time. The kids even manage to sneak off together without the heroes knowing and have some fun stopping bad guyd as a nascent team, then sneaking back before anyone notices.

and when they return....


So far, so adorably wholesome, right?







I don't know about anyone else, but I have rarely agreed with Alfred more than in that moment.

See, this isn't even Batman as a bad parent, because I have no issue with him having to learn on the job when it comes to raising a kid, every parent does. This is Batman being a completely horrible person who misses the point of being a parent.entirely.

"I had a crap childhood, so my kids should too" is possibly the WORST possible take on Batman and Robin I can think of.

Compare and contrast with his from Detective Comics 574



or this from Young Justice:

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Even if this ends with Batman learning "a valuable lesson" and having a realisation that Dick needs more of a life than cynical paranoia, it still feels wrong, because how could someone with that lack of regard, that lack of basic human emotion, ever have felt the emotional connection required for Bruce Wayne to take in Dick Grayson in the first place?

Comments

[onsokumaru]

My issue is that both him and Robin are focusing on psychological weakness.
But the only reason Robin would have to take them down is if they are mind controlled or if something change them to the point they become villains. In which case all that psycho babble is going to be useless.

[icon_uk]

That's a really good point I had overlooked completely!

In terms of villainy it might still have some effectiveness, but not for the mind control situation.

[thezmage]

That’s why I never bought Batman’s excuse in Tower of Babel either

[zachbeacon]

Yep, Dick took out a brainwashed Hal Jordan by eploiting exploiting GL's weaknesses, not Hal's.

[icon_uk]

Other way round I believe, It was a brainwashed Titans attacking the Justice League.

Though yes that is one of my favourite moments in early New Teen Titans, showing that these were not "just" sidekicks, but credible opponents in their own right.

[zachbeacon]

You're right, it's been a long time since I read it.

Though really ... I feel like being under the control of a demon is the one time I'd be okay with Dick using the tactics Bruce is encouraging.

[blues32]

Isn't the cape black on the other side?

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Tim Drake's was. His predecessors, not as I recall.

[icon_uk]

Dick and Jason's capes were all yellow, Tim was the first to have a black outside and yellow inside (and even then it was designed to be reversible, he just... never got around to that and kept the black side out because the fans loved it)

There have been various retcon flashback that Dick also had a black cape in his Robin days, but until 1990, no Robin had ever had that.

[donnblake]

Yeah- that's the sort of thing that suggests that Batman considers he might wind up on the other side of the superheroes as they are not as potential mind-controlled pawns of Starro or what have you.

And taken on its own, as a Batman Expy or an Elseworld, I wouldn't necessarily take issue with that. On its face, the idea that a billionaire who watched his parents gunned down, spent years training with a wide assortment of often quite shady spies, martial artists and assassins, and then returned to a crime ridden dystopia of a city where corruption was a way of life- that that guy might have trust issues? Yeah, I can buy it.

Year One Batman having plans to deal with Superman makes as much sense as Year One Batman having plans to deal with corrupt cops or politicians- this is not someone who will be predisposed to trust the system, and he won't have had opportunity to work out who he can trust.

Batman who has a teleporter pad to League headquarters training Robin to consider how to take Donna Troy out in a first strike? That only tracks to me if Batman's already well on his way to a plan that involves ruling Gotham with an iron fist.

[tinygaylaura]

The fact of the matter is that even the silver age version of Aqualad could take down Batman and Robin with one hand tied behind his back without even breaking a sweat

Any time a writer tries to act like Batman is some unstoppable bad ass who could totally beat anyone with actual superpowers because He's The Goddamn Batman it's just a level of utterly embarassing cringe that's even worse than that stupid "The Boys" garbage that Garth Ennis wrote

It's like watching a child on the schoolyard taunting their idiot friends about how "My dad is way cooler than YOUR dad!"

Bruce

Your a fucked up orphan in what's basically just the worlds most expensive fursuit. Robin is a child in tights

If either of you fought the Teen Titans or the Justice League or hell even the Inferior Five what would happen is that you'd get to spend the next year or so learning all the new kinds of pain a human body can experience while going through extensive physical therapy after suffering the single most brutal and one sided ass kicking since that time the WWE had Brock Lesnar fight a one legged boy less than half his size

.....

Yes that actually happened I wish I made that up but humanity has no limits to our capacity for madness and cruelty