Batman and Robin have a really bizarre and most likely unlawful relationship. Let’s talk about it.
However first: There’s an enormous joke, going again many years, that Batman and Robin are homosexual. This excellent article just isn’t about that. That is about issues in the Batman and Robin relationship that everybody takes as a right, however are literally exceptionally unusual, if you cease and take into consideration them.
Additionally, we aren’t right here to scold fictional characters. If something, the messiness of the Batman and Robin relationship makes it extra fascinating, from a storytelling standpoint, as a result of it muddles with the boring portrayal of Batman as excellent.
Actually, as we will present, the man who attire up as a bat each night time is a complete weirdo. Beginning with…
No. 1 Robin’s Costume
Batman, famously, attire in darkish colours as camouflage, permitting him to mix into the night time, invisible to criminals. He’s in a position to dodge their gunfire partially as a result of he’s so arduous to see.
Robin, in the meantime, wears the brightest costume doable. Whereas preventing alongside Batman. The Caped Crusader hides in the shadows, whereas his youthful ward… wears a garish purple, yellow and inexperienced costume that draws consideration. And bullets, we assume.
We noticed a Batman satire as soon as the place Robin was referred to as “Goal,” and that satire was proper on the cash. We’d hyperlink to it if we may discover it, however sadly after we Google “Robin costume goal” we simply get pages of Robin costumes… from Goal.
No. 2 Robin Is a Minor
There have been many Robins over the years, and whereas their origin tales have modified over the many years, all are introduced as minors at the time they meet Batman. Bear in mind he’s referred to as “The Boy Marvel.”
Dick Grayson, the first Robin, first appeared in Detective Comics #38 (eleven points after Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27) and was a junior member of the acrobatics troupe The Flying Graysons, led by his dad and mom, John and Mary. When criminals kill them, Batman takes on Dick Grayson as his ward, coaching him to battle crime.
Sure, Dick Grayson was an acrobat, which is harmful. However taking a minor out on the streets at night time to battle criminals with weapons — in a brightly coloured costume, no much less — is little one endangerment.
Whereas we don’t know what state Gotham is in, we do comprehend it resembles New York Metropolis, and that below New York Penal Regulation 260.10(1), “an individual is responsible of endangering the welfare of a kid when… she or he knowingly acts in a way prone to be injurious to the bodily, psychological or ethical welfare of a kid lower than seventeen years previous or directs or authorizes such little one to have interaction in an occupation involving a considerable threat of hazard to his or her life or well being.”
It’s a Class A misdemeanor, which may end up in as much as a yr in jail.
No. 3. Batman Calls Robin ‘Chum’
So as to add to the endangerment factor… Batman typically calls Robin “chum.”
There are two meanings of the phrase chum. It could possibly imply good friend — or it will probably confer with the stuff you throw to sharks, as bait.
We marvel how Batman is utilizing it.
Additionally Learn: All 10 Batman Films Ranked Worst to Finest
The Masks
Once more, inequality. Batman wears a cowl that covers his whole face, apart from his mouth. Robin wears a masquerade-party type masks that covers solely his eyes.
If the level of a masks is hiding your identification, so no enemies can hurt you when you’re in civilian mode, or by attacking your mates and household, Robin’s masks is an actual drawback. Batman is endangering not simply Robin, but in addition himself, Alfred, Batgirl, and… I suppose that’s their entire internal circle. However nonetheless.
Even the modernized Robin of the ’90s, performed by Chris O’Donnell, wore somewhat masks that hid virtually nothing. Ditto for Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone).
The Robin Hood Factor
Robin was modeled on Robin Hood. In 1940, when Robin was launched, Robin Hood was a red-hot popular culture property due to the 1938 Errol Flynn hit The Adventures of Robin Hood (see publicity nonetheless, above).
However Robin Hood is legendary for 2 issues. One is stealing from the wealthy and giving to the poor, and the different is capturing arrows.
Robin, on the different hand, works for a billionaire, serving to him beat up road criminals, and doesn’t even get arrows, which is perhaps useful, given the criminals’ weapons. Particularly contemplating his loud, gaudy, bullet-magnet costume,
Batman and Robin and Dying
As we talked about, there have been a number of Robins by means of the years. When Dick Grayson grew up and turned Nightwing (lastly donning a darkish coloured costume — sensible!), he was changed by one other Boy Marvel, Jason Todd, in 1983.
However 5 years later, partially as a result of followers didn’t love Jason Todd, DC Comics launched the groundbreaking Dying in the Household storyline during which The Joker bombed a constructing with Jason inside — and followers obtained to name a 900 quantity to resolve if Jason lived or died. Followers voted for him to die. (However don’t blame 13-year-old me — I voted for him to reside.)
What’s even weirder than followers voting to explode a youngster is that after Jason’s demise, nobody from the state got here to say, “Hey — what occurred?” Nobody investigated Bruce Wayne for possibly, doubtlessly, placing the poor boy in hurt’s approach. It was simply, “Hey, that child who seems to be precisely like Robin by no means comes round anymore.”
Ward
In the basic Batman TV present Adam West’s Bruce Wayne would typically confer with Dick Grayson as his “youthful ward.”
Cornell Regulation Faculty’s Authorized Data Institute defines a “ward” as “a particular person who’s below the safety, care , or guardianship of one other particular person, usually as a result of being a minor or legally incapacitated.” It notes that “courts appoint guardians to supervise the well-being and decision-making of wards who’re unable to look after themselves.”
This implies Bruce Wayne needed to go to court docket and clarify that he wished to tackle Dick Grayson as his “ward” — regardless of being, in the eyes of the court docket, a complete stranger to Grayson.
Wouldn’t it’s extra typical to make somebody your foster little one? Or undertake him? Possibly. However right here’s the place issues might get darkish, from a authorized standpoint.
A ward, in contrast to an adopted little one, doesn’t obtain an inheritance — until the guardian specifies it in the guardian’s will. So it’s doable that Batman is endangering Robin, night time after night time, with no assurance that he’ll obtain any a part of the huge Wayne fortune. Which is completely chilling.
Amusingly, the youthful ward of the Batman TV present was performed by Burt Ward, so possibly the present was simply having enjoyable with that.
Apart: Did The Folks’s Joker Get It Proper?
Whereas numerous Batman tales have skimmed over the weirder components of the Batman and Robin relationship, it took a low-budget satire to confront it head-on.
The Folks’s Joker, during which filmmaker Vera Drew performs a trans joker attempting to interrupt into the Gotham comedy scene, incorporates a satirized model of Carrie Kelley, the model of Robin who seems in Frank Miller’s 1986 The Darkish Knight Returns.
In The Folks’s Joker, Carrie gender transitions to change into Jason Todd, who then enters right into a poisonous, predatory relationship with Batman, despite their age distinction and Jason being 17.
Clearly, a sexual relationship between Batman and Robin isn’t canon, and Drew is making enjoyable of the aforementioned homosexual jokes about the Batman and Robin relationship. However what the movie will get proper is that even in the most charitable interpretation, the Batman and Robin relationship entails a mature, rich man placing a a lot youthful, orphaned associate in hurt’s approach. All of us them the Dynamic Duo, however one half of the duo holds all the energy.
It’s bizarre. And weirdly compelling.
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Most important picture: Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin in the Batman TV present. ABC
