Bruce Wayne goes out to enjoy a night at the circus. He, along with much of Gotham, is there to see the Magnificent Flying Graysons, a husband and wife team, famous for performing death-defying acrobatics with their young son, Dick. Halfway through their performance, tragedy strikes. The young couple fall to their deaths as the result of criminals tampering with their ropes. Dick is angry, and seeks justice for his parents. Bruce sees his own tragedy in the eyes of this child, and reaches out to him. He can’t take the pain away, but he can teach the boy how to focus his rage into measured, intentional justice.
As we celebrate Dick Grayson’s 80th year in comics — Robin the Boy Wonder was first introduced in Detective Comics #38, which bears a cover date of April 1940 — we have to reflect not just on what he did for Batman, but what he’s done for superheroes overall. Batman’s story is often reduced to the enduring tragedy he experienced as a small boy and how it never seems to leave him, but for many, the most important part of his tale is the way he reached out a hand in kindness to a child who needed him. There’s no denying that the introduction of Robin to Batman’s story changed Bruce’s story forever and, most likely, increased its longevity in the public consciousness by setting him apart from countless grim pulp heroes of his day. Dick gave Bruce someone to stick around for. The loner was not alone anymore.
According to longtime Grayson writer Tim Seeley, “Batman is a guy who, left to his own devices, would go too far. His need for revenge is so great that he wouldn’t know where to stop. Dick Grayson is the guy that can add levity, and pulls Batman back, and reminds him that it is what they do and who he does it for…” He adds, “Dick Grayson becomes what the entire industry of superhero comics needed.”
Robin: The Early Years
Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, with a costume design by artist Jerry Robinson (based on the Robin Hood designs by N.C. Wyeth), Robin was the first member of what would evolve into one of the most complex supporting casts in all of comics. He was the first superhero sidekick, who would ultimately go on to define the role only to redefine what that concept could mean as he eventually learned to go his own way. For decades after his debut, he and Batman would often appear without one another (though his popularity did warrant a long-running solo back-up presence in the post-WWII era of Star Spangled Comics).
One of the most beloved Robin stories is “Robin Dies At Dawn!” in Batman #156, from 1963. In this, we discover that losing Robin is Batman’s greatest fear – he retires after enduring psychedelic nightmares of Robin’s death during a voluntary experimental psychological test. When Batman does come out of retirement once more, it is because of his responsibility to protect Robin.
The impact this one story had on creators is impossible to fully measure – many Batman writers have cited it as one of the most influential comics of all time. For current Nightwing writer Dan Jurgens, it was the first comic he ever read. “I was walking through the neighborhood on a warm spring or summer night and there were some older kids sitting on the stoop with comics,” Jurgens told IGN. “One of them had an old, wrinkled copy of Batman#156, with the classic ‘Robin Dies At Dawn’ cover. Robin? DEAD?! How is that POSSIBLE? I read it right on the spot and was pulled right in. The seductive power of comics did its thing.”
In 1964, Robin became a founder of the Teen Titans, initially a back-up feature in which the sidekicks of the superheroes teamed up with each other to fight crime. This marked the beginning of a new era for sidekicks, as characters like Aqualad, Wonder Girl, and Speedy stepped up into more prominent roles under the leadership of Robin. This series attempted to tackle the changing culture by infusing slang into their dialogue and giving them bizarre, sometimes psychedelic villains like the Mad Mod. But as the ’60s drew to a close, the popularity of the book sputtered out.
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Meanwhile, the debut of the Batman TV series in 1966 rocketed Robin to multimedia stardom. In the mid-’60s, the sheer zaniness of the dynamic duo was given a boost by this new concept starring Adam West as a charming, campy Batman. Burt Ward was cast as Robin after the showrunners met him and felt his real-life persona encapsulated the wholesome charm of Dick Grayson so perfectly that no further auditions would be needed. It’s hard to argue with their decision – Ward’s is still one of the most iconic takes on the character.
In the words of Burt Ward, “What Robin means to me is the pureness and innocence of life. We’re all born innocent… not all of us turn out well, but we all start in basically the same place. We all have an opportunity to do something wonderful in life.”
After the cultural collapse of the flower child optimism of the 1960s, the American people were heading into a new era of cynicism in the ’70s, which put them at odds with the brightly-colored fun of the Batman TV series. To rejuvenate the franchise, Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams took over the main Batman title, and wrote Dick out of the book by sending him off to college. Written by Gerry Conway, the college-era back-up stories in Detective Comics effectively ended his pre-existing partnership with Batman. Going forward, they would be on more equal footing.
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Becoming Nightwing
When the Titans returned in 1979 under the creative team of George Perez and Marv Wolfman, Robin once again took leadership of the team, but he had changed from a plucky sidekick to a no-nonsense detective. He began his first serious long-term relationship with teammate Starfire, whose comparative moral flexibility forced him to confront Batman’s rigid ideologies. By the time the infamous The Judas Contract storyline hit the stands in the ‘80s, which included moral event horizons for several members of the team as they reeled from the betrayal of one of their own, Dick had shed his Robin persona forever to become Nightwing.
According to writer Marv Wolfman, “It was fairly simple, actually. I got a call that [DC] really would like Robin back in Batman, and they wanted Robin to be younger. Again, because Batman really needed a partner. The nice thing was that Teen Titans — which I was still on at the time — was way outselling Batman and I really wanted Dick Grayson and I really loved the character. We had aged him, we had made him a real leader, we had done a whole bunch of things with him, and I didn’t want to give up Dick Grayson. And it suddenly struck me — I don’t even know what happened because it was unprecedented in comics — I said, ‘Why don’t I keep Dick Grayson and you create a new Robin and make that a big to-do in Batman … while we have Nightwing.’”
Source: IGN.com Robin at 80: The Superhero Sidekick Who Saved Batman