Robin (character)

• 1. A Vote on a Sidekick

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  Robin, the young partner of Batman in DC Comics, once had his fate decided by a telephone poll. In 1988, DC invited readers to call a 1-900 number and choose whether the second Robin, Jason Todd, should die. The count came in at 5,343 votes for death and 5,271 against. Mainstream media gave the event more attention than any comic book event before it. A margin that narrow is a strange thing to hang on a character who was invented to be a friend and a stand-in for the reader. Robin is not one hero but an alias worn by several. Some are orphans, one is the child of an assassin's household, and one is a robot in the far future. This documentary asks why a boy was added to a lone crime fighter, who has worn the cape since, and why the role keeps outliving the people inside it.

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• 2. A Watson for Batman

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  About a year after Batman's debut, Detective Comics #38 introduced Robin the Boy Wonder in April 1940. Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson created him. DC wanted a way to attract young readers, and the plan worked. Critics responded warmly, and sales of the Batman titles doubled.

  Jerry Robinson remembered exactly where the name came from. As a boy he had loved Robin Hood, and he owned a Robin Hood book illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. When he suggested the name, Kane and Finger liked it, so he sketched a costume. He admitted, "it's Wyeth's costume, from my memory, because I didn't have the book to look at." The medieval look of the original outfit came from that same memory.

  Bill Finger had a more practical reason. He described Batman as a blend of Douglas Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes, and then pointed out that "Holmes had his Watson." His complaint was that Batman had nobody to talk to, and constant inner thinking grew tiresome on the page. Kane called him over and said he planned to put a boy in the strip so readers could identify with Batman. Finger said, "I thought it was a great idea."

  The nicknames Caped Crusaders and Dynamic Duo grew up around the pair. Later Robins also joined the superhero groups the Teen Titans and Young Justice. The original Robin, Dick Grayson, was a founding member of the Teen Titans and became its leader.

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• 3. Dick Grayson, the Boy Wonder

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  At eight years old, Dick Grayson was the youngest member of a circus family act called the Flying Graysons. A gangster named Boss Zucco, loosely based on Edward G. Robinson's Little Caesar character, was extorting money from the circus. As a warning against defiance, he sabotaged the trapeze equipment and killed Dick's parents, John and Mary.

  Batman investigated the crime. As the billionaire Bruce Wayne, he took Dick into his custody as a legal ward. Together they gathered the evidence needed to bring Zucco to justice.

  The first costume Batman made for the boy had a red tunic, a yellow cape, green gloves, green boots, and green spandex briefs. A utility belt completed the outfit.

  From his debut in 1940 through 1969, the character was billed as the Boy Wonder. Then he became the Teen Wonder, from 1970 into the early 1980s, as he finished high school and enrolled at Hudson University. Star Spangled Comics #65-130, published from 1947 to 1952, had already given him his first solo feature.

  The 1980s brought a new generation of fans through the success of The New Teen Titans. In that series he left Batman's shadow entirely and took the identity of Nightwing. Years later he even stood in as Batman for a time, while Bruce Wayne was traveling through time, with Damian Wayne as his Robin.

  Before any of that, DC felt cautious about turning Grayson into Nightwing and replacing him with a new Robin. The publisher tried to soften the change by making the next boy resemble the old one.

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• 4. Jason Todd and the Crowbar

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  Batman #357, published in 1983, introduced Jason Todd. To minimize the change, DC made him much like a young Grayson. He was the son of circus acrobats murdered by a criminal, this time the Batman adversary Killer Croc, and Bruce Wayne adopted him. He began as a red-haired, unfailingly cheerful boy who fought crime in his circus costume. Dick Grayson eventually gave him a Robin suit, and he dyed his hair black.

  The miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths redid much of DC's continuity. Grayson's origin and years with Batman stayed mostly the same, but Todd was completely revised. The new version was a black-haired street orphan who first met Batman while trying to steal tires from the Batmobile. Batman placed him in a school for troubled youths. Weeks later, after Grayson became Nightwing, Todd proved himself by helping catch a gang of robbers, and Batman offered him the role of Robin.

  DC believed readers had never truly bonded with him. In the storyline A Death in the Family, the Joker beat the young hero severely with a crowbar. The Joker then left him to die in a warehouse rigged with a bomb.

  That was not the end. Reality was later altered, and Todd came back to life as the new Red Hood, an alias that originally belonged to the Joker. After the New 52 relaunch, he became the leader of the Outlaws, a team including Starfire and Arsenal, who had spent years with Grayson in the Titans.

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• 5. Tim Drake Finds an Audience

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  Batman #436, published in 1989, showed Timothy Drake in a flashback as a preadolescent boy. Marv Wolfman wrote it, Pat Broderick penciled the interior, and John Beatty inked it. DC was unsure what readers had meant by their vote. They might have preferred a lone Batman, disliked Todd, or just wanted to see whether DC would go through with it. The 1989 Batman film, directed by Tim Burton, also left Robin out, which gave DC a marketing reason to keep him off the page. Even so, Batman editor Dennis O'Neil brought in a new Robin, and Drake's first name nodded to Burton.

  The storyline "A Lonely Place of Dying" put Drake in the costume. It ended with issue #442, written by Marv Wolfman with cover art by George Pérez. Writer Alan Grant recalled in 2007 that "when the Batman movie came out, the sales went up, if I recall correctly, from around 75,000 to about 675,000." Preorder reports from Capital and Diamond City Distributors called 1989-90 the "Year of the Bat." Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight took four of the top five preorder spots. Batman #442 took the third.

  In 1991, the sequel to the Robin miniseries again placed third in preorders, wedged between variant issues of X-Force and X-Men. Grant said that every issue featuring Robin sold more after that period because "Robin did have his own fans."

  Drake had followed Batman and Robin ever since he saw the murder of the Flying Graysons, and he worked out their secret identities by instinct. He said he wanted to become "The World's Greatest Detective," and Batman said Drake would one day surpass him. His fighting skills did not match Grayson's, but his detective work made up for that.

  His costume had a red torso, yellow stitching and belt, black boots, and green sleeves, gloves, pants, and domino mask. The cape was black outside and yellow inside. He carried a collapsible bo staff and an emergency "R" shuriken on his chest. Neal Adams redesigned the costume, and Norm Breyfogle sketched only the shuriken logo. Breyfogle said fans often credited him for the big double-page splash where the costume first appears, and "I usually have to point out to them that Neal Adams was the one who designed the costume."

  Grant and Breyfogle had at first thought their character Anarky might become the third Robin. They quickly supported the decision to focus on Drake instead.

  In the storyline "Rite of Passage," cult leaders murdered Drake's mother while his father lay in a coma. Grant and Breyfogle gave him recurrent nightmares, including a cemetery lullaby that began "My Mummy's dead...My Mummy's Dead...I can't get it through my head." Scholar Erica McCrystal reads Grant's approach as presenting vigilantism as therapy for children of trauma. Lauren R. O'Connor adds that writers like Grant and Chuck Dixon had a familiar picture of teenage behavior to draw on, which Grayson's creators lacked.

  Chuck Dixon wrote the five-issue miniseries Robin, with pencils by Tom Lyle and cover art by Brian Bolland. Its sequel pitted Drake against the Joker, answering fan demands for a rematch since the death of Todd. The three miniseries led to the monthly Robin series in 1993, which ran 183 issues until 2009. Drake became the first Robin with a comic of his own. He also co-founded Young Justice, then re-formed the Teen Titans and led them until 2009.

  After Superboy, known as Kon-El, died, Drake changed his costume to red and black in tribute. Later he became Red Robin after Batman disappeared. The 2011 New 52 relaunch changed his history so he never took the Robin mantle, but DC's Rebirth relaunch restored it. In the 2020s, he returned to the mantle while Damian searched for himself. He came out to Batman and was accepted, and he began dating his old friend Bernard Dowd.

  His solo series Tim Drake: Robin gives him a partner called Sparrow, whose real name is Darcy Thomas. Sparrow is a former member of the We Are Robin movement, which began as a series launched in June 2015 by writer Lee Bermejo with artists Rob Haynes and Khary Randolph.

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• 6. Girl Wonder and Son

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  When Tim Drake resigned, his girlfriend Stephanie Brown volunteered for the role. She had been the costumed adventurer called the Spoiler, and in 2004 storylines she became the fourth Robin for a short time. Batman fired her for twice failing to obey his orders to the letter. She then stole one of his unfinished plans to control Gotham's crime and carried it out. Her attempt to prove herself set off a gang war.

  Black Mask captured and tortured her while she tried to help end that war. She escaped, but she apparently died soon afterward. Drake kept a memorial for her in his hideout beneath Titans Tower in San Francisco. Then she appeared alive. Dr. Leslie Thompkins had faked her death to protect her. Stephanie went on to replace Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, with a series of her own, although the Flashpoint event erased her time as Robin, and her history as Robin was later restored.

  Damian Wayne arrived in the 2009 story arc "Battle for the Cowl." He is the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, and so the grandson of Ra's al Ghul. Batman did not know of him for years, until Talia left the boy in his care. The League of Assassins had trained Damian to kill at a young age. That clashed with his father, who had vowed never to take a life.

  Ra's had planned to use the boy as a host for his own soul. Batman saved his child from that fate, which forced Ra's to inhabit his own son's body. After that, Damian grew affectionate toward his father.

  In the first issue of "Battle for the Cowl," Damian drove the Batmobile and was attacked by Poison Ivy and Killer Croc. Nightwing rescued him. Jason Todd later shot Damian in the chest. In the final issue, Alfred made Damian into Robin. Grayson, who had taken up the mantle of Batman, gave Damian the role instead of keeping Tim, whom he saw as an equal rather than a protégé. Under the New 52, Damian briefly gave up being Robin as Red Bird, because his mother had put a price on his head.

  A clone of Damian called the Heretic, working for Leviathan, killed him. Batman later returned him to life with Darkseid's Chaos Shard. The 2015 series Robin, Son of Batman, written and drawn by Patrick Gleason, followed his individual adventures.

  As of 2025, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Jason Todd is the Red Hood, and Stephanie Brown is Batgirl. Tim Drake and Damian both share the title of Robin. All four of the young men regard Batman as a father, and he has since adopted new sidekicks named Bluebird and The Signal.

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• 7. Robins on Other Earths

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  In Batman #131, dated April 1960, the story "The Second Batman and Robin Team" has Alfred write a tale about a possible future. Bruce Wayne marries Batwoman, Kathy Kane, and they have a son named Bruce Jr. When Wayne retires, Grayson becomes Batman, and Bruce Jr. trains in secret to become Robin. Several "imaginary stories" followed, ending with Batman #163 in May 1964. Years later the character returned in Superman & Batman: Generations, where his father's missing years lead him to become Robin again.

  DC created Earth-Two to hold characters from the Golden Age of comics. That let creators publish Robin stories while disregarding old continuity, since Robin had until then been published as one ongoing incarnation.

  In Frank Miller's Dark Knight Universe, a twelve-year-old Dick Grayson sees his parents shot during a circus show. Batman asks him to build a costume, and the boy makes a hooded Robin Hood outfit and calls himself "Hood." Batman pulls the hood down and renames him Robin. Batman treats his sidekicks as employees and eventually fires Grayson. In The Dark Knight Returns, a new Robin named Carrie Kelley appears. When Grayson returns as a villain in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Batman bids him a sad farewell: "So long, Boy Wonder."

  The Elseworlds line has stranger Robins. In Batman: Dark Allegiances, Alfred takes the codename Robin while fighting behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany in the winter of 1940. Batman: Thrillkiller, published in 1997-98 by Howard Chaykin and Dan Brereton, sets a Robin named Richart Graustark in the 1960s with Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. In The Blue, The Gray and the Bat, a Native American named Redbird assists Captain Bruce Wayne in the American Civil War. In Batman: Dark Knight Dynasty, an ape named Rodney wears the costume.

  In DC One Million, the Batman of the 853rd Century is helped by a robot called Robin the Toy Wonder. It carries the personality of that Batman as a boy so he will not be consumed by darkness. On Earth-31, Robin Redblade serves aboard the craft Flying Fox, piloted by Captain Leatherwing. On Earth-C-Minus, a world of talking animals, a robin named Boyd is sidekick to the Batmouse.

  In Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100, Robin is a teenage mechanic whose real name is Robin, and he wears no costume. In the Tiny Titans series, Robin is a schoolkid who tries to lead but is rarely obeyed.

  In 2021, DC published Batman '89, a continuation of Tim Burton's Batman films. It introduced a Robin named Drake Winston, a mechanic at Royal Autobody in Burnside, who distrusts cops and authority. His appearance was inspired by Marlon Wayans, who was originally attached to play the role in the Burton films.

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• 8. Robin on Screen

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  According to Entertainment Weekly in 2008, Robin ranks among the greatest sidekicks. His screen life began in the 1943 and 1949 fifteen-chapter Batman serials, where Douglas Croft and Johnny Duncan played Dick Grayson. Burt Ward then played him in the 1966-1968 Batman television series and the related 1966 film. Chris O'Donnell took the part in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Michael Cera voiced the character in The Lego Batman Movie.

  In The Dark Knight Rises, Joseph Gordon-Levitt played Detective John Blake. The ending reveals his full legal name as Robin John Blake, a homage to the character.

  Animation has been generous to the role. Loren Lester voiced Grayson in Batman: The Animated Series. Tim Drake, played by Mathew Valencia, replaced Grayson in The New Batman Adventures. Scott Menville voices Robin as team leader in Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go!, and the second-season episode "The Best Robin" introduces Carrie Kelley and Tim Drake as their own Robins. In Young Justice, Jesse McCartney voices Grayson, and Cameron Bowen voices Drake, who takes over once Grayson becomes Nightwing. Brenton Thwaites plays an older Grayson in the live-action series Titans.

  A 1987 Zeller's commercial gave the character a catchphrase that stuck: "Well said, Robin!" Nick Lang plays him in Holy Musical B@man!, with a portrayal based mainly on Burt Ward's.

  The Damian Wayne version is set to appear in the live-action film The Brave and the Bold, part of the DC Universe franchise. Dick Grayson and Jason Todd will be featured in the animated theatrical film Dynamic Duo, about their origin story. DC Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, and 6th & Idaho are producing it.

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