“ROBIN THE BOY WONDER”

Actually the promised Monster Men will have to wait. It's time to introduce Robin! Robin is critical to the entire character of Batman and there is a major tonal shift in this issue away from sheer violence into a kind of justice rooted in care.

Robin's acrobat parents are murdered by a gang attempting to extort the circus they work for. They are made an example of when the circus boss refuses to pay the protection racket.

In this one Bruce takes the night off to go to the circus. Batman can have little a circus, as a treat.

So many major events have happened to him by total freak coincidence.

This is the first real moment Bruce demonstrates a genuine compassion. He clearly sees himself in Dick Grayson, with whom he now shares a core trauma. Robin has so many functions…

He is a chance for Bruce to change his own past. A chance to heal by healing others. Conscience, humor, and a tether to humanity. Batman allowed to be the father he never had. Chosen family. Sometime who understands.

Batman on his own is fundamentally a broken person. Maybe this is why I find him so compelling? In some ways he is a real arrested development. His alter ego a self trapped in permanent dissociation. Still, is his risking Dick wildly irresponsible? Yes, of course.

Batman's violence is tempered here. Where before he seemed to enjoy the violence for its own sake, here he seems genuine in his desire for justice. Notably, the police are as much the enemy here as Zucco's gang, as we learn the whole force is paid off.

This goes a way towards narratively justifying Batman's methods as necessary to protect ordinary people from corrupt and exploitative institutions rather than a cop who doesn't have to play by the rules.

(Love Bruce discoursing midair with complete nonchalance also.)

This is Batman rooted more firmly in a desire to protect others from what he has suffered, rather than pass it on to others in rage.

Batman is bonking people's heads together in this one. The violence feels more, well, comic.

Batman is back on his quip game too.

This Batman crashes a high society gambling operation and begins redistributing Zucco's wealth.

Christ Driving the Money Changers From the Temple (El Greco, 1609)

This guy looks completely out of his mind relieved. So glad we pause for this lil nugget of side story.

Whoopie!

He's got an axe again!

And looks like Jared Leto was not the first to pull this gag. Batman did it first!

Biblical allusions continue with Robin as David. For the first time, Batman feels like he's here to protect the defenseless against the corrupt. Maybe his appeal IS rooted in the hope that we are not alone at the mercy of corrupt capital and its cronies. We won't be abandoned.

There is someone there for Robin. And maybe Batman doesn't want there to be any more Bruce Waynes. Batman is loss and the wounds we grow around but never close. The seeming paradox of the lonely Batman with an ever growing family makes perfect sense.

You can read his broader narrative as one of confronting a deep loneliness, deep isolation, deep grief.

Here is an example from years later in The Killing Joke. This is the truer spirit of Batman. And I think it may have been birthed in this issue.

Even this glee in violence is about comeuppance rather than bloodlust. I'm not trying to justify the violence, per se, but to note the shift in emphasis.

We wrap up really quickly. Well, Dick we avenged your parents, what's next?

Oh yeah, they fight Zucco on a rooftop construction site, unconstitutionally force a confession before Zucco kills one of his own men, which Robin catches on film.

But then it ends on this unholy nightmare of a panel. "I ought to whale you, you reckless squirt," says a completely possessed demon Bruce. This face will haunt my dreams.

Originally tweeted by Weird Batman of the Golden Age (@GoldenAgeBats) on June 16, 2022.