Few people, when asked what it is about Batman that makes him so compelling, will talk about Robin. They’ll mention Batman’s iconography, his tragic upbringing, his mix of power and pain, but what they won’t mention is the revolutionary superhero plot device that was introduced to make the character flow a little better, who then evolved into a popular character in his own right.
Robin wasn’t the first sidekick, but he was the first sidekick to a superhero, and deserves the credit for not just the cliches, and jokes, but also the myriad of dynamics that have tried to emulate the teamwork of Batman and Robin. Batman’s ability to work as a teammate is his most redeeming quality, and Robin brings it out in him in ways that lend lightness to a comic and a character that can sometimes be too heavy handed.
Starting, essentially, as a talking plot device, Robin’s story function has primarily been to drive Batman’s evolution along. Over time, this has added up to some wild story twists that put Robin in a lot of sticky situations. Batman almost always comes through in the end, but this only spurs creators to design more dangerous, disfiguring, deforming traps to send the Boy Wonder careening off into.
Along the way, the character has racked up quite a history of scars and experiences. Beyond Dick Grayson too, the Robin mantle has been extended to new faces that are subject to Batman’s collateral damage heavy lifestyle.
For more on this sidekick turned compelling character, here are 20 Strange Details About Robin’s Body.
Five Different Robins, Five Different Body Types
The first Robin, Dick Grayson, was a natural gymnast due to his parentage, and of average height.
Next, Jason Todd, a gymnast like Grayson, was slightly shorter, with slightly worse posture.
Tim Drake took up the mantle of Robin after it had been vacant for a long time. He was on the taller side, but had a slighter build.
Stephanie Brown is the only woman to play the role in the main continuity, although other universes have told those stories. Brown was born to a villain’s family, but she switched to heroism, also going by the name Spoiler.
The present Robin is Damian Wayne, son of Talia al Ghul and Bruce Wayne. He’s also spent his life training from a young age, but he’s only around ten years old.
One Time Batman Had To Blow Him Up
In what appeared to be an elaborate ruse, Batman and Robin faked a madman routine that ended up with Robin at the center of an explosion detonated by Batman’s thumb.
Batman: Odyssey, the maxi series written and drawn by Neal Adams, was criticized heavily on its release. When Sensei and Anubis kidnapped Robin in an effort to extort Batman in issue #5 of the series, the Dark Knight wastes no time exploding the bombs strapped to Robin.
Not only did he show supervillainy everywhere that Batman has no fear, but Neal Adams also granted Robin the ability to walk away from the middle of an explosion unscathed.
He Was Raised to Host Ra’s al Ghul’s Soul
Damian Wayne, the son of Batman and Talia al Ghul, wasn’t originally raised to one day inherit the cowl. He grew up far away from his father, with his mother and the League of Assassins. Ra’s al Ghul, commander of the league and Damian’s grandfather was actually grooming him to one day host Ra’s’ eternal soul.
Ra’s al Ghul and one of his minions, the White Ghost, plotted to sacrifice Damian’s soul during a training excursion to the Australian Outback.
Fortunately, Damian caught wind of the plot in time, and was able to signal his father for his rescue. For a brief time, Tim Drake was considered a fitting replacement to house the head of the demon, until a fitting mystical source of rejuvenation was found.
His Teeth Were Claimed By The Court of Owls
When Scott Snyder introduced the Court of Owls into the history of Gotham City, he did so by bringing them to Batman’s attention in a very direct way.
Talon, the head of the shadow organization, is the operative that does all the dirty work. Basically, it’s a rolling position, and the person the Court was pursuing next was Dick Grayson.
Bruce Wayne wasn’t the only one impressed by Grayson’s talent, apparently, as it’s revealed the Court marked him from a young age to become Talon.
A compound was filled into one of his teeth that would prepare him for his eventual passing and resurrection.
The adult Dick Grayson refused this honor and in the end, it took Batman hitting him with a haymaker across the jaw to lose the tooth and the creepy destiny.
He Was Taken Out By The Joker, Then Resurrected
The story of Jason Todd’s tenure as Robin is a sad one that culminates in the 1988 story Death in the Family. This Robin had a jumbled origin thanks to the Crisis on Infinite Earths and had never gained much traction with fans to accept him as the Robin replacement. On the page, he was struggling to follow Batman’s rules and was reprimanded repeatedly for excessive force.
In ‘88, DC Comics decide to hold a poll, by phone answering service, to ask fans whether he should survive. By an incredibly slim margin, the fans vote to move on. The following story, written by Jim Starlin and drawn by Jim Aparo, tracked Jason Todd’s journey to meet his birth mother, only to be lured into a trap by the Joker and submitted to a brutal end.
He Got Transformed into A Bat Monster By Hugo Strange
It was after his time as Robin, but the Nightwing version of Dick Grayson had a physically transformative experience earlier in the Rebirth reboot of the modern DC era. Steve Orlando was the mastermind behind Night of the Monster Men, a six part crossover event that spread across the Batman, Detective Comics, and Nightwing titles.
Dr. Hugo Strange is behind a new genetic resequencing scheme to transform his cronies into monster soldiers. Once the DNA modifier is channeled into a gas, it’s only a matter of time before Nightwing, Gotham Girl, and other members of the Bat-family are infected and transformed. Some quick antidote concocting by Batman and Tim Drake, now known as Red Robin, reversed the transformation, but for a time, one of Batman’s former sidekicks was changed into an out-of-control monster.
Batman made him eat rats
In Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin, he takes the bond between both characters to new, more intense heights
Even after welcoming him to the family, Bruce still felt Dick needed to prove himself and his desire to be a superhero.
As a rite of passage, Dick was confined in the Batcave for days on end, and forced to eat rats as his only form of sustenance.
This take on Batman definitely presents a more intense mania for the character. It makes sense that Bruce wouldn’t really be a people person, and he would make new people in his life jump through extreme hoops to get close to him. Readers too, now know that Robin is dedicated enough to do anything.
He Holds Multiple Skydiving World Records
When Dick Grayson moved on from being Robin into his adult alias, Nightwing, he struggled to put some distance between himself and the Batcave. Bruce Wayne casts a long shadow and, like any young adult, he wanted to make a name for himself.
When Nightwing took over his own series, he moved to Bludhaven, spent some time as a cop, and took up extreme skydiving.
Whether it was chasing thrills or legitimate training, Dick Grayson used his small fortune and love of aerial stunts to enter a world of base jumping and ultimate free fall that let him break Guinness World records.
The arc, entitled “Freefall”, was written by Peter Tomasi and contains art by Rags Morales, and it was one of many responsible for moving Nightwing past his Robin days and into being one of DC’s coolest heroes.
He Was Attacked by His Own Clone
In Grant Morrison’s era defining Batman run, he introduces Damian Wayne and draws out the slow growing relationship between he and his father. After Damian decides to live with his father, Talia sends the League of Assassins and soldiers of the Leviathan after Batman.
Damian, living up to his role as Robin, fends them off but ultimately falls when his clone, an older version of him known as the Heretic, breaks through and finally defeats Robin.
After Damian’s passing, Batman and even his new Bat-siblings mourn his loss, despite his abrasive attitude. Eventually Damian is resurrected, but only after the League steals back his body, many more clones are created, and Batman can finally track him down and commit to restoring the life of his son.
He Turned Into A Shape-Shifting Joker
Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker puts a strange twist on Robin. In 2040 Gotham City, the Joker has resurfaced after a long absence.
In the course of new Batman Terry McGuinness’s detective work, it’s revealed that in the past, Tim Drake was captured by the Joker and was tormented until he became a version of the Joker himself.
Once all of this is brought to light and the Joker is confronted, it’s further revealed that Tim Drake can still be changed into the Joker whenever the villain presses a simple button. The future gets even crazier than we thought.
He could time travel through hypnosis
Early in the days of the original series, both Batman and Robin could travel to different periods in history using only a specific kind of hypnosis on themselves.
Batman #24, published in 1944, first introduced this new ability to the dynamic duo’s repertoire.
Robin used it to square off against Romans in Classical times, go on raiding parties with Vikings, and even fight with the Three Musketeers.
Joe Samachson and Dick Sprang wrote and drew that issue and even though this power is a little campy or corny for today’s Batman readers, we’ve got to get credit for leading Batman and Robin into the theater of the mind, and stretching the limits of imagination.
He’s naturally a redhead, but dyes his hair
Jason Todd, the second Robin, took up the mantle in the early ’80s from Dick Grayson, but the new character sounded a lot like the old one. Like Grayson, Todd also was a circus performing trapeze artist and he was also orphaned by a Batman villain.
In Bruce Wayne’s defense, it worked pretty well the first time, so why not go through the same process, see if it turns out another solid sidekick?
Once approached to become Robin, Jason Todd was so excited that he dyed his hair from red to black in order to perform the role more seamlessly.
Unfortunately, it went downhill from there, and despite moments of success as the new Boy Wonder, Jason Todd went down a different road.
The Joker Once Served His Face
In the New 52 Bat-family crossover event, the Joker gets inside Batman’s head in a way he never has before with writer Scott Snyder. That dark vision is brought to life dramatically by artist Greg Capullo in the first run the two teamed up on.
In a deranged plea to prove to the Batman that they need each other, Joker managed to kidnap entire nuclear Bat-family, including all current the Robins and Batgirl.
At a banquet the Joker holds for his captives, an enslaved Alfred pulls the lid off of the platters in front of the heavily bandaged heroes.
In front of each of them is a gruesome sight crafted to look like the Joker has removed all of their faces. It was a simulated event that would surely lead to a real trauma.
He Got Transformed into An Avocado Monster
In one very special fourth season episode of Teen Titans Go!, team leader Robin has a strange reaction to eating avocados, for apparently the first time, on the team’s Cinco de Mayo celebration. Along with a fondness for the fruit, Robin also notices some enhanced abilities and brain power that he attributes to the superfood.
This escalates into a rampaging desire to consume more and more avocados until eventually, Robin is completely consumed, and he becomes, the Avogodo, trampling everywhere in a Johnny Appleseed-eque quest to plant avocado trees everywhere and let the food grow and unending, unquenchable supply.
Guacamole’s spiciness eventually saps the Avogodo’s power, and the more manageable avocado-Robin is subdued.
This proclivity of Robin’s has yet to make it’s way to the comics.
He Can Do A Quadruple Somersault
Not only is Dick Grayson a former circus performer, he was one of the best. His family’s act, The Flying Graysons was world famous and Dick learned so much from his parents that he eventually became one of only four people to be able to do a quadruple, mid-air, somersault.
This is a move that Dick was capable of even as a kid, so it was included in the Flying Graysons show.
The fact that he continued to do the unique somersault while he was Robin is part of how Tim Drake discovered that Batman was Bruce Wayne. That’s quite a detail to notice all on his own. One Robin with world class agility, the other with world class detective skills.
She Was Done In With A Power Drill, Then Resurrected
Stephanie Brown’s time wearing the red and green of the Robin costume was cut short by her clash with Batman. Stephanie, daughter of retired villain, the Cluemaster, was never able to get on the same page as Bruce Wayne and she was cut from the team repeatedly for a failure to follow orders.
This did nothing to dissuade her, however. After one acrimonious split, she broke into the Batcave and tried to run a mission on her own. The result landed Gotham in peril and she wound up in the hands of the Black Mask.
Once he captured her and used his violent methods of persuasion, she managed to escape, but still perished. Stephanie Brown came back to the Bat-family later, but only ever as Spoiler.
He’s A Fan Favorite Love Interest
Dick Grayson, the first Robin, has long been the center of many romantic entanglements. First Batgirl, then Starfire, and even Alfred’s niece Daphne Pennyworth have been mixed up with Grayson on and off again just in the time that he was Robin. The adult Nightwing has engaged in trysts with Huntress, Raven, Zatanna, and Mirage, to name a few.
As someone who’s grown up around superheroes, Dick Grayson understands, perhaps better than anyone, the dangers of dating while crime fighting. For him, though, these romantic diversions never escalate to full on distractions.
That’s one of the things that separates him from Bruce Wayne. Where Batman saw love and romance as an enemy to pull him from his mission, Robin knows that it’s what keeps him going.
Batman has mistreated him
Aside from the rat eating incident already mentioned, especially in the earlier days of the Batman and Robin team up, there were several episodes of what would be called physical abuse or assault by today’s standards, especially for a rich guy and his adopted ward.
Of course, there’s the famous panel of Batman striking Robin across the face, but he’s also fired Robin multiple times, erased his memory, tried to drown him, blew him up, spanked him, allowed his passing, and in the Batman Beyond continuity, he even cheated with Barbara Gordon.
Not all of those are as shocking as a slap to the face, but it’s a fair accounting of what Robin’s had to put up with as Batman’s right-hand man for all of these years.
Martial Arts Skills
After his Robin career, Dick Grayson would go onto favor Escrima sticks, used originally in the real life Phillipine martial art, escrima. His sticks are boosted with a lot more tricks than the traditional ones, though.
Jason Todd has also gone onto a long post-Robin career as the troubled anti-hero Red Hood. He’s much more of a brawler than the rest, and maybe the most fascinated by guns and explosives.
Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown prefer the long bo staff, although they were both trained in the standard Bat-family broad spectrum martial arts that includes Karate, Aikido, and Judo.
Damian, due to his upbringing with his mother and the League of Assassins, carries a katana, which, while always tempting him to use lethal force, more than makes up for his small stature.
His Aging Patterns Can Be A Bit Uneven
Dick Grayson debuted as Robin in 1940, and for a 78 year character history, he still looks pretty good.
Aging up the first Robin has been a balance of preserving his prime crime fighting years, and moving the character forward.
Grayson became Robin at age 15, then around the mid ’60s, he teams up with a couple other heroes and starts the beginnings of the Teen Titans, but he’s still Robin and working with Batman as much as he can.
In the ’70s, the team on the main Batman title decided to send Grayson to Hudson University, so maybe he’s 18 years old around then.
It’s not until 1984 that he takes on the Nightwing persona and starts to build his own name. The current age of Nightwing is listed at 25 years old.
What other strange things do you know about Robin’s body? Let us know in the comments.
