Posted: 08 July 2009 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | 12
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Except Robin HAD trained for years. To be an acrobat. So he had the physical agility and strength and skill that Batman had to learn. All Robin needed was the detective skills but Batman always led the way there.
Even in comic books, having Robin BE Batman at 12 or whatever strains believability. When I was 12, I knew Robin was not as formidable in ANY way as Batman.
And considering everything else, why would these storytellers put a 10 year old kid into the current Batman mix? What's the point? Who does "Robin" appeal to, now? Why does this "Batman" need a Robin? Why not find a character to team him with, if need be...a new Catwoman dynamic or something. Straighten out the Creeper and let him be "Robin."
It's flat-out creepy to have 10 and 12 year old kids as superheroes nowadays. Especially considering who is reading the superheroes, and the very prevalent moron mentality that questions Batman's sexuality and motives with his "ward." Adults aren't reading Batman and "Robin" to get in touch with being a kid again. Why would a badass 10 year old give these people such a rod? What is "Robin" to them?
You want to have kids as superheroes, then have kids as superheroes. Don't make them killers and total badasses. If you MUST have them, keep them in context. I'm not crazy about Cassie Sandmark, in JB's WONDER WOMAN, but I understand her purpose. If you gotta have Robin in order to have Batman, then why isn't Robin the counterbalance to Batman's more severe outlook? Shouldn't the kid be a kid? Shouldn't he remind everyone what it's like to be a kid?
I think about stuff like TREASURE ISLAND or KAMANDI, where the kid is a kid with a kid's vulnerability, but he gets by on luck and hardheaded spunk and the part of him that will become, in some far-off future, a great man and hero. Johnny Storm is a hothead, and a little prone to foot-in-mouth, but he's a teenager and we were ALL like Johnny Storm, in one way or another.
But the point of those characters is their YOUTH, their youthful naivety or ignorance or raw emotion. I can understand Robin as a kid learning how to be a man and a hero. Anything else and he's not a kid but he's a child's age, and the relationship grows into something alien and weird. Shocker, just like Morrison himself.
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