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As Dick Grayson trains to be a superhero in Robin & Batman, his first encounter with a classic supervillain reveals they have an unexplored history.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Robin & Batman #1, on sale now from DC Comics.
The new comic book series Robin & Batman revisits Dick Grayson’s first year after being taken in by Bruce Wayne and training to become the original Boy Wonder, with all the growing pains and friction with the Dark Knight that comes in developing their rapport as the DC Universe’s Dynamic Duo. And with Dick already disobey Batman’s orders by going out to fight crime on his own, he stumbles across a familiar face from his days traveling with the circus as part of the Flying Graysons, with this old acquaintance having since become a monstrous supervillain: Killer Croc.
After Dick’s first mission goes disastrously, with the amateur superhero sporting a different, darker costume than the one he is most known for as Robin, the Boy Wonder is effectively grounded by Bruce for the foreseeable future. Instead, Dick takes the time to fashion his own costume, based on his colorful costume as a circus acrobat and trapeze artist with Haley’s Circus alongside his parents as the circus’ star attraction the Flying Graysons. Now wearing his new, makeshift costume, Robin follows Batman into the sewers the following night as the Dark Knight investigates the sewers before being ambushed by Killer Croc. And when Croc sees Dick dressed up in his Robin costume, he immediately recognizes it and assumes the Boy Wonder recovered it from someone else prompting a surprise flashback in Robin & Batman #1 by Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen and Steve Wands.
Following his skirmish with the fledgling Dynamic Duo in the series, Croc finds the abandoned remains of Haley’s Circus, including his own sideshow attraction where he was exploited for his physical condition and gawked at by circus patrons. Back at his old, traumatic stomping grounds, Croc recalls seeing the Flying Graysons happily passing by his water tank, including a younger, more innocent Dick with his parents, wearing what would become the inspirational basis for his Robin costume as he began his superhero career in earnest. While reconnecting these memories, it is unclear if Croc recognizes Robin as the boy he recalled seeing or if he just believes he wears a similar acrobatic outfit.
Interestingly the circus origin and Killer Croc’s ties to the Bat Family through a Boy Wonder came before the Crisis on Infinite Earths and involved a completely different Robin altogether. Rather than being linked to Batman’s original sidekick, Croc was associated with Dick’s eventual successor and the second Robin Jason Todd. Prior to the reality-altering events of the original Crisis, Jason and his origins matched Dick’s with Jason similarly being a circus acrobat alongside his parents. In this version of events, Jason’s parents were murdered by Killer Croc before Jason succeeded Dick as the new Robin and helped bring his parents’ murderer to face justice.
While Jason was reimagined as being a streetwise youth fending for himself on Gotham City’s mean streets, Robin & Batman restores Killer Croc’s shared circus origins with a Robin, albeit one that appears to have removed his lethal role as the man who killed a Robin’s parents. And in establishing this shared backstory, it heightens the tragedy behind Killer Croc as more misunderstood than a consciously malevolent monster lurking under the streets of Gotham seeking fresh prey. And with Dick making his iconic Robin costume official, the Boy Wonder’s next meeting with Killer Croc may yield more unhappy memories for the reptilian supervillain.
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