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As Robin & Batman explores the early days of the Dynamic Duo, the Dark Knight gives the Boy Wonder is darkest mission yet, echoing one of his own.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Robin & Batman #2, on sale now from DC Comics.
The new comic book series Robin & Batman explores the early days of the Dynamic Duo and Dick Grayson creating his first superhero alter ego as Robin while reframing the more questionable decisions from Batman to take on a child as a sidekick for his never-ending war on crime. This more morally ambiguous side of the Dark Knight and his relationship with Robin goes to new lows as Batman instructs his impressionable Boy Wonder to embark on a birthday mission that will echo an infamous betrayal the Caped Crusader is destined to follow years later by plotting against his fellow DC Universe heroes.
For Dick’s twelfth birthday, Batman begrudgingly agrees to take his new sidekick with him the Justice League’s headquarters so his protege can meet all of the Dark Knight’s greatest superhero colleagues, including Superman. After making the pleasant introductions, Robin is relegated to hanging out with the Justice League heroes’ other underage sidekicks, including Kid-Flash and Wonder Girl, as the burgeoning group of original Teen Titans get into mischief around the superhero headquarters before they each go their own separate ways. But as Robin returns to the Batcave with Batman at the end of the Robin & Batman #2, by Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen and Steve Wands, Dick reveals his true mission while at the Justice League’s headquarters as assigned by the Dark Knight before their birthday trip.
To Alfred Pennyworth’s visible horror, Robin provides Batman with a full dossier on each of the eventual Teen Titans, including a brief personality profile and assessment on each of the young superhero’s respective weaknesses and strengths. Dick denotes each of his future teammates as a “target” and observes that, if the time would ever come to turn on them, they would never see him coming. As an incredulous Alfred asks why such an insidious task was necessary for Dick to carry out among new friends on his birthday, Batman explains that among demigods, Robin may need to develop plans to down the heroes should the need ever arise.
This plan to develop contingency strategies to take down DCU heroes is something that would haunt Batman during the JLA storyline “Tower of Babel” by Mark Waid, Howard Porter and Steve Scott. Running in the pages of 2000’s JLA #43-46, Ra’s al Ghul distracted Batman by stealing his parents’ corpses and obtained the Dark Knight’s plans to take down each member of the Justice League and putting them into action. While the Justice League was angered that Batman assembled such plans without their knowledge, they also observed the pragmatism of placing such tactics in place in case any of them did become rogue however it took some time for several of the heroes to fully trust their teammate after such a harrowing ordeal.
Time has shown that Dick will eventually grow up to become a more trusting hero than his mentor and surrogate father figure, ultimately co-founding the Teen Titans with the very heroes he was tasked to spy on before creating his own superhero identity as Nightwing and emerging from the shadow of the bat. In the meantime, Batman has instilled a sense of paranoia and deception in his first protege that foreshadows a betrayal that will eventually befall the Justice League years down the line and further cause Alfred to doubt Bruce Wayne’s intentions by taking on a young sidekick into such a dangerous double life.
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