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In Robin and Batman #1, one of Gotham’s most brutal villains hints that he knows a lot more about the Dynamic Duo than he lets on.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Robin & Batman #1, on sale now from DC Comics.
In the Batman mythos, a few iconic villains have kept secrets about the Dark Knight, with the Joker, Two-Face and Bane holding incriminating intel around Bruce Wayne’s personal and professional past. While they’ve kept it to themselves to harm him as they please over the years, Robin & Batman #1 suggests that one of Gotham’s more sympathetic villains, Killer Croc, may have kept Batman’s civilian identity hidden for decades.
Before he was the cannibalistic monster he is today, Waylon Jones, or Killer Croc, was created by Gerry Conway, Don Newton and Gene Colan and debuted in 1983’s Detective Comics #523. During a flashback in Robin and Batman #1, by Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen and Steve Wands, we see Dick Grayson’s early days as Robin. The Boy Wonder gets grounded by Bruce for his disobedient ways, only to create a new colorful costume that pays homage to his days as a circus acrobat and trapeze artist in Haley’s Circus. There, he performed alongside his parents as one of the Flying Graysons. After their deaths and his adoption by Batman, his FLying Graysons outfit inspired his superhero career, and he went into the sewers on one of Batman’s cases. However, he gets ambushed by Killer Croc. But when Croc sees the outfit, he eases off as he immediately recognizes it’s similar to what Dick wore when they both were in the circus.
Croc manages to escape Dick and Batman, going ‘home’ where he sees the tank where he was a sideshow attraction. There, he was exploited for his physical condition, atavism, and gawked at by patrons. But as he remembers this trauma, he remembers seeing Dick’s family passing by his tank. He connects the costumes and it seems as if he’s reconciling now that Dick could be the vigilante he just fought.
While Croc isn’t exactly one of Gotham’s criminal masterminds, he still would have enough information to realize that Dick Grayson is Robin, and his adoptive father, Bruce Wayne, could be Batman. Croc may just think someone’s impersonating the acrobat, but the way the book has him honing in on Dick’s face at the end in the circus suggests he knows that Dick is Robin, if nothing else. After seeing what Dick went through, Croc may not have said anything to preserve the concept of his new family. After all, Waylon’s mom died when she gave birth to him, so he knows what it’s like not to have a guardian. Even if it meant Batman and Robin would still be out there fighting criminals, there’s a chance Waylon saw himself — or at least a more hopeful version of his life — in Dick, and he may not have minded keeping that secret as long as he could make some quick cash from various heists.
While Croc was originally positioned as the killer of Jason Todd’s acrobat family, this revelation updates that connection to Dick and softens it considerably. Despite his brutal tactics, Killer Croc is a villain who engenders some sympathy from Batman, who has tried to help him on occasion in the past.
Sadly, Croc’s been weaponized by Amanda Waller and other villains over the years, and he’s come to realize that he can’t really trust anyone to be family. It’s this unspoken bond to a lost, angry Dick that seems to have earned Croc’s silence. Killer Croc may be cold-blooded, but he doesn’t seem interesting in crushing an innocent kid’s future.
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