Batman is an imposing dark figure of the night, designed to
inspire fear into the superstitious and cowardly lot, so then why does it seem
that the Bat Cave is full of impressionable youth doing everything they can to
follow in his footsteps? Let’s take a look at some of these little praised,
often criticized or even sometimes disliked sidekicks of the Dark Knight.
Robin
Due to several factors, Robin is the most controversial and
probably most disliked of all the sidekicks, no matter the incarnation. The
problem is Robin was first created to lighten Batman and make him more
approachable to kids. The result was a campy cheesy Batman with pedophilia and
homosexual undertones towards his kid sidekick in bright green briefs.
What a lot of people don’t know though is that this
lightening was later written into the Batman story. When Tim Drake, the third
Robin, noticed news stories showing that Batman was becoming more dark and
violent, he decided that Batman needs a Robin to keep him balanced. Drake
brought this to the Dark Knight’s attention, as well as the fact that he had
singlehandedly figured out his secret identity, and Batman made him his new
Robin.
Tim Drake is probably the best Robin in my opinion.
Untainted by the “make Batman lighter” campagn, he’s not dark but just cool.
With his detective skills he’s probably the closest sidekick to actually being
able to succeed Batman permanently one day.
Plus, unlike his previous Robins and the one that followed him, Drake is
the most mature, and seems to be the best at his job, since he frequently went
on solo missions without Batman looking over his shoulders. Don’t let the
histories fool you, just because one Robin was a wuss doesn’t mean they all
were.
Batgirl
I think my favorite sidekick Batman has ever had is Barbara
Gordon as Batgirl. She’s such a unique character, even among Batman’s flavorful
life. Barbara isn’t haunted by some terrible tragedy, she doesn’t have a dark
agenda, she saw what fighting the scum of Gotham did to her father, Commissioner
Jim Gordon, and she just wants to help. She’s a fun, light-hearted character
that even Batman couldn’t help but brighten to be around.
What’s really interesting is what happened to her. One
morning, the Joker decides he’s going to try and drive the Commissioner to
madness, so he shows up at Barbara’s apartment and shoots her in the spine.
Batman rounds him up but it leaves Barbara paralyzed from the waist down, thus
unable to be Batgirl anymore. Rather than disappear into obscurity, she
reinvents herself as the computer savvy Oracle, and helps heroes with intel and
computer hacking skills. She even gets a cool little base in Gotham clock
tower, where she forms her own girl super hero team to go run missions for her.
Barbara has probably the most coherent, as well as realistic, story arch of
anybody in DC.
Now I should mention the other Batgirl, Cassandra Cain. She’s
from the time when DC wanted everything to get darker, and is evidence that it
didn’t really make for good storytelling. Cain was raised by her assassin
father to be a ruthless killing machine, but was then taken in by Batman and
Oracle for some reason, where she learned how to not kill and put her talents
to good use. It was hinted early on that she may have some kind of super power
where she could see her opponents next move, but it never was explored very
well. They never really did a whole lot with her, she almost never worked with
Batman and whenever she would team up with another sidekick or hero it always
seemed like she was trying to find a way to kill them. Her costume with the all
black and mouth cover was cool, but in the end she was flash without substance.
Nightwing
A grown up version of the first Robin, it’s hard to classify
Nightwing as a sidekick, but with as much as he hangs out with Batman some days
it’s hard to call him anything else. Once upon a time Dick Grayson got sick of
being Robin and wanted a job where he could wear pants and not dress like a
human target, so he became Nightwing and at first dressed like a male stripper.
Once the artists figured out a decent costume for him, Nightwing became one of
the coolest heroes to jump around Gotham.
Nightwing is the conclusion I would’ve loved to see Batgirl
reach. I know we have a Batwoman running around, but she’s a whole other thing.
I like the idea of the sidekicks eventually growing up and taking on their own
legacies, like Nightwing. It’s interesting to note that he seems to be a
combination of both Batman and Robin, between the acrobatics and black-and-blue
look he’s got going on.
With most other heroes the sidekicks either have to endure
the same freak accident they went through or be from the same planet or
whatever, with Batman’s though all they have to do is be people who for one
reason or another want to improve their world, and were inspired by someone who
already took it upon themselves to do just that. As bad as the mistakes were in
the past, I still think Batman’s sidekicks have plenty of redeeming qualities,
and shoudn’t be discarded as quickly as they have been.
-JOE
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