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.
Batgirl

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.

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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