Next issue: the big moment where Jason Todd suits up and gets adopted while Dick Grayson takes his exit, seldom to be seen in the Batman titles after. It's a big review to write, so it may take me a few days to get to it.

At this point, the reviews start fast-forwarding ahead as Dick and Babs are largely absent from the Batman titles and ultimately find new status quos for themselves. Crisis on Infinite Earths really isn't that far away in terms of these reviews.

I'm excited to see us finally nearing the end-stage of these reviews where the Batman Family will take a sort of final form that will last for over a decade. I intend to stop in 1990 with Dick as Nightwing, Babs as Oracle, Jason six feet below, and Tim by Batman's side. That's the incarnation of The Batman Family that will hold steady for roughly a decade. After that, I've no particular interest in exploring Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Damian Wayne, Retcon punches, nor post-Flashpoint reboots, but someone else is certainly welcome to take the reigns and continue from where I stop.

Detective Comics #526 (May 1983)

"All My Enemies Against Me!"
Script: Gerry Conway
Pencils: Don Newton
Inks: Alfredo Alcala
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: Ben Oda

Grade: n/a (exploring this issue in terms of Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson, and Jason Todd's developments, but not the story as a whole)


Here comes the big one.

Most know it as the debut of Jason Todd as Robin (sort of):



as the moment where Bruce adopts Jason, or as one of the most memorable team-ups of Batman's greatest foes (as Confessor so aptly explained in this year's Classic Comics Christmas), but it holds tremendous import for the fate of the Batman Family as well.

it's difficult to determine whether Conway had a change of heart partway into this story or just enjoyed faking the reader out because, at first, it looks like Babs and Dick are going to be side-lined once again for this epic throw-down, babs as the helpless female asking her dad to take her along on police investigations (instead of checking them out herself as Batgirl):



and Batman once again springing into action without Dick by his side:




Heck, Bruce almost seems to have moved on and redefined our concept of The Batman Family as of this issue, with Catwoman and Talia Al Ghul fighting by his side:



And yet that teammup proves dysfunctional of necessity. It's essential to the direction of this story that Bruce not find comfort and belonging among those two:



He needs someone/something else.


Fortunately, Babs is nowhere near as helpless as she first appears:



And so, for the first time in two years, Batgirl suits up in an A story and she and Robin get in one final hurrah like it's the good old days and editorial hasn't been trying to diminish these characters for ages now:



For a fan of the classic Batgirl/Robin team-ups, these moments are absolute gold:





and yet they serve as a final hurrah to the team-up that was once the most successful aspect of the entire Batman franchise. We'll never see these two in action together again, as the events of this story also set Dick on a path towards a different destiny:



Whether the plan at this point was to make Jason Todd take over the mantle of Robin or become a different side-kick entirely, the fun-loving days of Robin, The Teen Wonder are over, and it's time for him to grow up:



(not that he hadn't already been doing so in the pages of The New Teen Titans for two and a half years now!)


And there's the convergence point for Bruce and Dick's very separate journeys in this issue: Bruce feels increasingly alone and alienated from his "family," in need of someone new to share his world with



and Dick is ready to grow out of his role as side-kick, now ready to take on the world as an adult.

Jason Todd's introduction and subsequent transformation here may have been the result of a series of lazy conveniences, and his characterization may be that of a total Marty Stu at this point:





but this final culmination of Bruce and Dick's separate destinies is quite beautiful all the same:





For what it's worth, it's never once said nor suggested that Dick will no longer be fighting by Bruce's side after this story, but it's clear from a character progression stand-point: Dick is his own man now.


Important Details:

1. Jason Todd learns Bruce Wayne is Batman, his parents are killed, and Bruce adopts him.

2. Final team-up of Batgirl (Babs Gordon) and Robin (Dick Grayson).

3. Dick Grayson's final adventure as Batman's sidekick.



Minor Details:

1. In yet another gesture of good will to fans of the Batgirl and Robin team-ups, Conway undoes the most infamous attempt by editorial to weaken Batgirl's importance and prowess, revealing that she has once again figured out Batman and Robin's secret identities (after that knowledge had previously been expunged from her memories way back in Detective Comics #489):




2. Last issue, I'd wondered if we'd just seen the final appearance of The Robin motorcycle. Nope. It appears here and will show up again in the pages of New Teen Titans.


I have such conflicted feelings about this story. Jason's transformation into Bruce's next ward and future partner is obligatory and convenient as all heck, and yet I positively love what Doug Moench will go on to do with the character as early as next month, and this may mark the final end of the Batgirl/Robin team-up that began its slow death three years earlier, but Don Newton's visuals make it the most kinetic and exciting team-up the duo has ever had, easily on par with those early Elliot S. Maggin adventures in the first issues of Batman Family.

In short, I hated Jason but love where this story takes him, and I loved Batgirl and Robin and hate where this story takes them. Of course, It was all inevitable and all made total sense from an editorial perspective. I'm at least thankful that Conway and Newton gave Dick and Babs the exit they deserved.

As for the status of The Batman Family as of the end of this issue? We're clearly moving towards a more insular franchise that wants to focus exclusively on Bruce and Jason as the merchandising cash-cow that is Batman and Robin, with no interest in keeping any aspect of The Batman Family going. Dick Grayson's new role is at the forefront of the New Teen Titans, and so finding a new identity for him will be a logical next step. Batgirl, on the other hand, is more or less abandoned after this, making only a handful of subsequent appearances before being even more intentionally marginalized during Crisis of Infinite Earths, after in the Batgirl Special, and then dealt her final blow (both figuratively and literally) in The Killing Joke. These reviews will wrap up once Dick is firmly enmeshed in his new role as Nightwing, Babs is firmly established in her new role as Oracle, Jason Todd has been rebooted and subsequently killed off, and Tim Drake has stepped in to take his place. At that point, those roles will hold steady for about a decade, making it an excellent end point for these reviews.


From here on out, we'll be skipping around in these reviews and moving through time much faster, as Dick and Babs seldom appear in Batman stories, Dick's adventures with the Titans are rarely of consequence to his longterm progression as a character, and Babs rarely goes on to have adventures anywhere. Crisis on Infinite Earths is not all that far away...

DC Comics Presents #58 (June 1983)

"The Deadly Touch of the Intangibles!"
Script: Mike W. Barr
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inks: Dave Hunt
Colors: Gene D'Angelo
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: n/a (only tracking Dick Grayson's progression in this story)

Unique timing, giving Robin a guest appearance in DC Comics Presents immediately after getting ejected from the Batman franchise last month. No one involved in the writing, drawing, nor editing of this story was in any way connected with either the Batman Office or The New Teen Titans at this point, so Robin's showing up here is either a coincidence or is done at the behest of someone higher up at DC/Warner. As I argued in the previous review, Dick's transition at this point is being done entirely for the purposes of licensing, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone is gauging Robin's value as a license here, perhaps attempting to decide whether to retire/replace him on The Titans or give him a new identity (these options were also discussed in the previous review).

It's interesting to note that the last (and only other time) Robin showed up in this title as a solo act was in March of 1981, the last time his licensing role was in flux (while I didn't specifically discuss his appearance in DC Comics Presents, I do discuss the confusion surrounding his role during that time period here).

There really isn't anything memorable about this story beyond its timing. Robin is presented as a solo hero, no mention of Batman nor the Titans, as he is given numerous opportunities to demonstrate his acrobatics and detective skills alongside Elongated Man and Superman:



That second image is where it really becomes clear that this is still about licensing. Barr and his editors have no idea that Robin is supposed to be grim and forelorn right now, both in the Batman titles and in New Teen Titans. Instead, he's as happy-go-lucky as can be. Robin wasn't picked for this story because they were interested in the character; he was picked because they were told to pick him.

Action Comics #546 (August 1983)


"Showdown!"
Script: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: Gil Kane
Inks: Gil Kane
Colors: Gene D'Angelo
Letters: Ben Oda

Grade: n/a (only tracking Dick Grayson's progression in this story)

Further evidence that Warner/DC may have been considering retiring Dick Grayson entirely at this point: the last time the Titans guest-appeared in this title, Robin was at the front and center as team-leader:



from Action Comics #532


This time, he's still there, but Wolfman definitely doesn't make him important. With panel after panel of gorgeous Gil Kane JLA and Titans team-up:





Robin appears in exactly three small panels of this entire story, never in primary focus, and only once speaking a line of dialogue:








If you've been sticking with me long enough, you might recall that, two decades earlier, we saw Robin receive a similar treatment when there was a licensing conflict in regard to animation rights. Robin could not appear in the 1967 Teen Titans cartoon because it was produced by Filmation while Greenway Productions had the licensing rights for Batman and Robin. In the wake of this licensing fiasco came a sudden change in the original Teen Titans title, where Robin was repeatedly sidelined from the main action of the story



from Teen Titans #17 (October 1968)

This resulted in fans writing in, questioning whether Robin was going to be let go from the team and demanding that he remain.

I doubt anyone noticed Robin's near-total absence from a guest appearance in Action Comics quite as much, but somehow he won't be getting the axe anyway. Maybe someone in legal finally reassures licensing that "Dick Grayson" can be licensed out to one company while "Robin" is licensed to another, removing any need to force Dick into retirement.

New Teen Titans Annual #2, #35, and #36 (September thru November 1980)


Scripts: Marv Wolfman (with some plot assists by George Perez)
Pencils: George Pérez, Pablo Marcos, Keith Pollard, and Romeo Tanghal
Inks: Pablo Marcos, Romeo Tanghal
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: John Costanza, Todd Klein

Grades: n/a (only tracking Dick Grayson's progression across these stories)


After getting totally sidelined in Action Comics #546 and New Teen Titans #34, Robin gets the entire New Teen Titans Annual #2 devoted to him, and yet Wolfman and Perez's intentions towards him here are murky at best.

In addition to repeatedly rubbing it in the readers' faces that Robin is still generally seen as The Batman's sidekick and nothing more:





...even though Batman writer Gerry Conway went out of his way to show Jason Todd primarily associating Robin with the Titans a few months back:



from Detective Comics #525


Wolfman and Perez do much to take the previously capable and mature leader of the Titans and ruin him in every way possible, depicting him as incompetent/unprepared:



as a follower and not a leader:



and as someone who unilaterily uses the Titans to enforce his own personal vendettas with no regard for their input and opinions:





In fact, he takes this so far that this little exchange with Wonder Girl leaves her to seriously consider quitting the team:




Let's tap the breaks and pause for a second just to consider one simple question: When the hell did Robin suddenly become this character? We don't even understand what's driving him to do it. Why does Adrian Chase's desire to cross the line as District Attorney compell and haunt Robin so much as to make him compromise his standing with his own team? It's never really explained at all, and even when some of Dick's leadership choices end up being validated, he still maintains a cold, distant front that makes him feel far more like a villain than a hero:





And, when his decisions don't end up being right, he nearly gets the team killed while on a mission they neither understand nor are comfortable executing:



In every way, it feels like Wolfman and Perez are setting up Robin for a fall: ready to turn villain, or at least tap into a side of himself so dark that it causes him to quit/retire by the close.

And yet, he later goes on to make the right choice with Adrian Chase:



...or was it?

And, by the end, without our understanding why, the press now seems to primarily identify Robin as leader of The Titans, no longer invoking Batman's name nor the phrase "junior partner" every time Robin is mentioned:



So...did Robin somehow redeem himself by the close? Are we supposed to feel like he has resolved whatever internal crisis this whole subplot has been? The ending is extremely vague about this, as a concussed Robin seems too dazed and overwhelmed to express much that would help us to understand where he now is as a character:




In short, while Robin's near-total absence from the Titans in the past month felt like a scheme dictated by licensing/marketing to quietly phase out Dick and separate the Robin license from the New Teen Titans license (more on that here), this issue seemed to be trying to do it loudly and dramatically, only to flipflop by the close. In the end, we don't get any real understanding of what the hell this whole internal character arc was about -- neither what brought it on nor how it resolved. Dick will go on to vaguely suggest to Bruce that this somehow taught Dick he needs to choose a path other than Batman's, but I'm at a loss for where the connection is: is Robin equating Adrian Chase's unlawful conduct with Batman's? Is Dick promising to always uphold the law going forward? Will he be requesting search warrants before busting into bad guy hideouts to rescue innocents?

It's all beside the point, really. What matters here is that this character arc never ends up going anywhere. Whatever Wolfman and Perez were building to, they pulled out of that nose dive before the last moment, this fiasco getting mentioned briefly in New Teen Titans #36



again when Dick briefly and incoherently tries to connect this crisis to his relationship with Batman in NTT #37 (more on that in an ensuing review), and then it never really gets brought up again.

So what changed?

If I'm right that DC was pressuring Wolfman and Perez to ditch Robin for licensing reasons, then they must have worked out the events of Batman #368 (only two months away) by this point, in which Dick transfers the Robin name and costume to Jason Todd (and, thus, the license too). If this had been the plan all along, then maybe the issue was whether or not the name "Dick Grayson" was also connected to the Robin license (and therefore could not be attached to the Titans if Warner/DC was going to license "The New Teen Titans" and "Batman and Robin" to different companies at times). If that was the dilemma, then I guess Warner's legal team ultimately decided this was not an issue?

Whatever the case, there seemed to be a clear agenda to push Robin out of the Titans title, and now suddenly that agenda is gone. DC has a new plan for the character that comes with a shiny new trademark free of any Batman licensing rights, and we'll be seeing all this come to fruition shortly.


Important Details:

1. Robin does not appear at all in New Teen Titans #36. Of course, neither do Wonder Girl, Terra, nor Kid Flash.


Minor Details:

1. As of NTT #37, Robin is suddenly a capable leader again, the efforts to sully his standing and abilities as team leader now having been abandoned:

That Don Newton art... Wow. It's tragic that the man passed away at such a young age.

Great reviews, shaxper . The introduction of Jason as a replacement for Robin was indeed clumsy, what with his being a quasi-clone of Dick Grayson... but still, Doug Moench did good with the character. I really enjoyed the way Dick gave his blessing to the new Robin, and the transition was way more sensible than in the absurd post-crisis version.

New Teen Titans #37 and Batman and The Outsiders #5 (December 1983)

Script;: Mike W. Barr and Marv Wolfman
Pencils: George Pérez, Romeo Tanghal, and Jim Aparo
Inks: Romeo Tanghal and Jim Aparo
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: John Costanza and Jim Aparo

Grade: n/a (only tracking Dick Grayson's progression in these stories)


Well, if the past few issues had been testing whether or not fans would accept a New Teen Titans without Dick Grayson on the team, we're sure seeing an about-face here:



We're only two months away from Dick passing on the Robin identity to Jason Todd, so those plans are clearly in place by this point: Instead of removing Dick Grayson from the Titans, they'll just remove the Robin trademark so that the Titans and Batman & Robin can easily be licensed out to different companies without fear of overlap.

So now, instead of driving Robin into quitting, Wolfman and Perez (and, to some extent, Barr) are working to establish Dick as his own unique hero (the kind of hero who will pass on the Robin identity in two month's time), no longer living in Batman's shadow. I'll admit that some of this speech felt like utter nonsense to me (especially how Dick's experience with The Vigilante feeds into any of this), but the overall intent remains clear:



Dick is paving his own way now.

And, by the way, you've got to love that little tease about Jason wanting to be Robin. Funny how quickly Dick comes around to that idea in only two months' time. I wonder if Jason's comment and Dick's response were intended to mess with the fandom that must have been anticipating the idea that Jason might take over as Robin at this point.

Anyway, the purpose of the remainder of this crossover becomes two-fold:
1. Use the New Teen Titans' popularity and sales to promote Batman and The Outsiders
2. Prove to everyone reading that Dick was no junior side-kick anymore.

And so, we see the two repeatedly butt heads as Dick seeks to prove that he is more competent than Batman suspects:





How far we've come from the first time Batman appeared in a comic alongside Robin and the Titans:


from Brave and The Bold #83 (May 1969)


The tension boils to a climax with this powerful moment, in which Barr and Wolfman make a hell of a good argument for why Robin is in some ways superior to Batman:






And there it is. Whereas Dick had previously tortured himself by trying to be as good as Batman:


from New Teen Titans #29


he now understands that, while he pales in comparison to Batman as a solo hero, he is far more tested and practiced as a team leader than Batman has ever been. Would have been nice to have seen Dick arrive at this wisdom organically over time instead of becoming a terrible and largely absent team leader for a string of issues while Wolfman and Perez worked tirelessly to make him a thoroughly unlikable antihero, presumably in preparation to eject him from the title, but maybe it's better just to pretend that NTT #31-36 and Annual #2 never happened.

Anyway, here's the big conclusion we were inevitably building to:





No more conflict between Dick and Bruce. In fact, no more meaningful relationship between Dick and Bruce. Batman has a new sidekick to focus on, and Robin has just proven his worth as a character independent of his old mentor. Now all that's left to do is ditch the trademark so that Dick Grayson and the Titans can move on towards a destiny (largely) apart from Batman.


Important Details:

1. While it was heavily implied seven months back in Detective Comics #526, Dick has now officially ended his partnership with Batman, and they part on good terms.