Robin Begins!

How our introduction to the Boy wonder shaped him for years to come!

Way, way back in Detective Comics (1938) #38 (for reference, at time of writing DC has just published issue #1108 one week ago), we were first introduced to Richard "Dick" Grayson, soon known to basically anyone who has consumed pop culture in the past century as Robin. Everyone knows the basic bones of the story, how he'd been part of a traveling circus, flying on the trapeze with his acrobat parents, when mobster Tony Zucco had one of his men tamper with their equipment, causing the deaths of both parents before Dick's young eyes.

Just how young? That varies depending on what author, canon, year you ask, but it's not essential knowledge, so just pick a number between 8 and 13 in your heart and consider that the answer. Either way, it's too young to watch your parents die, and Bruce Wayne knows that, so he takes Dick under his wing, trains him in crime fighting, and helps him take down Tony Zucco. Again, depending on the canon, Zucco is ran out of town, arrested, or some other fate in a wide variety of possibilities and canons.

We begin to see parallels right away between Dick and Bruce, with a panel of Bruce's anguished face watching the murder of his parents used as direct comparison to Dick's own face upon watching his parents' death. Dick's first disguise on the job, a newsboy, mirrors the journalist disguise Bruce slips into in his second issue of Detective Comics. The two heroes develop what can be described as a parent-child dynamic, alongside their hero and sidekick dynamic, so why is Dick not legally adopted by Bruce in a significant way on panel?

There's a lore reason, but it's one that only meaningfully works in a few contexts and times. In one of the first times it's meaningfully explained, Bruce couldn't adopt him because he wasn't married. He had a fiancée, Julie Madison, but they would split within a dozen Detective issues anyway. Later, it's said Bruce simply didn't consider officially adopting him, just taking custody. There are all kinds of explanations, and in some continuities later on, he in fact does adopt him!

This is what I call a "moving target" of canon. There's more than one answer for almost every detail of the situation, and just like Dick's age at the start, there's several options and whichever one feels most right is fine, just because it's reworked and retconned and changed enough that no one answer is definitive. Despite the many unalienable details of the Robin origin story, the question of adoption vs ward is one of those details that fits neither.

Ironically, the question of if the Graysons were targeted, or simply an example, has a much more specific answer. Though they were the ones chosen for the violent act, they weren't the ones being "targeted", per se. Zucco's men, in fact, simply wanted money from Haly, the owner of the circus, as part of a "protection" racket. When he refused (a conversation Dick overheard, which in the original canon at least didn't have direct consequences), they chose to enact retribution and blackmail by tampering with the equipment of the Flying Graysons. It wasn't even about the victims themselves, they were just chosen because Haly himself was the one who could give them the money.

A senseless act of violence, taking the parents of a boy who would grow up to be a hero? Where have I heard that before?

Oh, yeah! Echoing through every issue of Batman from the introduction of his origin until today. Bruce and Dick have echoed each other, in similarity as well as difference, for their whole time being published.

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