Na Na Na Na Na Na Bat-WTF?

3/25/2013

If you haven't heard about it yet, Robin is dead. Again. Although this was planned nearly six years ago, the death of the new Robin is something that's got me thinking about character development.

See, one of the golden rules of writing is to avoid killing off the main character. There is a lot of thought behind the rule. For instance, what good is a character who kills himself at the end of the book? If your story is in first person, it's rather difficult to tell a story once you're dead. Another thought is that main characters shouldn't die unless it is absolutely necessary and fits the overarching plot.

So does killing Robin accomplish any of these things?

Now here's the thing: I've killed off main characters before, but rarely the protagonist. Often times, stories will kill off secondary characters for the sake of pushing the protagonist. However, I've always seen Batman a little differently.

Like most people, I enjoy The Dark Knight tales when Robin isn't around. He's pretty annoying most of the time, but ever since the late 1940s, Batman has needed Robin. In fact, every time he pushes away Robin, he only takes him back. It's a really awkward partnership.

And, of course, plenty of Robins have died (Batman(s) too), depending on which comic strips or novels you follow. If you like Grant Morrison's work, then really there's only one main Robin that died and a glass case displaying his suit as some sort of memorial. Oddly enough, that Robin (Jason) is brought back to life, but Batman keeps the glass case around in the cave, still displaying the old Robin-Hood-like uniform.

To me it seems like Morrison simply killed off a less popular character, to not only make Batman a little darker, but to make his comic work more appealing. However, it does seem he has some good reasons:

"Well it seemed natural to the genesis of Batman, you know, a way to get to the roots of these characters and to the engine that makes them work. Batman is all about the death of his parents. So I kind of thought that Bruce Wayne, for all that he loves his parents, there must be parts of him that hates his father for not being Batman that night and saving everyone and there must be parts of him that hates his mother for leaving him alone in this bizarre and peculiar life, so what I did was base my entire run on this idea of the bad father, the bad mother, and the bad son.

And the bad father was Dr Hurt. And in the story the bad mother is Talia and the bad son is Damian, and he becomes a good son in the end but it's too late and he dies because really what he represents is this whole twisted loss that's at the heart of the Batman myth. But yeah, it was all based on that original idea about Batman watching his parents die and how that must have affected him and how it affects all his relationships and all his battles with villains, it's all in there. So we just made it a bit more obvious by playing on, very specifically, is it a bad father, is it a bad mother? And here's a bad little kid who becomes good, which is Batman's story as well."

Admittedly, bringing Batman back to his roots could prove to be a great move. However, it's been done a dozen times before. Let's kill someone to bring Batman to the point he almost kills people. (See Batman: Knightfall.)

Honestly, I think Robin is needed (at least in books/comics) to provide a sort of duality. We've got Bruce Wayne who is a drunken playboy by day and anti-hero by night. A real ass-kicker. But I think having Robin around works to bring Batman back to his roots as much as killing him does.

Robin, while he's around, is generally arrogant and is often scolded by Batman. What this does, in turn, is bring Batman back to his roots. It reminds him of his own principles. It reminds him of his one rule, which derives from compassion and sometimes commiseration. Quite honestly, without Robin, Batman kinda becomes a role-playing asshole. I mean, even the Joker ends up needing Harley Quinn.

But that's just my rantish thoughts on the matter. WOULD YOU HAVE KILLED OFF ROBIN TOO?

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