Robin Broke Batman’s One Rule
Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Teen Titans Special #1.
After Justice League: No Justice, tons of superhero teams were getting rebooted, such as the Titans, Justice League, and Teen Titans. But the new Titans are mostly made up of Teen Titans, which means that the Teen Titans have to do some recruiting. These “new” Teen Titans are Robin, Kid Flash, Red Arrow, Crush, Roundhouse, and Djinn.
This team brings in a lot of fresh blood, whether it be characters new to the Teen Titans, or just new in general. Teen Titans Special #1 showed three stories on how Robin, Kid Flash, and Red Arrow decide to make a newer, badder Teen Titans. While this issue was great, and showed off how the Teen Titans will be different from past iterations, it took one character too far, Robin.
Robin, also known as Damian Wayne, is the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul. He was raised by his mother and the League of Assassins. Once he finally met, and subsequently started working with Batman, he had a large problem. He was raised to kill his enemies, but obviously, Batman isn’t on board with that. Damian managed to stop killing, but he still struggles with his past, and that was shown off great in Super Sons. He intentionally doesn’t tell Superboy about his past, and the terrible things he’s done, because he doesn’t want Superboy to stop being his friend. However, Superboy doesn’t push Damian away, but rather helps him by telling him it’s the future that’s important, not the past. But here in Teen Titans Special #1, Robin’s character development gets thrown away, as he gets back to killing.
Batman doesn’t kill, and makes sure his closest allies don’t either, with the exception of Red Hood. However, after all the development for Damian to fight his upbringing and stop killing, it feels cheap to rob him of it here. Damian begins killing soon after a local Lebanese restaurant is destroyed, and the father of the family that owns the restaurant is killed. But Damian isn’t killing right away, but we do see his interrogation tactics get more brutal, as he drops a guy off of a building to get information.
Damian finds out it was Black Mask who did this, so he goes to his base to confront him, only after remarking that “this strategy isn’t working anymore.” He then goes and confronts Black Mask in the sauna, and he is not messing around. We then see six bloodied Black Mask thugs, that don’t look like they’ll be doing anything ever again. This is troubling enough, as it has been shown many times in that not everybody working for a supervillain is one, such as when Tim Drake’s dad worked for Two-Face, but then Robin goes even farther. Robin pulls a gun on Black Mask, who remarks that “Batman doesn’t use guns.” Robin then corrects him saying “I’m not Batman,” and then we see a flash of light, and the word BANG show up. It’s clear what Robin did, and that he went too far.
When Robin kills Black Mask, he goes back on the development he’s been working on for years. While this does allow him to relearn why he shouldn’t kill, seeing characters go through the same arcs gets tiring, especially when new ones can be explored. But on this other hand, if Robin doesn’t have another arc on not killing, his relationships with other characters will suffer, especially with Batman, Nightwing, and Superboy, who have all helped him get past this. While Robin starting to kill criminals again does open up new narratives, it shouldn’t become the status quo, nor should it be treated so lightly. If Robin kills, it should be treated with more weight. It’s not unreasonable that the destruction of somewhere that reminded Damian of his home could start something like this, it is unreasonable that Damian would be completely fine with killing again.
The new Teen Titans team seems like it will be a lot more abstract from previous versions, which is good for spicing up the stories, it shouldn’t have major character changes that work against years of development, if it doesn’t make sense. I’m not saying that Robin wouldn’t kill, especially after witnessing a planet get destroyed in No Justice, but I do believe that he would treat killing with more seriousness. This new Teen Titans series is already shaking things up, and it really shows what it means by its tagline of “New Blood. New Mission. New Attitude.”
