Originally Posted by
PurpleGlovez
Like Alfred being Bruce's butler from childhood, it's just one of those things I've learned to accept. It seems DC wants Batman to have a more personal and cerebral relationship with his major villains and if Robin was there for their first encounters it might detract from that somehow (not saying I agree with that necessarily).
Interestingly, several early post-Crisis stories, such as Neil Gaiman's Poison Ivy origin and Penguin's Who's Who profile, had some of the rogues gallery post-Robin... it does seem to be the Zero Hour Year One annuals that started to change things. Though there was a 2005 Scarecrow Year One with Robin and he was also in Through the Looking Glass (a Mad Hatter first encounter originally slated for Batman Confidential).
It's always tempting to create a timeline that ignores Long Halloween and Dark Victory except DC clearly considers them canon. They were codified wholesale in Tony Daniel's Batman, referenced as early as Hush, and the 2008 Two-Face Year One revolves around them completely. There's tons of LotDK stories that take place on holidays and span implausible lengths of time, so TLH and DV ironically make those possible and impossible by having the Holiday and Hangman murders take up Batman's sole focus for years on end.