Bermejo Expands Robin Concept Beyond "Teenage White Kids Who All Look the Same"

[buttler]

The way people insist on interpreting a conscious effort to include diversity in a comic as somehow meaning that will be the only point of interest in it is amazing. That's such a huge leap of logic, and a really disturbing one. I don't understand why they find this so threatening.

Can you imagine if Wonder Woman were created today? That was a conscious effort to provide a female superhero, so clearly by this logic it would just be interpreted sight unseen as PC pandering, and why even do it if the only thing about her is she's a woman, and what's wrong with male heroes anyway?

Actually, we don't have to imagine it. We went through this exact reaction when Batwoman was introduced. It was announced in advance that she was a lesbian, and people freaked out because they said what's the point of creating a lesbian character just to create a lesbian character? Why not just create characters without making it some demographic thing? And of course that was a ridiculous argument because Kate Kane was from the very beginning a fully rounded, terrific character who, yes, was a lesbian. She was in fact exactly what the people objecting to her existence were ostensibly advocating. We go through this every time minority characters are introduced if they have any relation to an existing legacy. It's just so exhausting when people get so worked up over the smallest steps forward.

[skyvolt2000]

Heh, good point.

I think it's a better point to use that previous Robins tended to be treated and written alike; no real sense of class or ethnic differences. Really, with nearly every one of them plunked down into the Wayne mansion, how could they be treated differently?

Lets just HOW certain things are done to Duke can and most likely will vary to how he gets treated. It all depends on the writers.

Lets take Duke in a private school as Wayne's kid. Is he the only black kid? the only nonsport playing black kid? the only black kid with a white parent? You could get 50 issues out of that story line alone.

Tim is a product of the typical student middle class americana. Steph lived in a broken home (low class). Jason had no home, taking care of his ill mother in the streets. Dick is classically half romani, growing up in tents and moving on to the next show. Damian is a product of an actual cult. They all dealt with similar issues differently.

Put Duke into all those origins and does he even make it to being Robin? I would say yes if it was Tim or Damian's origin.

I think that is what the writer is trying to say-in a perfect world-we wouldn't see a difference in treatment but we are not in a perfect world.

Duke as Robin and Bruce Wayne's ward, foster son or adopted son-opens up a TON of worms.

Most are racial-with one story line that CAN NOT be ignored.

Batman had 4 white Robins fighting with him. Now he has a black one. SOMEBODY (probably Riddler, Joker or Ral Gul or Lex Luthor) is going to add 1+1 and find out who that Robin is.

Someone is going to notice millionaire Bruce Wayne takes in/adopts (if Duke's parents are dead) Duke Thomas and weeks later a black Robin is roaming around.

Batman had Duke with him all through the current storyline and now a black Robin is roaming around.

If not that won't folks notice the hair? Unless Jakeem Thunder or that fake Static in Steel's Convergence comic suddenly popup in Gotham.

[KingsLeadHat]

The three Robin's have all looked the same over the years (black hair, blue eyes) mainly because DC wanted to maintain the basic look of the character for marketing and merchandising purposes; the logic being if a kid pick's up a Robin toy or whatever, and decides to buy the comic, the character will at least look like said toy in the comic. Beyond the fact that DC wouldn't have allowed creators to make Robin "ethnic" in the past, they wouldn't have allowed him to be a blond male or a female simply for this reason.