Just letting you know, there's an anon going around messaging people that you ship a child with their caretaker and urging them to reconsider interacting with your posts
Thank you to the anon who messaged me about this, and thank you to the anon who is unhappily engaging with my work! As a fine artist, comic artist, and person who likes to think about culture, stories, and history, I’ve been wanting to write about the Dynamic Duo for a while. This is a good opportunity for getting those various drafts together. And for anyone who’s curious about DC comic dynamics and likes, like me, to play with comics… I hope this can be an interesting little read into the various ways of reading Batman and Robin, and why one might choose to engage in a queer reading of “Brudick.”
Bruce and Dick: Father and Son, Brothers in Arms, Partners Fighting Crime
First, Bruce and Dick can certainly be read as “Father and Son.” There are several Dynamic Duo stories from various decades that do this, some of which I quite enjoy.
Like in Batman Vol. 1, No. 20 (1944), where Bruce has to fight Dick’s corrupt blood relations to retain guardianship of his almost son/best friend.
And in writer Tom Taylor, artist Bruno Redondo, colorist Adriano Lucas, and co.’s Nightwing comics, including Nightwing Vol. 4, No. 100 (2023).
But “Father and Son” isn’t their only definitive relationship.
Dick wasn’t adopted by Bruce at first for logistical reasons inside and outside of text (the difficulties of single men adopting kids during the 40s, when Batman and Robin was first published, for example.) There are comics that describe them as brothers for example, including when Dick first leaves to attend university as a young man and when he dons the Batman cowl after Bruce “dies.”
Batman & Robin Vol. 1, No. 7 (2009) by Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart, and co.
Batman Vol. 1, No. 217 (1969), by Irv Novick, Dick Giordano, and Frank Robbins.
(Said vow of manliness was then followed up by Dick crying like a heartbroken heroine of a 1960s romance comic.)
Young Romance No. 125 (1963)
Dick and Bruce have even, on significant occasions, denied being father and son (though one could choose to read that as the first step of a cautious, tsundere journey towards patrilineal bonds)
Batman Vol. 1, No. 439 (1989), by Marv Wolfman, Pat Broderick, Adrienne Roy, and co.
The bond that Bruce asserts with Dick in this compelling story is based not on him replacing Dick’s parents, but on bonding with him as a similarly traumatized and wounded child.
This resonates with the words of David Mazzuchelli, fantastic mainstream and indie comic artist behind Batman: Year One. In the “Afterwords” section of Year One, Mazzuchelli describes the pair as being a pair of innocent, un-sexed twelve-year-old boys (Bruce mentally) who connect as best friends pretending to be heroes.
(Take a look at Austin Kleon’s blog for the full post where this comes from – all photo credits to him)
This reading of the Dynamic Duo who are mainly partners, fighting against the crime that destroyed their parents, vibes with Darwyn Cooke’s beautifully rendered DC: The New Frontier (2004).
As Batman explains, they are “two lost souls who found each other”... romantic, no?
2. Bruce and Dick: Romantic Partners
With all the various interpretations of Bruce and Dick over the decades, from the perspectives of various writers and artists, there is also room for a romantic reading. Not just the comic panels taken out of context and spoofed on the internet. From this Reddit post…
…To “A Brief History of Dick: Unpacking the gay subtext of Robin, the Boy Wonder”, a great summary by Glen Weldon, author of The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. The comics themselves are ripe for various – *eh-hem* – creative readings and misinterpretations.
Canon Jokes about Batman and Robin’s Relationship
But Bruce and Dick’s ambiguous relationship is also referenced in DC’s canon comics, like World's Finest Year 6: The Imp-Possible Dream (1999) by Karl Kesel, Peter Doherty, and Robert Campanella.
By aligning Dick with Lois Lane, damsel in distress, DC’s officially published comics pokes at the stability of a purely platonic father and son relationship between the Dynamic Duo.
Then there are the much more disturbing jokes from the Joker in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1989) by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean.
Joker makes plenty of insinuations about Batman’s mental wellness and his attraction to a Robin. Queerness as pathological isn’t new to Batman – it’s embodied in the Joker, a lipstick and acrylic-wearing man obsessed with another man. Joker not only evokes drag queens; in Batman: The Dark Prince Charming (2017-2018) by Enrico Marini, he even dresses as one.
It’s easy to forget the Joker’s queerness with Heath Ledger’s highly popular elemental Joker, Joaquin Phoenix’s sad boy follow-up, and the heterosexual, Harley Quinn-touting Joker of the Batman animations. But I think Joker has lasted – and surpassed Robin in popularity – because Robin was a good boy who was scandalously attached to gay jokes while Joker was a bad guy, who one, historically, could easily accept as being evil.
And then Robin became the Joker.
Like Sin City, Frank Miller’s infamous Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again is a testosterone and titty fueled extravaganza. And it makes Dick a Joker mutant targeting Bruce’s new sidekick, former female Robin, current lovely Catgirl, Carrie Kelly. A side-by-side comparison shows who is more desirable and healthy amongst them.
Dick envies Carrie, going so far as plotting to steal her body by skinning her alive.
It’s not a good look on Dick. It is also sad, twisted, and one of the most fascinating ways Frank Miller could have acknowledged Dick’s mixed cultural legacy within DC published comic (even one set in an alternate universe). Here is a panel of Dick declaring his wicked love, driving Bruce to (lover’s) suicide.
So there is room for laughable and sick interpretations of romantic Brudick. Now let’s take a look at a healthier option for these not-quite lovers, enemies, partners, and family members.
3. Batman’s (and Robin’s) Queer Liberation: Fredric Wertham, Feminism, and Kevin Conroy
I’m personally captivated by a romantic reading of Bruce and Dick. Stories revolve around conflict and that poses A LOT OF PROBLEMS. It also has led to plentiful interesting fanart and fanfiction that tries to make sense of decades of stories with a cohesive narrative. While there’s plenty of porn (which, no anti is entitled to shame others about), it also involves strangely compelling coming-of-age stories that few other slash pairings can inspire.
Also, Bruce and Dick’s queer potential is really important for Western comics history – it’s part of what Fredric Wertham M.D. took comics to task for in the 1950s, leading to a (flawed) study, a Senate Hearing, censorship and comic codes, as well as the creation of family friendly female characters! Wertham clearly read the comics as queer – and that still holds currency for other LGBTQIA comics fans who see themselves in Batman and Robin.
Excerpts from pg. 190 of Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954):
Wertham also accuses Wonder Woman and her friends of loving women to the detriment of men on page 193:
DC superhero media has a history of deviant queerness – to say no is to deny an important facet of comics history.
Mining said queerness can give room for female characters to be more than objects of men’s violence/sexual objectification. One of my favorite Batgirl comics gets Batgirl away from Dick Grayson, putting her on her own journey of friendship, love, and self-fulfillment in the capable hands of Babs Tarr.
From Batgirl, Vol. 4, No. 40 (2015):
Other female characters who have flourished when given the ability to be more than love interests include Batgirl’s bestie, Supergirl, in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (2021-2022) by Tom King, Bilquis Everly, and co.
Superhero stories are so big, full of questions about what makes a person moral and how/whether they can ever truly belong. Do stories that play with Bruce and Dick as romantic connect to those ideas? They certainly do.
And, as we see from the autobiographical comic of Kevin Conroy, iconic voice of various animated Bat-men, these questions and deviations can enrich our superhero stories too.
Excerpts below from “Finding Batman” by Kevin Conroy, J. Bone, and Aditya Bidikar, published in DC Pride 2022.
The Batman and Robin stories are so strange, plentiful, and varied – there’s room for various interpretations, none of them “wrong.”
If the anon who’s messaging other social media users to stop looking at my art wants to tackle issues like child exploitation, or if they want to support girls and women who are in danger of incest or rape, they can donate and spread awareness of organizations like Save The Children, Planned Parenthood, and others using ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
And for wholesome DC comic recs with gals of color, I recommend DC comics like Diana and Nubia: Princesses of the Amazon (2022) by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and Victoria Ying and Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story (2023) by Sarah Kuhn and Arielle Jovellanos. My twin collaborator and I are also working on stories that tackle superheroines and intersectional feminism – stories which criss-cross with our platonic and romantic Brudick stories!
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