#forgotten robins

[tangelotea]

DC’s first girl Robin

If we’re gonna talk about forgotten robins we have to talk about the icon Mary Wills aka Roberta the girl wonder. Aka the first girl Robin! Mary appeared for the first and last time in star spangled comics #103 (April 1950)

Mary is a really cool character she actually reminds me a lot of Bonnie king’s comic appearances when she debuted as miss arrowette. But unfortunately since this is a comic from the 50s is going to heavily lean into the culture of the time. So just a heads up that Dick Grayson is going to be a massive dick.

Mary attends the same school as Dick. And while she thinks plain old Dick Grayson is boring she has a huge crush on Robin. Her friends tell her that Robin would probably only go for another hero. So she decides to start training to become one.

(Dick’s smug face in that panel is killing me)

Mary actually put herself though some pretty detailed training before she makes her debut. She reads through stacks of criminology books, she works out constantly, she even converts her whole basement into a crime lab. And she makes the coolest bat gadget to ever exist. the utility compact! When she does make her debut she chooses the name Roberta the girl wonder.

The bat signal goes off and both her and Dick see it. Batman is conveniently out of town so Dick drives the Batmobile to the commissioners office (I don’t think autopilot was a Batmobile feature yet so I guess child Dick was just allowed to drive?) when dick sees Mary he quickly tries to send her home.

But Mary isn’t going to listen to a loser like Dick Grayson so she sneaks into the trunk of the Batmobile. And successfully sneaks into the batcave. Dick is mad at her and tells her to stay put while he solves this case but Mary convinces him to let her help. And Mary is constantly calling Dick out.

They get to the scene of the crime and Mary literally carries the whole case.

The next day after she does all this work Dick decides he doesn’t care and is gonna reveal her identity. He offers to buy her a perfume for her hard work, but he swaps the perfume for like actual acid or something. And when she sprays it mer mask falls off.

They end up getting interviewed for tv and her masks falls of mid interview. And dick is like “oh no what a shame!” As if he didn’t just screw up this girls whole life by broadcasting her identity on tv.

We never see Mary again after this issue but she’s really cool bit of Batman history. It would have been really cool for Mary to be a recurring character. I’ve never seen anyone talk about her before but I love her and I love thinking about what she could have become if she had more appearances.

I throw a lot of hate at Dick in this post and I do love him and his Robin days. But he is the absolute worst in this issue and deserves the hate!

Anyways please go give Mary’s issue a read! I have a few more forgotten Robins id love to highlight in the future so I’ll probably post those sometime soon:)

[flwrkid14]

Tim and Jason never really talk about it, but there’s this unspoken understanding between them.

They’re both the leftovers, the Robins that never quite fit where they were supposed to. Jason came back from the dead, and Tim’s been running ever since he picked up the mantle that wasn’t his to begin with.

Jason still resents Tim sometimes. It’s not that he hates him, exactly. It’s more complicated than that. Tim took his place, whether he wanted to or not, and no matter how many times Tim says he didn’t ask for it, it still stings. Jason can’t help but look at Tim and see everything he was supposed to be. Everything he lost. And it hurts.

But Tim? Tim looks at Jason and sees everything he could become. The anger, the loneliness, the rage at being abandoned. He sees the same cracks in himself that led Jason down his darker path, and that terrifies him. Because he knows he’s one bad day away from becoming Jason, from crossing that line, and he doesn’t know if anyone would even bother to pull him back.

They don’t talk about it, though. They don’t talk about the fact that Tim still wakes up in cold sweats from the memory of Jason beating him with that crowbar, or that Jason sometimes dreams about what might’ve happened if Tim had never shown up. They don’t talk about how both of them feel like they’ve been used and thrown aside by Bruce, by the Bat family, by everyone.

But sometimes, on the really bad nights, when the weight of everything gets too heavy, they find themselves sitting together on a Gotham rooftop. Neither of them says anything, but it’s the closest thing they have to peace. Jason doesn’t apologize for the way things are, and Tim doesn’t ask him to. But they both know what it’s like to feel forgotten. To feel like you’re always fighting to be seen, even by the people who are supposed to care about you.

Maybe that’s why, despite everything, they stay close. Because Jason knows what it’s like to come back and not recognize yourself in the mirror, and Tim knows what it’s like to slowly lose pieces of yourself until there’s almost nothing left. They’re both walking the same line, balancing on the edge of darkness, and neither of them knows what’s going to happen if one of them falls.

But for now, they’re both still standing. That’s something, at least. Even if they never say it out loud.