10 Things DC Comics Wants You To Forget About Robin

6. Those Old Costumes

Let's look at this objectively: a middle-aged rich guy adopts a succession of orphaned children and, amongst other things, dresses them up in a series of terrible costumes. Sounds pretty weird, right? That's exactly what Batman has done with all of the Robins, starting as he meant to go on with Dick Grayson by handing over an outfit that included a big yellow cape, a red top, a domino mask, then some bright green gloves, booties and scaly hot pants. Not only is that a fashion disaster in itself - who on Earth though those colours would go together? This is how things were in the days before Gok Wan - but also it's a 12-year-old running around in his underwear. Which is very much Not Okay. Thankfully things have gotten better since then. Except Jason Todd also wore the same costume, which meant that even in the seventies and eighties DC editorial thought that it was an acceptable costume for a kid to wear. It doesn't really make any sense as an outfit for a crimefighter to wear, either, especially when Batman's whole deal is that he operates from the shadows, jumping out of the darkness and frightening thugs as much as incapacitating them with punches, kicks and novelty boomerangs. Bright red, green and yellow isn't the stealthiest of colour schemes. Since then the outfit has had something of an overhaul. Tim Drake's Robin actually got to wear a full set of tights, and the yellow was much less emphasised. Where Dick and Jason had the fighting skills Tim hewed closer to Batman's detective skills, so the shades of his costume were a little duller, all the better to sneak around in. Then his time as Robin was retconned, and Damian got that costume instead, and now he's dead, so basically there's no evidence of those terrible get-ups in the current comic books. Also, we doubt that domino mask would conceal your identity from ANYONE.