10 Things DC Comics Wants You To Forget About Robin

4. Okay, The Gay Stuff

We've been dancing around this one, too, because it's really been done to death at this point. Yes, it is weird that Batman always hangs around with kids that are like him. Yes, it's especially weird when he dresses them up in skin-tight clothes and hot pants. Yes, we did just compare him to Michael Jackson. Jokes about a romantic relationship between the Caped Crusader and his underage male partner have been made since time immemorial, despite the fact that they're decidedly un-PC and a lot creepier than any perceived subtext within the comics themselves. That said, whilst we're still making jokes about it to this day, there was a time when the implication of impropriety between the two superheroes was taken a lot more seriously. The origin of these serious business allegations was one Fredric Wertham, MD, a complete hack and total quack who nonetheless boasted a vendetta against the then-new fad for superhero comics and the credentials for a large portion of the US to take his opinions on them seriously. Wertham wrote a whole book on the way that this four-colour menace was warping the brains of the nation's children, with the explicitly violent and sexual comics produced by publishers like EC coming under fire. 1954's Seduction Of The Innocent fingered an even more insidious comic book as the principal culprit for the perceived rise in juvenile delinquency, mind. It was the unconventional relationship between Batman and Robin that Wertham suggested would turn young boys into raging homosexuals, picking up on the "hidden messages" in their adventures. The book was so popular that DC radically changed the way the characters were handled, introducing female love interests Batwoman and Batgirl for the characters. So you're unlikely to see any modern examples of the "secret" gay romance between the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder, but you will still see Batwoman and Batgirl, so...yay?