10 Things DC Comics Wants You To Forget About Robin

3. Other Weird Sex Things

Worryingly, those aren't the only examples of sexual impropriety happening in a Batman comic. His young sidekicks have a habit of getting involved in actual dodgy relationships that appear on the page, and not just within the twisted mind of a failed child psychologist looking for things that aren't there. Weirdly they usually involved Dick Grayson, too, which might be because of his hilarious phallic first name and is rather at odds with his original appearance. As an actual child. Wearing green hot pants. Look, we really can't emphasise enough how weird the green hot pants are, all right? The biggest - and worst - example of this came in the pages of Nightwing #93-95, where the former Robin has an, ahem, interesting encounter with fellow vigilante Tarantula. In fact Dick decides to follow in the footsteps of his former mentor, taking all the lessons he learned under the tutelage of Batman and applying them to Tarantula, the new kid on the block he needs a few pointers when it comes to crime fighting. Eager to impress him, she goes off to take down bad guy Copperhead all by herself, only to get the crap beaten out of her. Which is the moment she falls in love with Nightwing. Unfortunately for her, he doesn't feel the same way, and her feelings are never reciprocated. That is until the end of the story arc where, after getting his own ass handed to him and laying bruised and battered in the middle of the street, Tarantul decides to take advantage of the incapacitated object of her affection by shagging him there and then. Totally non-consensually. The story was so controversial that it was instantly retconned, and nobody ever spoke of it again. Except everybody who read it, realised it was totally messed up, and still tell people of it to this day.