Nightwing Confirms the Most Depressing Part of Being Robin
Warning! Spoilers forDC Pride: Tim Drake Special #1 ahead!
Out of all the superheroes, Batman might be the toughest to be the sidekick for, and as Nightwing points out, the hardest part of being Robin is more emotional than physical.
It's no secret that Batman has gone through a number of sidekicks over the years. It has been established that Batman should have a Robin to balance out his inner darkness, but the role of Robin takes such a toll on young people that many have had the identity. Dick Grayson eventually graduated into his own hero, Nightwing, and his successor, Jason Todd, met a bloody end. Even Tim Drake, as he ages out of being a sidekick, struggles to find his own place among DC's other heroes.
Related: Nightwing's Original 'Sister' Needs a Bigger Place In His Modern Stories
But the struggles of being Robin extend past the costume and crime fighting. In essence, being a Robin means having Bruce Wayne as a father figure. And as Nightwing points out in DC Pride: Tim Drake Special #1 by Megan Fitz Martin, Belen Ortega, and Alberto Jimenez Albuquerque, being an adopted son to Bruce Wayne is no picnic. Dick constantly sought to make Bruce happy, but Bruce's own darkness was so strong that Dick felt himself sacrificing his own future in order to make this father figure of his happy. And as Dick tells Tim, he eventually concluded that there is nothing that Robin can do to make Batman happy.
The psychological scars and trauma of the entire relationship is troubling. As a child, Bruce lost his father at a very young age, just like Dick Grayson. Perhaps Bruce never fully realized that by adopting Dick, he was essentially replacing Dick's own father as someone to look up to. But Bruce was so stuck in his own trauma
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