Red Robin vs. Batman?

DC Comics is promoting Red Robin, #4, on sale this Wednesday, with this dramatic cover image of the title character (Tim Drake, who was Robin from 1990 until this year) fighting the current Batman (Dick Grayson, formerly Robin and Nightwing). On Twitter, DC tweeted, “RED ROBIN vs. BATMAN?”

As I responded in the new weekly Robin Twitter feed, “The question mark shows they’re just toying with us.” When a comic-book company can’t muster up even one exclamation point, we know there’s not going to be a “RED ROBIN vs. BATMAN” battle.

I’d be skeptical about a fight between these two characters even if there had been an exclamation point. That’s because, as I’ve written before, their fraternal bond has been an unshakable part of the DC Universe’s bedrock for the past twenty years.

Which is all the more reason, of course, for DC to hint that that bond has broken. Comic-book covers show what’s most dramatic and dire. What could alarm readers into buying comics more powerfully than a fight between these guys?

But by now we should know that comic-book covers lie. They’ve done so almost since the beginning. (In the first Batman story in Detective Comics, #27, for example, Batman never swings down on a rope gripping a man by his neck, as the cover shows.) Just as comic-book superheroes are symbolic characters, readers soon learn that most covers merely symbolize the story to be found within.

DC has played this game with Tim Drake and Dick Grayson several times before. The cover for Robin, #10 (above), shows Tim with another teen dressed as the original Robin looming dangerously behind him. The adventure inside reveals that this is the original Robin, Dick, caught in a temporal warp.

But there’s no looming in the story. The two guys get along famously, even at the start when each thinks the other is an impostor. Which is incredibly rare since comic-book rules say superheroes always have a misunderstanding and fight before teaming up.

The cover for the Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day paperback edition (shown here in a Spanish translation) pictures Robin and Nightwing sparring as their teammates also square off. The book has nothing of the sort. Instead, both teams fight against common foes. Furthermore, while Robin’s teammates are impulsive (one is even named Impulse), and thus at odds with Nightwing’s orders, Robin never is.

The cover for Nightwing, #110, has Nightwing dangling Robin off an apartment building. Not only does that scene never happen in the book, but during the two characters’ conversation Dick Grayson isn’t even wearing his Nightwing costume.

The fiery cover for Robin, #139, depicts Robin and Nightwing at each other’s throats. That story is, to my knowledge, the closest they have come to an actual fight. Dick physically tries to keep Tim from reaching one of Ra’s al Ghul’s Lazarus Pits.

The tussle lasts about a page and a half, during which the fraternal conversation never stops. Then Robin and Nightwing team up against another martial artist. Ultimately, Dick decides to let Tim make his own decision, and the scene ended with the two characters hugging.

The first issue of Red Robin established new tension between Dick as the new Batman, who’s chosen a new Robin, and Tim, feeling cast off. I expect that when the characters meet again in the new magazine, they will argue. There may be sarcasm, and sulking, and refusal to listen. But flying fisticuffs, as shown on the cover? Not a chance.