WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Robin & Batman #1, on sale now from DC Comics.

For nearly as long as Batman has been defending Gotham City and the wider DC Universe, he has been accompanied by his young superhero sidekick Robin, with Dick Grayson leaping into action as the Boy Wonder in Detective Comics #38 -- by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson -- the year after Batman's original debut. While fans have debated for years if the moody Dark Knight is better-suited crimefighting alone or with a colorful partner by his side, there is one figure in the Bat-Family that vocally opposes the idea of Batman charging into battle each night with a Robin, constantly setting Bruce Wayne on a course for reckless child endangerment. It's none other than the Wayne family butler and Bruce's surrogate father figure Alfred Pennyworth. And as with many things, Alfred is exactly right.

The new comic book series Robin & Batman -- by Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen, and Steve Wands -- reveals the early days of Batman training Dick Grayson to become his young sidekick and the friction between the two crimefighters as they learn to trust one another. Eager to make a difference and work out the immense amount of grief from recently losing his parents to the deep-rooted criminal element in Gotham City, Dick is already disobeying his new father figure's orders by going out and fighting criminals on his own. As Batman and Robin recover from a recent incident that leaves the fledgling partnership already deeply at odds, Alfred expresses his misgivings to Batman about the efficacy of training Dick as a crimefighter. This is after incisively observing that the training process would make it easier for Bruce to lose a fellow soldier rather than an impressionable, misguided child.

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Batman Robin Alfred

Given how the history of Robins has gone in the Batman mythos over the years, Alfred's concerns are certainly not without merit. Batman has a disturbingly long line of sidekicks that have paid the ultimate price for participating in the Caped Crusader's never-ending war on crime. Dick's eventual successor Jason Todd would be brutally killed by the Joker as the Dynamic Duo searched for Jason's biological mother in the Middle East. Stephanie Brown would be tortured to death by Black Mask during a gang war that consumed the entire city while Bruce's own son Damian Wayne would perish facing his mother's sinister organization Leviathan during the New 52 era.

While all three Robins who died in the line of duty would each eventually be resurrected to rejoin Batman's crusade as if death was only ever a temporary setback, this does not diminish what Alfred was rightfully concerned about regarding the Dark Knight's choice in child sidekicks. Even Dick has died while defending the DCU as Nightwing, even if he has trouble remembering memories from his New 52 days. Death has a way of following the Bat-Family and it's a price that would even ultimately claim Alfred's life at the hands of Bane.

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Batman Alfred Robin

Batman is definitely right to rigorously train Dick to become a junior crimefighter but, the decision to employ children to help him against some of the most nefarious supervillains in the DCU is a highly questionable one that has yielded disastrous consequences in the past. Robin has always helped Batman keep from completely cutting himself from his own humanity and brought much-needed light to the proceedings. However, the choice to put children on those frontlines, highly trained and volunteering themselves though they may be, will always be a morally questionable move as echoed by Alfred.

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