Comic Legends: Was Stephanie Brown Nearly Robin Two Years Early?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Dec 25, 2016

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn how Stephanie Brown was nearly Robin two years before she became Batman's short-lived sidekick

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and seventh week of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

Here's Part 1 of this week's Comic Book Legends Revealed! And here's Part 2. Let's continue!

COMIC LEGEND:

Chuck Dixon was going to have Stephanie Brown become Robin two years before she eventually did become Robin.

STATUS:

True

Stephanie Brown famously became the first (present day, not counting the future "Dark Knight Returns" continuity) female Robin in "Robin" #126...

but that came out over two years after when she was ORIGINALLY going to become Robin!

Many years ago, I wrote a Comic Book Legends Revealed about how Chuck Dixon wanted Tim Drake to briefly take over as Blue Beetle, which would lead to a new "Blue Beetle" ongoing series where Ted Kord would oversee a collection of heroes all going by the name, Blue Beetle. Sort of like Batman Incorporated, only with Blue Beetles.

What I failed to point out back then was the very interesting thing that Dixon would have done with the regular "Robin" series, which was to have Stephanie Brown, Spoiler, take over as Robin in the main "Robin" series while Tim would be appearing in a "Blue Beetle" mini-series.

Dixon explained how he would have handled Stephanie's time as Robin in a great interview by Donovan Grant at TheBatmanUniverse:

Batman would have been impressed by Steph’s work ethic and dogged determination. Both of these were at the core of her character. She would have worked harder at being Robin than anyone else had. Even Tim. In the end though, Batman would find himself hampered by the responsibility of having a female sidekick. His natural, “preux chevalier” instincts to protect her would have made their working relationship impossible.

Obviously, something emergency would have caused Tim to return to being Robin. I don't know what would have happened to Stephanie, but I guess she probably would have gone back to being the Spoiler, but really, who knows?

Part of me wonders if this change to the character would have saved Stephanie from being on the chopping block two years later for "War Games," but I somehow tend to doubt she was ever going to be accepted once Dixon left the book (by the way, it's funny that the issue after Dixon left the series, they sort of did the plot they wouldn't let him do, in the alternate reality story in "Robin" #101 that I used for the banner image).

Thanks to Donovan Grant and Chuck Dixon for the great information!

OK, that's it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well!

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Here's my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. -- half of them are re-worked classic legends I've featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).

The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it...