But gay subtext managed to insinuate itself into the Dynamic Duo’s dyad from the very start. The opening page of Robin’s debut story in the April 1940 issue of Detective Comics No. 38 featured an introductory scroll jammed with breathless declamatory copy about “THE SENSATIONAL CHARACTER FIND OF 1940 … ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER!” [...]
Thus young Dick became Bruce Wayne’s ward, and many stories in the ’40s and ’50s began by depicting the man and boy engaged together in some leisure-time pursuit. Again and again, however, said tableaux stubbornly bore a romantic, lavender-scented shading. [...]
And of course there were the plots, many of which turned on Robin’s seething jealousy over Batman’s romantic interests and his paranoia that he might get replaced at Batman’s side by some rival crimefighter. In this era, elaborate ruses and misdirection were the twin engines of comic book storytelling, which meant many a comic began with Batman performatively rejecting Robin as his partner, an act that would send the tearful lad to his sumptuously appointed bedroom to (choke!) and (sob!) his guts out. [...]
This is the issue with gay readings. Any given bond between males can be homosocial without being homoerotic, and even the most explicitly homoerotic bond can exist without ever rubbing up against homosexual desire. To willfully and sneeringly misinterpret what was clearly intended as a familial connection as a romantic one—as Wertham did in 1954 and as so many Tumblr feeds do today— seems ungenerous at best and snide at worst, no? [...]
Alfred the butler had joined them in 1943, serving as a 24/7 chaperone. Now, between a Bat-Hound, a Batwoman, a Batgirl, a Bat-5th-Dimensional-Magical-Imp, and—all too briefly—a Bat-Ape, Batman and Robin could hardly find any time alone together. This was no coincidence. The shadow of Wertham lingered long into the ’60s, and Batman editors resolved to do what they could to dispel it, even if doing so came with a body count: When asked why Alfred the butler was killed off—briefly—in 1964 to be replaced by the dithering Aunt Harriet, editor Julius Schwartz averred, “There was a lot of discussion in those days about three males living in Wayne Manor.”
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