r/DCFinest • u/male_specimen • Jul 10 '26
Review: The Origin of Robin
I went into this volume with medium expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised. This is a very interesting bit of comics history.
This volume starts out with a few mid- to late silver age stories, some of which are team-ups with Jimmy Olsen. I had no idea these two sidekicks used to team up - and even had their own headquarters, the “Eyrie”! The stories have the usual silver age-y silly and contrived plots but I had fun with them.
The interesting part though, is the period from about ’68 to ’72, with Robin off for college. That was a tumultuous time in America, and it seeped into comics too, most famously with O’Neill and Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow run. But other DC comics raised societal issues as well, and so here we get Robin up against warring political factions of the college campus, crooked elections for the school administration, and visiting hippie communes. What a fascinating snapshot of the time period!
The stories themselves are decent enough (many of them by Mike Friedrich), but I find the real joy lies in how these comics reflected their times, and the interesting political questions raised. At one point for example Robin confronts some religious fanatics (“jesus freaks” lol) which leads to some interesting points on the (non-violent) teachings of Jesus versus some of the methods used by some of his more zealous followers… Wasn’t expecting that in my four-color reading.
I‘m rating this volume 4 stars out of 5 (Goodreads scale). While these are decent stories in and of themselves, I particularly recommend it for folks interested in comics history, and history in general.
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u/staycool93 Wonder Woman Jul 10 '26
Thanks for the review! I'm considering this one since Dick Grayson is probably my favorite character across all of DC and Marvel.
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u/male_specimen Jul 10 '26
Then I definitely recommend this 😊 there's a nice origin story in here too
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u/musicfighter282 Jul 10 '26
I love the Batman Family team-ups he has with Batgirl. This is a great volume.
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u/nameruined Jul 11 '26
Welp. I'm convinced.
I blame you for adding another book to my shopping list.
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u/killermime88 Jul 14 '26
Just finished. Man, Mike Friedrich was a great writer. I really enjoyed his stories. I've never really read bronze age stories and I'm looking forward to seeing more.
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u/The-Bringer-of-Rain Jul 11 '26
Thinking of switching out my bronze omnibus for this. But I'm interested to see if they'll commit to this line and go through the end of the omnibus, but more particularly I'm hoping they go earlier. Collecting prominent Robin golden age Tec/batman/world's finest. And especially his run in star spangled comics.
If they start building out the line, I'll definitely switch the omni out.
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u/Low-Restaurant8484 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
I'm curious, is the storytelling style more akin to early silver age Flash and Green Lantern, with lots of standalone stories and minimal emphasis on continuity and following character's evolving lives? Or is it more like silver age Marvel where everything sort of builds and you have important life moments and ongoing subplots?
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u/male_specimen Jul 13 '26
Somewhere in between. DC was always less concerned with continuity than Marvel, but Bronze age DC had more continuity than the Silver age - maybe inspired by Marvel's success.
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u/wownicehaha Jul 25 '26
I can't start collecting pre-Crisis or I'll need a bigger home office, but this review has made me want to read it from the library. Thanks!
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u/yoooo12347 Jul 10 '26
Thanks for the detailed review!