Batman: Year Three occupies a weird space for me. On one hand, it’s a “Year of” story, which gives it a place of importance. On another hand, it was quickly forgotten, both as a story and as an origin of Dick Grayson. To be fair, most of Marv Wolfman’s run on Batman from the very late eighties and into the early nineties got forgotten once Knightfall happened, but this one should have had staying power, but it didn’t.

For me, this story is a big deal because it came out in the summer of 1989. I remember turning the big, wooden spinner rack at Waldenbooks and coming across that George Perez cover of Batman #436 and thinking, “That looks kind of cool.” To be fair, this was the Summer of Batman. The first Burton film had just come out and thirteen-year-old me was all about the Dark Knight. So, it wasn’t a huge stretch that I would want to check out the comics. I just happened to hit a particularly good time to do so.

As far as modern (you can tell you’re getting old when you refer to something that is a few years shy of being forty years old as “modern”) takes on the origin of Dick Grayson Year Three is one of the best. On an objective level. Wolfman didn’t simply tell the story of Dick becoming Robin as a four-issue flashback. He switched between the past and the present, as well as tying in recent Bat events to bring Dick back to Wayne Manor. It was the story of how Dick became Robin, but it was also the story of Tony Zucco and showing his background fleshed out that character in a way that had, to my knowledge, never been done before.

Wolfman also used the post-Crisis Batman history to show that Alfred was an important part of Dick’s upbringing.  This is probably the most important story beat that lived on when Year Three left the conversation. In the pre-Crisis days, Alfred came to Wayne Manor deep into Batman and Robin’s partnership. He was important to Dick, but he wasn’t there from the beginning. Now, Dick had a second, softer parental figure. Alfred was also someone Dick could talk to about the things he couldn’t talk to Bruce about.

To be fair, the Golden, Atomic, and Silver Age Batman wasn’t as much of a jackass as post-Crisis Batman could be, so that Dick Grayson probably didn’t need as much comforting.

Add in Wolfman dealing with Batman becoming more violent in the wake of Jason Todd’s death and the low key, blink and you’ll miss it, didn’t notice until it was pointed out later first appearance of Tim Drake and this story becomes a classic.

To me, at any rate.

In the past few years this story has managed to get reprinted, most notably in Batman: The Caped Crusader Volume 2: The Origin of Robin, but you can also find it in Tales of the Batman: Marv Wolfman Volume 1.

More to follow…