Bill Finger on Dick Grayson

“Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Douglas Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea"”

“I knew many homosexuals but I certainly didn’t think of Batman in those terms. I thought of it in terms of … Frank Merriwell and Dick Merriwell, his half-brother, who was the kid he was taking care of. … In America we always talk about the Western hero and the pioneer kind of man—the Davy Crockett types—as being loners. They’re never really. They always have a sidekick. … Certainly there’s no homosexual relationship. It’s just part of the American syndrome. … It was just that the author realized that you’ve gotta have somebody to talk to. Sherlock Holmes had Watson—were they homosexuals? Baloney. You just can’t have your hero walking around thinking aloud all the time. He’d be ready for the men in white coats after a time. So we created a junior Watson and that’s all [Robin] was.”