Of all the bare-legged kids who have given Batman a helping hand over the years, Carrie Kelley is probably my favorite. She’s this spunky teen who just goes ahead and dresses in that silly suit and totally owns it, kicking enough butt to impress the Dark Knight. In many ways, she anticipated future Robins like Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown. Also, I suppose it helped that she made her debut on the pages of one of the most acclaimed comics in the freaking history of the entire medium!
We meet Carrie early on in The Dark Knight Returns, when she and her friend Michelle take a shortcut through a decadent video arcade and almost end up getting knifed by a street gang of mutants (yes, it was the eighties). She’s saved by Batman and immediately becomes a fan.
Here’s Carrie when she first sees the Bat-Signal in the sky:
I love her parents’ ramblings in the background. It’s easy to forget how (intentionally) funny Frank Miller used to be, despite The Dark Knight Returns’ reputation as a serious bastion of the turn towards grim and gritty superhero comics.
The fact that we get so little of Carrie Kelley’s backstory plays into the book’s general theme that the world is so obviously screwed up that all it takes is one inspiring figure for people to start acting up and taking matters into their own hands. But at the same time, in a way this also makes Carrie special. After all, it suggests that, unlike the Robins that came before her (Dick Grayson and Jason Todd), Carrie is not an orphan and she doesn’t need a family trauma to drive her… unless of course you consider having stoner hippie parents a trauma!
Charmingly, while Batman is out terrorizing the Gotham City night by severely beating up kidnappers and pimps, Carrie approaches crime-fighting like a cartoon character from the Looney Tunes. Her weapon of choice is a slingshot and the first thing she does is sneak a stick of dynamite into the butt of a con artist who is hustling bystanders with a game of Three Card Monte! Adorable.
She eventually follows some mutants into the dump where Batman gets his ass handed to him by their gang leader. In fact, Carrie actually saves the Caped Crusader’s life when the mutant leader is about to crush his skull with a crowbar (the preferred killing method for costumed heroes in the Batman comics of the time).
After bailing out the Dark Knight, Carrie drags him to the Batmobile and makes a splint for his broken arm. Batman is so impressed that he admits he’s Bruce Wayne and shows her the Batcave, practically hiring her on the spot. Wow, talk about a successful spontaneous application!
Carrie’s first mission is to put on a pink shirt and a bald cap, pretend she’s a member of the mutant gang, and convince all the other members to gather around the sewer pipe at West River and 40, where the Dark Knight will publicly humiliate their leader.
She first approaches a couple of mutants near the arcade where she first saw Batman, earlier in the story, and we get a healthy dose of Miller-esque street slang:
Carrie and Bruce have a nice dynamic going on, which basically consists of Batman ordering her to stay put and she just straight-up disobeying him all the time, whether by engaging with a transsexual Nazi in a fight or by breaking into a house with a sentient explosive doll. You know, just your average juvenile rebellion.
That said, she does keep saving Batman’s bacon when he inevitably bites off more than he can chew. For example, when the Caped Crusader gets caught up in a struggle with a bunch of cops, Carrie rescues him by flying a damn helicopter, much to his surprise. She also spots a key clue to tracking down the Joker. Indeed, one of the running gags concerns the fact that, while Batman acquired his skills through years of intensive training and roaming the earth, Carrie just seems to have picked up all the necessary stuff in school and in the girl scouts.
Although he does teach her how to ride a horse.
Batman’s final confrontation with the Joker in the county fair has deservedly become legendary. But it’s a shame that it has completely overshadowed Carrie’s own elaborate, exciting action set piece, on a roller-coaster, facing an armed henchman and yet another explosive doll. Also, during the famous Batman-Superman face-off, Carrie helps distract the Man of Steel while driving a tank. And later on, she is the one who digs up Batman from his grave. So many iconic moments!
As if Carrie Kelley wasn’t zany enough already, in The Dark Knight Strikes Back Frank Miller went on to dress her in a leopard spandex and turn her into a rollerblading vigilante called Catgirl.
However, Carrie still made a few amusing cameos in the Robin suit. She was in the very cool ‘Batman Dies at Dawn!’ (Batman: The Brave and the Bold (v2) #13), where the Phantom Stranger gathers all Robins – past, present, and future – in order to save a wounded Dark Knight. Hilarity ensues.
Moreover, a version of Carrie showed up in the DC Adventures Universe. In Batman & Robin Adventures #6, when a tabloid newspaper announced that Batman had fired Robin (Dick Grayson), she was one of the many volunteers to audition for the job.
This version of the Caped Crusader, though, was decidedly not pleased to see her…
It’s a really fun story with super-dynamic art. But hey, it was written by Ty Templeton and drawn by Rick Burchett, so that pretty much goes without saying!
More recently, Peter Tomasi introduced a New 52 version of Carrie Kelley during his run in Batman and Robin. Ah, and I guess I should probably mention the fact that Carrie has another new identity in some kind of Dark Knight Returns sequel/fan-fic DC is putting out nowadays… but I don’t really care.
She is still Robin in my dreams:
