Dark Nights: Death Metal has introduced a sinister adolescent supervillain in the Robin King, but how does he compare to the murderous Superboy-Prime?
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dark Nights: Death Metal #3, by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia and Tom Napolitano, on sale now.
As Dark Nights: Death Metal has continued, the DC Comics crossover event has been bringing in more villainous incarnations of Batman from the Dark Multiverse to assist Perpetua and the Batman Who Laughs. Among them, the most sinister Dark Knight of them all has surfaced: The Robin King. The evil, adolescent Bruce Wayne from a parallel world within the Dark Multiverse was recently recruited by the Batman Who Laughs as his latest protege after older Bruce made his omnipotent transformation into the Darkest Knight. The Robin King is one of the most terrifying young villains to menace the DC Universe but far from the only currently active in the DCU, with the murderous Superboy-Prime having recently resurfaced in the pages of Shazam!.
Created by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, the Robin King was a Bruce that displayed psychotic tendencies from an early age, including capturing and mutilating live bats to the visible horror of Alfred Pennyworth. During an attempted mugging by Joe Chill in Crime Alley, Bruce would not only murder Chill but also his own parents, framing Chill for the crime despite Alfred and Jim Gordon’s visible suspicions. To maintain his serial killing secret, Bruce adopted his Robin King persona and murdered both Alfred and Gordon back at Wayne Manor shortly before his recruitment by the Batman Who Laughs to assist with the invasion and subjugation of the DCU before the start of Death Metal.
Labeled by Snyder as one of the scariest characters he had created for mainstream comics, the Robin King has spent all of his free time fantasizing over different ways to gruesomely kill each of the DCU’s heroes. Armed for the occasion, the juvenile supervillain’s utility belt is loaded with a full arsenal designed to take down every possible opponent as brutally as possible. As the various Flashes reassembled in the superhero cemetery of Valhalla, the Robin King interrupts their reunion to herald the Darkest Knight’s arrival. Before his mentor appears, the Robin King seizes the opportunity to taunt Barry Allen on how he would kill the Silver Age Scarlet Speedster, having dug up the remains of his mother to defeat him.
Superboy-Prime is more of a conventional supervillain, less geared for psychological horror and primal shock value for the pure joy of taking out his own frustrations on the heroes of the DCU. After helping save reality during Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Clark Kent of Earth-Prime took shelter in a pocket dimension where he became murderously jealous of watching the heroes of the reborn DCU fail to live up to his lofty expectations of what it took to be a superhero. Breaking out as a full-fledged supervillain in Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime killed and maimed several Teen Titans and many Green Lanterns before his eventual defeat. Since then, the villain has reemerged as a genocidal antagonist in “Sinestro Corps War,” “Countdown to Final Crisis” and “Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds,” killing scores of heroes each time and an entire alternate Earth while traveling the Multiverse. Superboy-Prime has recently broken out of captivity again, this time determined to vent his frustrations on the entire Shazam Family.
In terms of sheer body count, Superboy-Prime remains supreme as the more evil, young supervillain, a sneering doppelgänger of Superboy who will kill any hero that gets in his way for not receiving the tremendous respect he believes he deserves. But in terms of sheer remorseless terror, the Robin King is the ultimate hero gone bad, gleefully cutting through superheroes across the Dark Multiverse before setting his sights on the main DCU. Superboy-Prime, on the other hand, has elicited rare glimpses of sympathy, but there is no pathos at all in the Robin King.
