ABSTRACT
Wertham’s corresponding reading of the same source material sought to persuade ‘his repressed 1950s audience that Batman and Robin were gay and that exposure to their adventures would send young readers down the same path to perdition’ (Lendrum 2004, p. 84). In highlighting that Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson ‘live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler’ (Lendrum 2004, p. 70) Wertham argued that their lifestyle betrayed their closeted sexual orientation. However, Les Daniels (2004, p. 85) argues that:
Batman’s creators were evidently heterosexuals, and it would never have occurred to them that homosexual undertones could have been read into the stories that they created. It’s highly probable that they were focused instead on the objections that would have been raised if Bruce Wayne were living with an adolescent girl, and they were bending over backwards to avoid even the suggestion of sex.
