History YMMV / AllStarBatmanAndRobinTheBoyWonder

* CrazyAwesome: What a lot of Batman's actions appear to be intended as. Unfortunately, he ends up looking just plain crazy.

* TooBleakStoppedCaring: Aside from the snail's paced story and all the {{Padding}}, most of the characters in the series are sociopathic jerks, incompetent idiots, or both. Between Batman brutally beating up criminals in ways that could kill them or cripple them for life, Black Canary and Batgirl being violent vigilantes who idolize Batman and emulate his behavior, the Justice League kowtowing to Batman for no reason (save for Wonder Woman, who wants to kill him, and otherwise viciously hates all men), and Jim Gordon cheating on his alcoholic wife, it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone in this comic. The exception to that is Dick Grayson, but the kid is psychologically traumatized and physically and emotionally abused by Batman in a deliberate attempt to mold Dick into a "detective" like him, so Dick's presence also heightens how loathsome Batman is.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Aside from the snail's paced story and all the {{Padding}}, most of the characters in the series are sociopathic jerks, incompetent idiots, or both. Between Batman brutally beating up criminals in ways that could kill them or cripple them for life, Black Canary and Batgirl being violent vigilantes who idolize Batman and emulate his behavior, the Justice League kowtowing to Batman for no reason (save for Wonder Woman, who wants to kill him, and otherwise viciously hates all men), and Jim Gordon cheating on his alcoholic wife, it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone in this comic. The exception to that is Dick Grayson, but the kid is psychologically traumatized and physically and emotionally abused by Batman in a deliberate attempt to mold Dick into a "detective" like him, so Dick's presence also heightens how loathsome Batman is.

** At one point in the story, Crazy Steve contemplates taking Green Lantern's ring for himself. Although the general idea of Batman becoming a heroic Green Lantern was explored in the One Shot ''Batman: In Darkest Night'', ''ComicBook/DarkNightsMetal'' (which came after ''[=ASBAR=]'') features The Dawnbreaker, who's essentially what an unhinged Batman ''could'' be if he became a Green Lantern.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Miller apparently got wind of criticisms towards Batman making Robin eat rats, since there are lines of narration in Issue 10 where Batman explained he lived in Gotham's sewers and lived off of the rats in order to learn how to live without his inherited fortune...[[FridgeLogic which begs the question of why he thought it'd make as much sense for Dick Grayson Age Twelve to follow suit, considering Dick wasn't exactly living a life of luxury growing up in a circus]].

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Aside from the snail's paced story and all the {{Padding}}, most of the characters in the series are sociopathic jerks, incompetent idiots, or both. Between Batman brutally beating up criminals in ways that could kill them or cripple them for life, Black Canary and Batgirl being violent vigilantes who idolize Batman and emulate his behavior, the Justice League kowtowing to Batman for no reason (save for Wonder Woman, who wants to kill him, and otherwise viciously hates all men), and Jim Gordon cheating on his alcoholic wife, it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone in this comic. The exception to that is Dick Grayson, age twelve, but the kid is psychologically traumatized and physically and emotionally abused by Batman in a deliberate attempt to mold Dick into a "detective" like him, so Dick's presence also heightens how loathsome Batman is.
* DesignatedHero: The Goddamn Batman, who is psychotic, brutal, and an-all round {{Jerkass}}. He kidnaps Dick Grayson, age twelve (albeit from DirtyCops that were about to kill the boy), and then forces him to live alone in the Batcave, expecting him to hunt the rats and bats in there for food. Then he complains about having Dick around and repeatedly insults and assaults him for getting on his nerves. He goes out on patrol laughing about how awesome he is and how much he loves being Batman as he gleefully poisons criminals, sets them on fire, and attacks police officers; while it isn't outright stated, FridgeHorror implies many of the victims of these incidents don't survive the encounter. And he thinks that if he had a Power Ring like Green Lantern, he would use it to enforce his will on the world, destroy (unspecified) enemies of the United States, and exile Superman from Earth—which is basically the backstory for ''Sinestro''; using a Power Ring for selfish, tyrannical means was the reason he was cast out of the Green Lantern Corps. Why are readers supposed to like this depiction of Batman, exactly? It says something when the ''Villains Wiki'' has an entry for him.

** Hal Jordan, for calling out Batman on his terrible treatment of Dick Grayson, age twelve, and being pretty much the only hero that doesn't do or say anything horrible or offensive—which is ironic, given Frank's opinion of him.

** When Dick Grayson, age twelve, is huddling alone in the Batcave, his shadow cast on the floor forms an "R." It's probably supposed to foreshadow that he's going to become Robin, but considering the series is called "All-Star Batman ''and Robin''" and Dick is prominently featured on most of the covers, often in full Robin costume, it's not so much foreshadowing as it is symbolism for the sake of symbolism.

** When 12-year-old Dick Grayson, age twelve, initially creates his costume with a hood, Batman cynically tells him to drop it, since according to him, this would be impractical in a fight. Flash-forward to Creator/GrantMorrison's mainstream Batman run, when Damian Wayne becomes the new Robin. His costume includes a hood. (Linkara has theorized Morrison might have done this on purpose as a TakeThat to this comic.)

** Batman has to try and cover up the fact that Dick Grayson, age twelve, is Robin...''entirely because'' he took Dick in front of plenty of eyewitnesses, including Vicki Vale, who got photographs of it and was able to publish a newspaper article about Batman kidnapping a little boy.

* {{Padding}}: The series suffers terribly from this. One critic noted the book felt like Miller was spreading 4 issues of story across 20. To put it in perspective, Batman meets Dick Grayson, age twelve, in Issue 1. They arrive at the Batcave in Issue 4. The time in between (the entirety of Issues 2 and 3) is focused on either repetitive inner monologue from one of them or scenes focusing on other characters (despite this being a book about Batman and Robin). Black Canary's introductory scene takes up half of Issue 3, but all that happens is her getting harassed and her beating up a room full of people, and then she isn't seen again until Issue 6. The Justice League appears in Issue 5 to talk about confronting Batman, but nothing happens about that until Issue 8, and the actual confrontation happens in Issue 9. Finally, while Dick's parents getting killed was the event that began the series, it wasn't until Issue 7 that we actually learn who hired Jocko Boy to carry out the murders, and when the series was cancelled after Issue 10, we still had no hints ''why'' they were killed.

* StrawmanHasAPoint: When Green Lantern confronts Batman, he points out that Batman is hospitalizing people with his excessive violence and endangering a boy as young as Dick Grayson, age 12.

** The fact that Robin--in both narration and spoken dialogue--is ''constantly'' referred to as "Dick Grayson, age 12", almost as if "age 12" was part of his name.

** Some of the things Crazy Steve says about Robin are worded very unfortunately, even with proper context. Just one example has him commenting on the boy's "fast hands [and] big mouth."

* ValuesDissonance: Batman's asking Dick "Are you dense? Are you retarded or something?" clearly dates the story back to the days when it was considered acceptable to use "retarded" as a synonym for "dumb" or "stupid", before it became widely considered one of the absolute worst discriminatory slurs that anyone can use. In-context, Batman is basically just calling Dick a moron—which ''still'' makes him a DesignatedHero considering what Dick's just been through, but to modern day readers the line comes across far harsher even than Miller intended.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Aside from the snail's paced story and all the {{Padding}}, most of the characters in the series are sociopathic jerks, incompetent idiots, or both. Between Batman brutally beating up criminals in ways that could kill them or cripple them for life, Black Canary and Batgirl being violet vigilantes who idolize Batman's behavior, the Justice League kowtowing to him for no reason save for Wonder Woman who wants to kill him, and Jim Gordon cheating on his alcoholic wife, it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone in this comic. The exception to that is Dick Grayson, age twelve, but the kid is psychologically traumatized and physically and emotionally abused by Batman in a deliberate attempt to mold Dick into a "detective" like him, so Dick's presence also heightens how loathsome Batman is.

* {{Narm}}: Frank Miller's prose and dialogue is a frequent source of jokes and memes. It sounds like he was trying really, ''really'' hard to be gritty, but instead it just comes off as bizarre and ridiculous, with everyone talking in sentence fragments, constantly repeating themselves, and just generally saying absurd and laughable things.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: When so many characters, including and especially the main protagonist, are at best sociopathic jerks without sincere empathy for other human beings, it's hard to feel genuine sympathy.

* FanonDiscontinuity: Many fans like to believe that this story (and ''ComicBook/TheDarkKnightStrikesAgain'') is in no way connected to ''Batman: Year One'' and ''ComicBook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns''. (However, they're just fine with ''ASBAR'' and ''Strikes Again'' being connected to ''each other;'' ASBAR Batman eventually toning down somewhat to become TDKSA Batman but it being too late and his horribleness being [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal the catalyst for]] Robin's HeelFaceTurn makes total sense... almost too much sense for either book.)

** As [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] pointed out, Creator/FrankMiller once said he considered Batman the most pure and good of all DC superheroes. Fast forward to this comic and suddenly we have the Goddamn Batman [[SlasherSmile smirking gleefully]] as he slams the Batmobile into cops, abducting Dick Grayson, [[RunningGag Age Twelve]], and generally running around acting so brutally out of character that Linkara dubs him "Crazy Steve" because even "Batman In Name Only" is still ''too much'' like Batman. Also, ''ComicBook/HolyTerror'' was conceived by Miller as a Batman story before being changed to a new character called The Fixer.[[note]]as detailed on that book's trivia page, Miller claims that he consciously chose to make the hero a new character because he didn't seem like Batman, but a far more popular theory—based on the fact that many elements of the book seem like the Bat-mythos with SerialNumbersFiledOff—is that DC refused to let Batman be used in a story as an Islamophobic sociopath who kills terrorists, and so Miller took the story elsewhere.[[/note]]

* FanonDiscontinuity: Many fans like to believe that this story (and ''ComicBook/TheDarkKnightStrikesAgain'') is in no way connected to ''Batman: Year One'' and ''ComicBook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns''.

* {{Misblamed}}: It's common for people to put the blame on Frank Miller for the comic's ScheduleSlip. However, Jim Lee stated that it was because of how long it took him to draw the book that it fell behind.

* FanNickname: Linkara of ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'' calls Batman in these comics "Crazy Steve".

* SnarkBait: Virtually every other panel has some.

** Interestingly, Black Canary doesn't get a new name from Linkara despite ''explicitly'' not being the version we know (her origin clearly isn't that of either mainstream one.)
* ArcFatigue: The series had a lot of {{Padding}} with characters and subplots that don't seem to be important to the main narrative, the series was infamous for its ScheduleSlip resulting in issues being released months apart (and Issues 4 and 5 had a full year between them), and the story being told didn't seem very good anyway. The result is that when the plot actually ''did'' begin to move forward, no one cared anymore. It has been noted that in all that time, ''not much actually happened.'' By the 10th and unintentionally final issue, much of the plot is still where it was in issue one, with plot points having been shown but not ''advanced'' as we cut back and forth.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeArt: Say what you want to about the writing, but the art is ''amazing'', both Lee's interiors and Miller's covers. The art is what's been selling the book. All the critics who absolutely hated the writing said DC could do the fans a better service by reprinting the books with blank speech bubbles.
* AuthorsSavingThrow: Miller apparently got wind of criticisms towards Batman making Robin eat rats, since there are lines of narration in Issue 10 where Batman explained he lived in Gotham's sewers and lived off of the rats in order to learn how to live without his inherited fortune...[[FridgeLogic which begs the question of why he thought it'd make as much sense for Dick Grayson Age Twelve to follow suit considering Dick wasn't exactly living a life of luxury anyways due to having grown up in a circus]].

** Neo-Nazi woman with swastika pasties standing guard outside a motel door. It's ''supposed'' to be a ContinuityNod to an extra that appeared in ''ComicBook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns'' but… yeah, it's just too weird to work.
** A ''lot'' of events in the comic go nowhere and have no importance to anything except for {{Padding}}. Black Canary, Catwoman, Batgirl, Vicki Vale, Jimmy Olsen, and the Justice League, all feature in the series, but across ten issues they each only get one or two scenes in which they do little, if anything, of relevance. Given that Miller considers this series in-canon with his ''Dark Knight Returns'' saga, he's probably including them to build continuity, but the series is ''supposed'' to be about Batman and Robin, yet Miller constantly cuts away to other characters.
* BileFascination: The whole reason the book continued selling: once word about it began to spread, people who haven't read it yet just can't believe it's ''that'' bad.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: When so many characters, including and especially the main protagonist are at best sociopathic jerks without sincere empathy for other human beings, it's hard to feel genuine sympathy.
* DesignatedHero: The Goddamn Batman, who is psychotic, brutal, and an-all round {{Jerkass}}. He kidnaps Dick Grayson, age twelve (albeit from DirtyCops that were about to kill the boy), and then forces him to live alone in the Batcave, expecting him to hunt the rats and bats in there for food. Then he complains about having Dick around and repeatedly insults and assaults him for getting on his nerves. He goes out on patrol laughing about how awesome he is and how much he loves being Batman as he gleefully poisons criminals, sets them on fire, and attacks police officers; while it isn't outright stated, FridgeHorror implies many of the victims of these incidents don't survive the encounter. And he thinks that if he had a Power Ring like Green Lantern, he would use it to enforce his will on the world, destroy (unspecified) enemies of the United States, and exile Superman from Earth, which is basically the backstory for ''Sinestro'' and the reason he was cast out of the Green Lantern Corps, using a Power Ring for selfish, tyrannical means. Why are readers supposed to like this depiction of Batman, exactly? It says something when the ''Villains Wiki'' has an entry for him.
* DesignatedVillain: The Justice League are repeatedly insulted and mocked by Batman as a "club" for ineffectual morons. While this is accurate to how Miller is writing them, all the Justice League does in terms of their interactions with Batman is call him out on his crap, particularly that he's an insane nutjob that's making superheroes look bad and should try and tone it down a bit for the sake of everyone. And they're absolutely correct.

** Hal Jordan, for calling out Batman on his terrible treatment of Dick Grayson, age twelve, and being pretty much the only hero that doesn't do or say anything horrible or offensive, which is ironic, given Frank's opinion of him.

* FountainOfMemes: It is, after all, Batman TurnedUpToEleven -- now with extra crazy flakes.

** The 1994 ''Batman/Spawn''[[note]]also written by Frank Miller[[/note]] crossover had Batman riled up at Spawn's lethal methods, vexing him to the point where he chucked a batarang in Spawn's face when ComicBook/{{Spawn}} asked to shake hands. At the time it was understandable; in ''ComicBook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns'' and ''ComicBook/BatmanYearOne'' he never used lethal force. After his child abusing, cop-killing antics in ''All Star Batman'' his attitude towards Spawn killing seems flat out hypocritical. However, it's completely in line with Miller, as Spawn ''asks'' Batman why ''not'' kill her - and Batman can't think of anything. FacePalm.

** As [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] pointed out, Creator/FrankMiller once said he considered Batman the most pure and good of all DC superheroes. Fast forward to this comic and suddenly we have the Goddamn Batman [[SlasherSmile smirking gleefully]] as he slams the Batmobile into cops, abducts Dick Grayson, [[RunningGag Age Twelve]], and generally runs around acting so brutally out of character that Linkara dubs him "Crazy Steve" because even "Batman In Name Only" is still ''too much'' like Batman. Also, ''ComicBook/HolyTerror'' was conceived by Miller as a Batman story, before DC rejected and forced Miller to use The Fixer.

** Although the "I'm the Goddamn Batman" is the most remembered part of the quote, right before it, he says "[[Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann Who the hell do you think I am?]]"
** When 12-year-old Dick Grayson, age twelve, initially creates his costume with a hood, Batman cynically tells him to drop it, since according to him, this would be impractical in a fight. Flash-forward to Creator/GrantMorrison's run, when Damian Wayne becomes the new Robin. His costume includes a hood. Linkara has theorized Morrison might have done this on purpose as a TakeThat to this comic.
*** This is acknowledged in the comic itself. Dick mentions how Batman taught him that a hood would limit his line of sight, but Damian proves that, having been trained from a far younger age than Dick, he can fight perfectly fine with the hood.

** On the topic of ''Metal'', this Batman's actions are ''very'' similar to those of The Red Death from ''[=DKM=]''.

** The Justice League strongly disapproves of Batman's methods, and Wonder Woman openly wants to kill him, but all they do is send Green Lantern to deal with him. Said "dealing" takes the form of basically a stern talking to and a finger wag. This despite the fact that any ''one'' of the League's members should easily be able to apprehend Batman on their own, nevermind four-on-one, but in the hands of Frank Miller they're too stupid and ineffective to do anything but complain.
** Batman has to try and cover up the fact that Dick Grayson, age twelve, is Robin entirely because he took Dick in front of plenty of eyewitnesses, including Vicki Vale who got photographs of it and was able to publish a newspaper article about Batman kidnapping a little boy.

** And then Miller had exactly the wrong reaction to the Goddamn Batman meme, as he threw the word more and more into Batman's lines until it's practically a VerbalTic.

** In such an attempt at a dark, gritty and bleak storyline where Batman is straight up a SociopathicHero, there's his method of dealing with the Green Lantern powers by painting himself, Robin and ''an entire house'' yellow (and seemingly even his own [[{{Squick}} teeth]] judging by one panel) and then offering Hal a cup of lemonade to rub in their immunity to his powers. It's like a quick trip into a wackier and zanier comic than this one tries to be, right down to the immortal, "''Damn you and your lemonade!''" line.

* OlderThanTheyThink: Some readers take exception to the Joker being emotionless and grim, a far cry from his usual depictions. However his early Golden Age appearances did have the Joker as a more morose character compared to how he would later become known.
* OvershadowedByControversy: Although each issue is arguably infamous in some way, issue 10 was the only one to get ''recalled'' - due to a printing error, the text boxes that blacken out profanity were made see-through, and a [[CountryMatters certain word]] that would otherwise have been blocked out was visible. As such, any discussion of the issue will inevitably bring up said scene.
* {{Padding}}: The series suffers terribly from this. One critic noted the book felt like Miller was spreading 4 issues of story across 20. To put it in perspective, Batman meets Dick Grayson, age twelve, in Issue 1. They arrive at the Batcave in Issue 4. The time in between (the entirety of Issues 2 and 3) is focused on either repetive inner monologue from one of them, or scenes focusing on other characters (despite this being a book about Batman and Robin). Black Canary's introductory scene takes up half of Issue 3, but all that happens is her getting harassed and her beating up a room full of people, and then she wasn't seen again until Issue 6. The Justice League appears in Issue 5 to talk about confronting Batman, but nothing happens about that until Issue 8, and the actual confrontation happens in Issue 9. Finally, while Dick's parents getting killed was the event that began the series, it wasn't until Issue 7 that we actually learn who hired Jocko Boy to carry out the murders, and when the series was cancelled after Issue 10, we still had no hints ''why'' they were killed.

* SoBadItsGood: The fact is that most people think this is a bad Batman story; that doesn't stop them from finding it ''[[CrossesTheLineTwice absolutely hilarious]]''.

* TearJerker: The ending pages of issue 9, where Batman [[PetTheDog throws Dick Grayson,]] [[RunningGag age 12]] [[PetTheDog a bone]] by visiting his parents' graves so he can properly grieve, only for ''both'' of them to dissolve into tears. Even with how messy the rest of the series is, it's a legitimately powerful and almost uncharacteristically sincere scene.

* ValuesDissonance: Batman's asking Dick "Are you dense? Are you retarded or something?" clearly dates the story back to the days when it was considered acceptable to use "retarded" as a synonym for "dumb" or "stupid", before it became widely considered one of the absolute worst discriminatory slurs that anyone can use. In-context, Batman is basically just calling Dick a moron -- which ''still'' makes him a DesignatedHero considering what Dick's just been through -- but to modern day readers, the line comes across far harsher even than Miller intended.

* WhatAnIdiot: If Green Lantern had a brain cell in his head, he'd have dismissed Batman's offer to meet him at a time and place of ''his specification'', and just captured him then and there with the power ring on his own terms. Or, thinking a little harder, used his ring to manipulate normal objects that ''aren't'' painted yellow, like, say, controlling a normal pair of handcuffs to arrest them, or throwing heavy objects at them (such as bricks).
** For that matter, there's Batman's plan to begin with - as Linkara pointed out in his review of the series, ComicBook/BoosterGold encountered ComicBook/{{Sinestro}} while the latter was a Green Lantern in an issue of the former's series; yet despite the fact that [=BG=]'s outfit naturally featured large amounts of yellow[[note]]technically gold is metallic yellow[[/note]] (which led [=BG=] to assume he would be fine against Sinestro), [=BG=] lost when he fought against Sinestro ''because'' the latter used methods that didn't involve touching him, meaning that if Hal was at least written semi-competently, all Hal would have to do is either cover the yellow paint with dirt, or grab something outside the room that Batman didn't paint yellow - it would be one thing if Batman had sealed all the exits after Hal had entered, but that's not what happened.

** As [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] pointed out, Creator/FrankMiller once said he considered Batman the most pure and good of all DC superheroes. Fast forward to this comic and suddenly we have the Goddamn Batman [[SlasherSmile smirking gleefully]] as he slams the Batmobile into cops, abducts Dick Grayson, [[RunningGag Age Twelve]], and generally runs around acting so brutally out of character that Linkara dubs him "Crazy Steve" because even "Batman In Name Only" is still ''too much'' like Batman.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy4ecAylR14 One theory provided by Owen Likes Comics]] posits that the intent was to explore a more up-to-date and [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructive]] take on the original formation of the Dynamic Duo, specifically the original ''Detective Comics #38'' that introduced Robin, a comic featuring [[OlderThanTheyThink a similarly]] [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness uncharacteristically cavalier Batman]] [[CharacterizationmarchesOn whose initial treatment of Dick is questionable]] [[ValuesDissonance to the modern eye]], [[CharacterDevelopment but became slowly humanized by his presence]]. Perhaps the more outlandish characterization choices in ''All-Star'' were potentially meant to parallel and decontextualize this arc, but unfortunately, it's completely lost in the ''other'' characterization and story decisions that turned it into a mess.

** As if picking up on the MemeticMutation, Miller starts overusing the hell out of "Goddamn Batman" like it's going out of style, bordering on [[OnceAnEpisode once an issue]] at ''least''. It stops reading like a serious exclamation and more like that's just his hero name now, and it becomes a signature phrase for Frank Miller to the point that later works liberally toss around "goddamn" all the [[RuleOfThree goddamn]] time.

** As if picking up on the MemeticMutation, Miller starts overusing the hell out of "Goddamn Batman" like it's going out of style, bordering on [[OnceAnEpisode once an issue]] at ''least''. It stops reading like a serious exclamation and more like that's just his hero name now.