 his way through a case, and that gave the readers a surrogate, a stand-in where they could feel like, hey, I could do that, I could take part in these adventures. That partnership really pushed Batman even farther into the superhero territory than he'd been before, and that pushed the villains that much farther into extremes, because right after Robin's debut, you had Joker, who was evil and dangerous a villain, as there was.