Robin: Facing the Enemy was originally published in 1997 as a junior tie-in novel to Batman & Robin, written by Alan Grant, set in between the two Joel Schumacher films.

It was accompanied by Batgirl: To Dare the Darkness, written by Doug Moench, which was given a junior audio drama (with the same cast as the Batman & Robin movie audio drama). The Robin story, however, was not given the same treatment. Because of this, I reached out to Tim Maxwell at Neuverse Creative to ask, “Have you thought about doing the audio version for this one?” Sure enough, he was very familiar with the story and was down for me to write it!

Thumbnail wise, fans might notice that Tim based the art on the action figure art of the Spin Master Robin that was recently released:

A Post-Batman Forever Robin Story

I had already done Batman Forever: Night of the Reaper as a sequel to the movie, but I had always wanted to do a story taking place directly after Forever to kind of further cement Dick Grayson’s place as Robin. At the end of that movie, Robin joins the crusade out of necessity but it’s clear that the two would probably need to keep working out the kinks of their partnership after.

My original idea was actually to adapt the comic book The Gauntlet, covering the test that Batman gives to Robin to prove that he can survive a night in Gotham and be his partner. I had even written a first draft beforehand in which Chase Meridian even replaced Alfred for a couple scenes.

But then I read Robin: Facing the Enemy and realized that this story fit the Schumacherverse much better, considering that it was tailor-made for it.

The other thing was that The Gauntlet was very much written for the traditional pre-teen Robin, which heightened the stakes. Chris O’Donnell’s Robin has long been the brunt of jokes for being too old for the “Boy” Wonder and so the beats just didn’t hit the same way in imagining him in danger in The Gauntlet story.

I had originally thought of doing both stories until I realized that it wouldn’t have worked either. If Facing the Enemy took place before The Gauntlet, then why would Batman need to put Robin through the test after a month of crime fighting together already? And if The Gauntlet took place in between Forever and Facing the Enemy, it would seem very weird for Bruce to go from approving Robin as a partner at the end of Gauntlet to immediately firing him in the opening of Facing the Enemy. I decided to abandon adapting The Gauntlet for the Schumacherverse (though I’ve toyed with the idea of adapting it for a different Batman universe) and focus on adapting Facing the Enemy instead.

Differences from the Novel

The main goal that I had in adapting the story was to keep the focus on Dick Grayson. You’ll find that this is a trend of mine where I tried to focus Batman 89 Shadows on Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent. The book had an ongoing parallel storyline of Nate Toomey’s evolution into becoming The Enemy. But I decided that the audience would mainly be interested in Dick’s storyline and that all the relevant beats about Nate would be covered in the narration.

I did start taking a few creative liberties at the end of the story that aren’t in the book, however.

For example, the dialogue is reordered a bit in the final confrontation between Robin and The Enemy where Dick says “I’m Robin. Remember the name. I stop people like you in their tracks!” I ended up splitting the line as I really liked the idea of Dick having an “I’m Robin” moment in parallel to the classic “I’m Batman” and I felt that audio drama dialogue would be a little different than what was in book form.

The biggest creative liberty I took was Nate Toomey’s future as The Enemy. The novel has him wind up in Blackgate and swear vengeance, like we did in the audio drama, but I thought it’d be more satisfying to make The Enemy become a future Nightwing villain. Hence, the idea of Nate turning into a bird-like enemy, “like a shrike,” hinting that Nate will become “Boone” in the comics, train under the League of Assassins, and return as the Nightwing villain Shrike.

Lastly, I wanted there to be a bit of a happy ending with the resolution with The Enemy and added in a beat about Dick Grayson finding Joe’s money and sending it to his family. This actually was not in the novel and does feel like a darker ending for Joe and his family.

If you want to check out an unabridged audio version of the story, check out Drew Griffin at 1995 Batman’s reading of the book:

Casting and Determining Kilmer vs. Clooney

When Tim and I first discussed adapting the book, one thing we had to determine was which Schumacher Batman would be “cast” for the story. The book was obviously a Batman & Robin tie-in, so Clooney seemed the obvious choice.

But in reading the book, it just felt more like Forever than Batman & Robin. Robin’s costume was described as having the green and gold that we saw in Forever, before he transitioned to the red suit in the next movie and on the cover. Then, there were obviously the references to Forever since it took place only a month later, with mentions of Two-Face and Riddler. It’s likely that Alan Grant had to write it so it’d be published in time for Batman & Robin, in which case he might have only had access to the B&R script. So he may have needed to draw more off of Batman Forever anyway, not to mention the fact that he had written the Forever junior novelization, so he was very familiar with that version of Bruce. Lastly, Batman just felt more like Kilmer to us than Clooney in how he was written. The stickler for Neuverse continuity in me also wanted us to keep Night of the Reaper in our own continuity, which takes place a year after the events of Forever, which meant Batman would still be Kilmer during this time period. In the end, it just made more sense to “cast” Kilmer for this.

Just like with other audios, I had no idea I’d have to perform it!

Casting-wise, in 2024, Tim originally cast me as The Enemy! This was before we had talked about me voicing Bruce/Batman in Batman 3 and Batman Forever: The Schumacher Cut. I had played around with a few possible voices for it, including a creepy whispery take on it. But then when I finished recording for Batman Forever: The Schumacher Cut, Tim and I thought it just made more sense for me to continue as the Kilmer Batman for this one and he got Damien Inge instead for the role. Damien’s youthful sounding Nate is a much better fit than what I would’ve done for the role as the character is meant to be around Dick’s age. So I think it worked out for the best. It was great to slip into the Kilmer Batman shoes so quickly after recording Forever and I look forward to more in the future!