Comics are much more dense, literary, and full of drama than you may realize. As an example, we're going to look at a brief history of Robin. I know that all of you reading this have heard of Batman's sidekick, but did you know that there have been no less than five Robins?

The original is Dick Grayson, the circus acrobat whose family was killed by gangsters and was adopted by Bruce Wayne. Did you know that he and Bruce had a falling out and he left to become the hero Nightwing?

Jason Todd was the second Robin, he was a street orphan that Batman took in after he caught him trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile. Did you know that the Joker beat him to death with a crowbar and blew him up?

After that incident, Batman was nearly driven mad with despair and darkness until a young boy named Tim Drake pieced together the mystery of Batman's identity and forced himself into Bruce's employ, insisting that he needed the light of Robin to balance his dark ways.

Tim served as Robin for quite a long time until he too quit after a fight with Bruce. Stephanie Brown, Tim's girlfriend, took over the mantle for less than a year. She got in way over her head and was presumed murdered for a long time, at the hands of the gangster Black Mask. (She's not dead though, she's now Batgirl.) Tim came back as Robin for a time, but was soon replaced by Damian Wayne, the current Robin and Bruce's own biological son. Oh, and Damian is also the grandson of the homicidal Ra's al Ghul, whom we met in "Batman Begins."

The stories that spawned this history extend back through 70 years of continuity, and each and every one of them is wondrous and entertaining. Sure, it sounds like some sort of soap opera, but it's a bad-ass soap opera with heroes and villains in capes and we love it. Comics can be every bit as enlightening as any of the great literary masters were and I hope you get a chance to find out for yourself.