Why did Batman have Robin the Boy Wonder? Not only that, but why Bucky and Captain America? Green Arrow and Speedy? Aquaman and Aqualad? Superman and Krypto the Super Dog? Fredric Wertham, the Seduction of the Innocents and the Comics Code guy, would have you believe that they were there to make young boys turn gay and violent. But that was nonsense, wasn’t it? Better change Krypto for photographer Jimmy Olsen just in case.
But if that was merely nonsense, why was it such a part of the formula?
As a D & D dungeon master, I have my own theory about sidekicks and their function in story-telling.
Young sidekicks were an important part of the stories I told as a game master because the players in my games were mostly adolescent boys themselves. It was the same as the primary readers of Batman comics in the 1950’s of Wertham’s Comics Code. The young hero or adventurer character, most often in the form of a non-player character, was someone they could relate to because of age. They had more in common with the sidekick than the lead hero. It helped to draw them into the story and make it relevant.
As a storytelling device, you often find the young apprentice character in novels written for younger audiences. Think of David Eddings’ Belgariad, or Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, or Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. The characters of Garion the youngster in the Belgariad, Taran the young protagonist of Prydain, and certainly Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island.
So, with that realization, I incorporated youthful characters, both boys and girls, as apprentices and student-adventurers.
Initially it proved to be a hard thing. Wizards and sorcerers, according to D & D rules, can take an apprentice once they reach level three. But first-level characters as apprentices are vulnerable because damage done by third level monsters wipes out the meager hit point reserves of a beginner character. After several traumatic deaths of beloved sidekicks, the player characters begin to take steps to protect them better in combat, or quickly learn where to find priests with resurrection spells who work really cheap.
Of course, these characters are useful for more than just creating combat complications. They are really useful for comic relief. The missteps, mistakes, and total botch-jobs that these inexperienced younger characters create can make us laugh, make us sweat a little to correct it, and move the plot forward in interesting ways that I, as the game master, wouldn’t have otherwise planned.
So, hopefully, Mr. Wertham’s ghost isn’t hovering over my D & D game thinking it is all a plot to create a generation of violent, gay youths. Hopefully he can see that it is all a part of a well-established story-telling literary device that actually helps to educate and deepen the understanding of youths. But it is swiftly becoming irrelevant what Wertham’s ghost thinks anyway. I haven’t played D & D for a while now. My sons and daughter now have their own groups of friends, playing under different dungeon masters with different dice. But hopefully, the need for youthful sidekicks will remain.
![Clofillia, Josphine [Madame Clofullia, P.T. Barnum's "Bearded Lady of Geneva"]. Daguerreotype by Thomas M. Easterly, 1853. Photographs and Prints Collections. Missouri History Museum. Easterly 321. NS 17387. Scan © 2008, Missouri History Museum.](https://i0.wp.com/catchafallingstarbook.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/beardedlady.jpg?w=273&h=154&ssl=1 "beardedlady")
During my middle-school teaching years I also bought and read copies of The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, and Life on the Mississippi. I would later use a selection from Roughing It as part of a thematic unit on Mark Twain where I used Will Vinton’s glorious claymation movie, The Adventures of Mark Twain as a way to painlessly introduce my kids to the notion that Mark Twain was funny and complex and wise.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Philosopher King’s Quest
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor, one of the good ones, not like Caligula, Nero, or even Commodus, his son who was emperor after him.
But what made him good? Obviously, the fact that he was beloved by the Roman people, even the senators and the very people who would’ve benefited personally by his failure and demise.
He was a good administrator who benefited the people with public works. He was a good military leader who maintained the Pax Romana until he died in 180 A.D.
Of course, his son, Commodus, blew that all up by being such an incompetent dictator that his own Praetorian Guard assassinated him (as portrayed in the movie Gladiator, though that movie also made him out to be his father’s murderer, of which there is no real evidence)
But my friend Emperor Marcus was so much more than just a good ruler. He was a good man. And this is due almost entirely to the fact that he was a well-known Stoic Philosopher.
He embraced the philosophy of the Greek philosopher and Roman slave Epictetus. Stoicism is the belief that you, as an individual, do not control anything in the outside world to the degree you can control yourself. It is not the things, people, and events around you that matter, since you can’t control those. It is your own set of principles that you have to put in place and adhere to that affect the outcomes in life. In fact, you should view setbacks and roadblocks to your accomplishments not as negative things, but as a learning opportunity. Learn all you can while you may, and at every opportunity. The Stoic welcomes hardship because the overcoming of hardships shapes the man or woman you will become.
I found this philosophy to be the only way forward on some days during my teaching career. I was always more successful in meeting challenges head-on as they arose in front of me. Delaying, making excuses, or running away are all easier to do than that. But those other wimpy tactics never yield the success you can have by defeating your opposition and hardships face-to-face. Of course, you have to remember too that overcoming opposition does not have a selfish quality if you are a Stoic. In fact, you must respect all men, even your enemies. Marcus Aurelius, in response to victory in battle won by having thirsty troops offer a Christian prayer and then have their problem solved by a fortuitous rain storm, told the Senate they must no longer persecute Christians. They were to be considered good Roman citizens, no matter what their religion was.
Marcus Aurelius made it clear in his writings, the Meditations written in Greek, that, “In order to win the day, you must first win the morning.” To him this meant you had to be an early riser, tackling each problem of the day as it came up in the order they happened, morning to night.
So, the Philosopher King’s Quest, by this Stoic philosophy, is managed by first putting yourself right. You must examine your beliefs, test your hypotheses, and prove yourself to yourself before trying to tackle the world.
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