Dick Grayson: Robin, Nightwing, Agent of Spyral Appreciation 2018

[kjn]

I think writers are more interested in their own created characters than in legacy characters.

Are they? A lot of them surely are, but there are also people (including writers) who are drawn to characters with a long history, a rich legacy, and sometimes also a high status. Or as G Willow Wilson said about being offered the chance for writing Wonder Woman:

So it really did seem like the right place, the right time. And even if it hadn’t been, when you get a call saying, “Hey, can you write Wonder Woman?” You don’t say no. You find a way, you find the time. I was very honored to be asked.

[Konja7]

Are they? A lot of them surely are, but there are also people (including writers) who are drawn to characters with a long history, a rich legacy, and sometimes also a high status. Or as G Willow Wilson said about being offered the chance for writing Wonder Woman:

Of course, there are writers interested in characters with high status. In fact, they put their new characters in book with high status characters.

Curiously, Dick should be a character with high status. The problem is that his higher status are "the first sidekick (Robin)" or "the hero becoming independent"

This is why Dick can be easily used in other media, they can put Dick in these roles again and develop him in different ways. However, this isn't possible in comics.

[kjn]

Oh, I think there are good niches for Dick. The one that opened the current Titans run, with Dick setting out to form a team to help new metahumans to adjust to their new powers, sounded like an excellent further development of him. It's also similar to the way he is used the TV show.

There is also a difference between having a new character as a protagonist and as a supporting character. Supporting characters come and go all the time, it's when the new character takes over from the established one that you end up in trouble with readers (see Robinson's use of Jason in Wonder Woman).

[oasis1313]

What do you do when you're assigned to write the book of a character your boss despises?

[Godlike13]

That’s easy, try to change his mind with your work on him. Every writers goal on a character should be to get people interested and invested on that character and their work on them. From die hard fans, to the more general audiences, to the people that despise him.

[oasis1313]

I'd say that the goal for a Nightwing writer would be to write Dick Grayson in such a way that Dan Didio is won over and changes his mind about hating the character.

[Robanker]

I'd say that the goal for a Nightwing writer would be to write Dick Grayson in such a way that Dan Didio is won over and changes his mind about hating the character.

The thing is he hates Dick's existence by virtue of his relationship to Batman. Unless Dick gets de-aged, I don't think it can be solved for Didio. Dick being a young adult makes Bruce an old man by his own admission, so he has to go in order for the fantasy of Batman being 32 or something to make sense. I dunno, I always imagine Batman frozen around 38 and Dick roughly 24, so Bruce was about 24-26 when Dick first took flight as Robin. Considering Bruce has a 13 year-old son (sure, artificial womb and super SCIENCE) and has gone through all those Robins, 38 isn't a stretch. Keeps him in his prime, adds some years for wisdom and gives a lot of time to fit stories in.

I guess that makes him a decrepit old grandfather?

Dick Grayson's age is his problem, as is his generation because they grew up and Didio firmly wants his heroes young, vital and with none of their sidekicks invalidating their success by being heroes they themselves mentored into equals. He just seems like a terrible fit for creative direction of DC Comics, but what do I know?

[WonderNight]

I'd say that the goal for a Nightwing writer would be to write Dick Grayson in such a way that Dan Didio is won over and changes his mind about hating the character.

what ways are that? It whould have to be in ways that didio feel nightwing is no longer redundant with batman and robin or ages batman.

[oasis1313]

Why not de-age them all if that's what it takes to make Didio happy?

[Ascended]

Why not de-age them all if that's what it takes to make Didio happy?

I think if Didio wanted the original sidekick generation to be kids again he'd have done it. Or rather, if he wanted it and could get away with it, he'd have done it.

If you de-age Dick and Wally, you end up losing Damian, Tim (I know you wouldnt mind but many of us would), Bart, Conner, etc. Those characters have a lot of fans, and they wont be happy to see them disappear just so Dick can wear short shorts again. And for that matter, how many of us actually want to see the NTT de-aged back to sidekick levels? Granted, the treatment they get these days is so piss poor it makes me angry and I question how anyone dense enough to abuse them could have any authority in the company, but do we *really* want to lose all that history and development in main canon? I dont.

Didio seems to want two generations in DC; the League's generation and their sidekicks (currently Damian's generation), and everyone else like the JSA, NTT and Young Justice? Didio can't seem to figure out what purpose they could serve.

The fact that DC is all about legacy and Didio can't get behind multiple generations is......ironic, to say the least.

As for whether a writer could turn Didio around on Nightwing? Who knows? Didio's problem doesn't seem to be Dick as much as the fact that Dick being in his mid-20's somehow makes Bruce an invalid. So I'd presume that there's no way to turn Didio's opinion around because it's not about Nightwing at all, its about Batman being "old."

The best hope is that some writer comes in when DC expects nothing from them, and knocks out such a fantastic run that even Didio can't ignore the fan response. It seems that, unless you're Batman, the only way to find success is in spite of DC, not because of them.

Its that, or we hope that some WB exec decides to take an interest in Nightwing and over rules Didio. How or why someone at WB would care, I have no idea. It'd certainly be something banal like the exec's grand kids liking Nighting on the Young Justice cartoon or something equally mundane, and that exec forcing Didio to make Nightwing viable so the exec's grand kids can have more stuff.

[dropkickjake]

Why not de-age them all if that's what it takes to make Didio happy?

bc then we lose people like Jason, Damian, Connor, et c.

My question, honestly, is why do we need them to have definite ages and why do we need a definite timeline and why do we need it all to make a clear logical sense? When I first got into comics I worked out like a ten year timeline that had bruce in his late 20s/early30s, Dick in his early twenties, et c., but as time has gone on I care about that way less.

In my mind, as long as Dick acts competent I can read him as someone that lost his parents when he was 8, started *training* soon after, took the streets with Batman a few years later, and is early/mid 20s now having been a hero his whole life. And I can do that and read Bruce as a late 20s early 30s guy whose been doing this for quite some time as well.

B/c I'm pretty comfortable with comic time not working like real person time. In comics world time time isn't really a strict progression of cause to effect. From a non linear non-subjective viewpoint, its more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.

[OversizedLoad]

Remember when Higgins wanted to frame his run with Dick as the "Prince of Gotham"?

[Badou]

Remember when Higgins wanted to frame his run with Dick as the "Prince of Gotham"?

Yeah, I remember when he said he wanted to make Dick that in Gotham. Just saw the name of Lobdell's new Red Hood arc is Prince of Gotham. I guess ideas in the Batman office are running thin, lol.

[dropkickjake]

Yeah, I remember when he said he wanted to make Dick that in Gotham. Just saw the name of Lobdell's new Red Hood arc is Prince of Gotham. I guess ideas in the Batman office are running thin, lol.

Well lobdell's clearly are.

[Restingvoice]

Remember when Higgins wanted to frame his run with Dick as the "Prince of Gotham"?

Yeah, then Death of The Family happen, but that's on him too. He doesn't have to torch the circus.

By the way, it's been a month, right? How's the sale on the current dickishness?