Pitch a Direction: Nightwing

[WonderNight]

Bludhaven being like Vegas is so good. It connects with Dick's roots as a performer and it immediately makes the setting more colorful and fun. He could even have an arc where he's working in a show, whether undercover or as his day job. A supporting character could be a street magician/con artist that helps Dick from time to time.

A Vegas Bludhaven is a good start. Where does zatanna live? She could live in vegas Bludhaven and help add more character to the city but she'd spend most of her time on the road doing shows and her and dick can have team ups when she in town. #Chalant

But nightwing definitely needs to be globetrotting to help him stand apart from batman.

[Rakiduam]

I have been thinking Circus of Soleil in Vegas and it sounded really good since someone pitched it at the time of the new 52.

If DC could really commit to the concept and let it be developed, making Bludhaven into Las Vegas would be such a fantastic concept to exploit and a sandbox to play for more characters that just Nightwing. And there's always the option of a world tur with the Circus would be the perfect cover to world trotting.

Casino business is savage; ruthless CEO's and mob money in a world of metas and superpowered people, they could play that off; like have a character that can smell lies working for the casinos to detect people trying to hide their powers, and when Dick says "I'm Dick Grayson" kind of smell like a lie, (I have theis imagen of Lex Luthor playing poker at a mind readers' table, just to prove he is better)

They are alaways saying Dick is a performer so develop that side of him, then they could connect it to Dick's familly and the life he could have lived if they hadn't die.


They don't even have to lost the street level aspect, just make the streets more interesting.

Or, just do Grayson again, that work too.

A Vegas Bludhaven is a good start. Where does zatanna live? She could live in vegas Bludhaven and help add more character to the city but she'd spend most of her time on the road doing shows and her and dick can have team ups when she in town. #Chalant

But nightwing definitely needs to be globetrotting to help him stand apart from batman.

They could have a whole team book with rotating cast of DC characters living and preforming in Las Vegas like Zatanna and Mister Miracle. Black Canary coud stop by if she still has the band, even Midnighter could have fun in a WWE kind of spectacle.

[Ascended]

I feel like we are talking about this endlessly in the appreciation thread. But ya'll know I can't resist throwing my "brilliant" ideas out there.

So, I'd do something much like what a lot of people here are suggesting; Nightwing: Director of Spyral.

This basic setup is about as perfect as we're gonna get; DC doesn't have a "super spy" so its a niche Dick can own, "Grayson" set precedent for it, and Dick has the skills and the leadership ability to pull it off. And the fact that Dick doesn't naturally gravitate to the darker elements of spy work, and all the secret keeping and moral gray areas, provides internal conflict for him.

To the world at large, Dick Grayson is just another super rich trust fund kid trying to fill the hours in a day. He does extreme sports stunts for fun and/or charity, (like snowboarding) and occasionally hits the high life, but lives far more under the radar than Bruce Wayne. Typically the most interesting thing about Dick, as far as the paparazzi go, is his new relationship with Karen Starr, better known to us as Power Girl. To the heroic community, Nightwing is the protector of Bludhaven; he's a skilled, experienced, and respected hero. The "Nightwing seal of approval" carries serious weight (as Superman himself once said). But he's just another hero protecting a city and many heroes wonder why he's settled for something so common when he could be on the League (if only he'd say yes to their invites!) or doing something....bigger. If only they knew the truth! Because in reality, Nightwing is protecting the entire world from threats they don't even know about. Remember when the Justice League failed to stop that biological weapon from turning every person in the Western hemisphere into twisted mutants? No? Well, you have Nightwing and Spyral to thank for that. Or, you would thank them....if you had ever known you were in danger in the first place.

On the homefront, Bludhaven is a crapstick of a city. A former whaling town that never recovered from the end of whaling, Bludhaven has tried several different things to salvage its economy and all of them have failed. The city is full of run down, barely functioning casinos, IT firms, etc. Nearly half the buildings in town are empty and condemned. Bludhaven has been a lot of things over the years and you'd see a little bit of each version here, all mixed up with a solid amount of tarnish and corruption and rot. It's what Gotham would look like if Wayne Enterprises hadn't been there to save it. Blockbuster still runs the city as the local kingpin, and smuggling would be the serious threat in Bludhaven; exotic weapons of all kinds (biological, tech, alien, etc) flow through the docks like poison and you end up seeing everything from brainwashed, weaponized metas to self-aware computer viruses all passing through Bludhaven on their way to black market auctions. In this way, Bludhaven becomes a crossroads for the DCU, mirroring Dick's connections to the wider universe.

With regards to Spyral, I'd establish Bronze Tiger as Dick's second in command, and Tiger (the Spyral operative) would become a rogue agent hell bent on getting revenge against Dick for taking Spyral from him. Dick would take Bette "Flamebird" Kane as a sidekick (which wouldn't sit well with Kate Kane). If DC would let me, I'd also bring Babs in for her computer skills; she'd still operate publicly as Batgirl, but unknown to most people (including Bruce) she's now Oracle again too. And, if DC would let me, she'd bring the Birds of Prey along with her and they'd be one of Dick's primary strike teams. So in this way, we can see how a collection of books could grow around Nightwing's Spyral; Dick's own solo, a Birds of Prey title, and the Batgirl book could dip into this as much or as little as it wanted. The ties to Nightwing wouldn't have to be direct; these would be more like satellite titles more than additional Nightwing books. After all, in Charlie's Angels you never actually see Charlie, right?

Visually, Spyral has to have its own design aesthetic and I'm not afraid of stealing, so we're going to take a lot of the visual elements from Snyder's Heavy arc. Spyral uses militarized blimps (with the Nightwing logo in the spotlight instead of the Bat), and their combat teams use mech suits similar to the robot-bunny thing that Gordon wore, etc. It honors the ties to Gotham while re-purposing it for Dick's own ends, which seems fitting. And since the Batman books aren't really using any of that stuff anymore, there's no point in letting cool ideas collect dust.

Dick handles all kinds of threats personally; this is comics so Dick being the director of Spyral doesn't mean he's stuck behind a desk and a mountain of paperwork. He protects Bludhaven as his "secret identity" but spends most of his time traveling the globe, having sexy fun James Bond adventures. So to help him handle superhuman problems, he upgrades his costume. We're basically going to give him a suit with Batman Beyond capabilities. I knocked out a quick doodle a while back for what this suit could look like....though of course I'd want to leave it to the professionals to design for actual publication.

Nightwing McArthur.jpg

As for rogues.....I'll just copy-paste this bit from another thread.

Blockbuster, Lady Vic, Torque, Brutale, Roxy Rocket, Deathwing, Double Dare, Prankster, Riot, the Bomb Squad (Electrocutioner & Plastique), Doctor Phosphorous.

This feels like a solid lineup of city-level threats. We've got mob bosses, assassins, dark mirror killers, walking WMD's, thieves, anarchists, psychopaths, and one sexy rocket riding adrenaline junky who just wants a rush and loves stealing stuff so the cops will chase her.

Professor Pyg and the Circus of Strange, Raptor, Leviathan, Queen Bee & H.I.V.E., Katrina (Kathy) Webb-Kane, Atomic Skull, Checkmate (Max Lord & Brother Eye), the Wildebeest Society, Intergang.

Building on the super-spy motif of "Grayson" I think there's a real solid foundation for Nightwing's more high-risk, global threats. We've got several flavors of secret societies, spy cabals, terrorist organizations and murder houses, plus hyper-powered killer cyborg robots in the form of Brother Eye's OMAC units.

Flamebird & Nightwing.

The actual, for-realz Kryptonian gods. They might be drawn to earth because that's where the last vestige of Kryptonian culture and religion are (thanks, Clark) but when they find out two mortal earthlings are using their names, the gods decide that Dick Grayson and Bette Kane would make great hosts, and just like that Dick has a "Phoenix" level problem on his hands.

[Restingvoice]

We did talk about this a lot but it always got swallowed with bad news of the week. Making it a separate thread is better.

[Ascended]

As an alternative.....

Titans, Inc.

Let's take the Titans, Batman Incorporated, and Infinity Inc., mix them together, and turn them into a global peace keeping force with Nightwing at the lead. As the JLA concern themselves with huge, cosmic problems more and more often, that means there's less attention given to threats like the Royal Flush Gang or the Shaggy Man, and a army of Titans and Infinity Inc'ers could fill that space. If the League handle huge, universe-ending problems, then Nightwing and Titans Inc could take up that slack.

[WhipWhirlwind]

I feel like we are talking about this endlessly in the appreciation thread. But ya'll know I can't resist throwing my "brilliant" ideas out there.

So, I'd do something much like what a lot of people here are suggesting; Nightwing: Director of Spyral.

This basic setup is about as perfect as we're gonna get; DC doesn't have a "super spy" so its a niche Dick can own, "Grayson" set precedent for it, and Dick has the skills and the leadership ability to pull it off. And the fact that Dick doesn't naturally gravitate to the darker elements of spy work, and all the secret keeping and moral gray areas, provides internal conflict for him.

To the world at large, Dick Grayson is just another super rich trust fund kid trying to fill the hours in a day. He does extreme sports stunts for fun and/or charity, (like snowboarding) and occasionally hits the high life, but lives far more under the radar than Bruce Wayne. Typically the most interesting thing about Dick, as far as the paparazzi go, is his new relationship with Karen Starr, better known to us as Power Girl. To the heroic community, Nightwing is the protector of Bludhaven; he's a skilled, experienced, and respected hero. The "Nightwing seal of approval" carries serious weight (as Superman himself once said). But he's just another hero protecting a city and many heroes wonder why he's settled for something so common when he could be on the League (if only he'd say yes to their invites!) or doing something....bigger. If only they knew the truth! Because in reality, Nightwing is protecting the entire world from threats they don't even know about. Remember when the Justice League failed to stop that biological weapon from turning every person in the Western hemisphere into twisted mutants? No? Well, you have Nightwing and Spyral to thank for that. Or, you would thank them....if you had ever known you were in danger in the first place.

On the homefront, Bludhaven is a crapstick of a city. A former whaling town that never recovered from the end of whaling, Bludhaven has tried several different things to salvage its economy and all of them have failed. The city is full of run down, barely functioning casinos, IT firms, etc. Nearly half the buildings in town are empty and condemned. Bludhaven has been a lot of things over the years and you'd see a little bit of each version here, all mixed up with a solid amount of tarnish and corruption and rot. It's what Gotham would look like if Wayne Enterprises hadn't been there to save it. Blockbuster still runs the city as the local kingpin, and smuggling would be the serious threat in Bludhaven; exotic weapons of all kinds (biological, tech, alien, etc) flow through the docks like poison and you end up seeing everything from brainwashed, weaponized metas to self-aware computer viruses all passing through Bludhaven on their way to black market auctions. In this way, Bludhaven becomes a crossroads for the DCU, mirroring Dick's connections to the wider universe.

With regards to Spyral, I'd establish Bronze Tiger as Dick's second in command, and Tiger (the Spyral operative) would become a rogue agent hell bent on getting revenge against Dick for taking Spyral from him. Dick would take Bette "Flamebird" Kane as a sidekick (which wouldn't sit well with Kate Kane). If DC would let me, I'd also bring Babs in for her computer skills; she'd still operate publicly as Batgirl, but unknown to most people (including Bruce) she's now Oracle again too. And, if DC would let me, she'd bring the Birds of Prey along with her and they'd be one of Dick's primary strike teams. So in this way, we can see how a collection of books could grow around Nightwing's Spyral; Dick's own solo, a Birds of Prey title, and the Batgirl book could dip into this as much or as little as it wanted. The ties to Nightwing wouldn't have to be direct; these would be more like satellite titles more than additional Nightwing books. After all, in Charlie's Angels you never actually see Charlie, right?

Visually, Spyral has to have its own design aesthetic and I'm not afraid of stealing, so we're going to take a lot of the visual elements from Snyder's Heavy arc. Spyral uses militarized blimps (with the Nightwing logo in the spotlight instead of the Bat), and their combat teams use mech suits similar to the robot-bunny thing that Gordon wore, etc. It honors the ties to Gotham while re-purposing it for Dick's own ends, which seems fitting. And since the Batman books aren't really using any of that stuff anymore, there's no point in letting cool ideas collect dust.

Dick handles all kinds of threats personally; this is comics so Dick being the director of Spyral doesn't mean he's stuck behind a desk and a mountain of paperwork. He protects Bludhaven as his "secret identity" but spends most of his time traveling the globe, having sexy fun James Bond adventures. So to help him handle superhuman problems, he upgrades his costume. We're basically going to give him a suit with Batman Beyond capabilities. I knocked out a quick doodle a while back for what this suit could look like....though of course I'd want to leave it to the professionals to design for actual publication.

Nightwing McArthur.jpg

As for rogues.....I'll just copy-paste this bit from another thread.

Blockbuster, Lady Vic, Torque, Brutale, Roxy Rocket, Deathwing, Double Dare, Prankster, Riot, the Bomb Squad (Electrocutioner & Plastique), Doctor Phosphorous.

This feels like a solid lineup of city-level threats. We've got mob bosses, assassins, dark mirror killers, walking WMD's, thieves, anarchists, psychopaths, and one sexy rocket riding adrenaline junky who just wants a rush and loves stealing stuff so the cops will chase her.

Professor Pyg and the Circus of Strange, Raptor, Leviathan, Queen Bee & H.I.V.E., Katrina (Kathy) Webb-Kane, Atomic Skull, Checkmate (Max Lord & Brother Eye), the Wildebeest Society, Intergang.

Building on the super-spy motif of "Grayson" I think there's a real solid foundation for Nightwing's more high-risk, global threats. We've got several flavors of secret societies, spy cabals, terrorist organizations and murder houses, plus hyper-powered killer cyborg robots in the form of Brother Eye's OMAC units.

Flamebird & Nightwing.

The actual, for-realz Kryptonian gods. They might be drawn to earth because that's where the last vestige of Kryptonian culture and religion are (thanks, Clark) but when they find out two mortal earthlings are using their names, the gods decide that Dick Grayson and Bette Kane would make great hosts, and just like that Dick has a "Phoenix" level problem on his hands.

Exactly what I was waiting for when I saw the thread. This would be perfect.

[OBrianTallent]

As an alternative.....

Titans, Inc.

Let's take the Titans, Batman Incorporated, and Infinity Inc., mix them together, and turn them into a global peace keeping force with Nightwing at the lead. As the JLA concern themselves with huge, cosmic problems more and more often, that means there's less attention given to threats like the Royal Flush Gang or the Shaggy Man, and a army of Titans and Infinity Inc'ers could fill that space. If the League handle huge, universe-ending problems, then Nightwing and Titans Inc could take up that slack.

THis is something I had thought about as well. The basic premise for the current Titans run isn't a bad one, it's quite good, the execution of it on the other had has been choppy at best and could easily step into something similar to this idea. Although I dont know that we would need an "army" but just a good coordinated team (Dick, Donna, Wally, Roy, Garth, Raven, Gar, Natasha, M'Gann) include some rotating chairs for others (Bumblebee, Flamebird, Hawk, Dove...). Outside of Hotspot, we haven't seen Jurgens' Titans characters at all and the current storyline would give a good reboot to those characters if they didn't want to use the alien hybrid origin and would also give good reason to bring Argent onto the team.
As for Nightwing proper...someone somewhere brought up the idea of him being a private investigator, which I think could be quite brilliant. Why couldn't the ward of the world's greatest detective not go into being an investigator? I would bring in Lillith Clay as a supporting character to be his girl Friday, office administrator, coordinator. Being a PI would give him plenty of opportunity to work within Bludhaven (making it a Vegas style city is a necessity at this point after reading that suggestion) but it could also give him plenty of opportunities to travel the world on work for hire.

of course the best story line to read for Nightwing would be the news report that Dan Didio is no longer involved in DC Comics.

[9th.]

Glad people liked the Vegas idea, I didn't even think about superpowered performers like Zatanna and Mister Miracle making appearances. That makes it even better and gives the city more life.

[oasis1313]

THis is something I had thought about as well. The basic premise for the current Titans run isn't a bad one, it's quite good, the execution of it on the other had has been choppy at best and could easily step into something similar to this idea. Although I dont know that we would need an "army" but just a good coordinated team (Dick, Donna, Wally, Roy, Garth, Raven, Gar, Natasha, M'Gann) include some rotating chairs for others (Bumblebee, Flamebird, Hawk, Dove...). Outside of Hotspot, we haven't seen Jurgens' Titans characters at all and the current storyline would give a good reboot to those characters if they didn't want to use the alien hybrid origin and would also give good reason to bring Argent onto the team.
As for Nightwing proper...someone somewhere brought up the idea of him being a private investigator, which I think could be quite brilliant. Why couldn't the ward of the world's greatest detective not go into being an investigator? I would bring in Lillith Clay as a supporting character to be his girl Friday, office administrator, coordinator. Being a PI would give him plenty of opportunity to work within Bludhaven (making it a Vegas style city is a necessity at this point after reading that suggestion) but it could also give him plenty of opportunities to travel the world on work for hire.

of course the best story line to read for Nightwing would be the news report that Dan Didio is no longer involved in DC Comics.

Or: Dan Didio woke up one morning and decided that Nightwing is his favorite character.

[Ascended]

Exactly what I was waiting for when I saw the thread. This would be perfect.

Thanks. But that "Bludhaven is Vegas" idea is excellent. I'd humbly like to fold that concept into the one I posted, because it's far better than my "Bludhaven has a problem with smuggling" idea.

THis is something I had thought about as well. The basic premise for the current Titans run isn't a bad one, it's quite good, the execution of it on the other had has been choppy at best and could easily step into something similar to this idea. Although I dont know that we would need an "army" but just a good coordinated team (Dick, Donna, Wally, Roy, Garth, Raven, Gar, Natasha, M'Gann) include some rotating chairs for others (Bumblebee, Flamebird, Hawk, Dove...).

Well, I figured the Infinity Inc kids could be folded in because they're cut from the same cloth as the Titans. They're about the same age, they're legacy heroes tied to bigger names, and DC has no idea what to do with them. And honestly? I'm beyond sick of the same Fab5/NTT-centic roster. I mean, at this point in order to try and keep it fresh, DC has allowed Donna friggin Troy, the Mary Sue of the Titans, to become an alcoholic. Yeah, that's f**king creative, that is. We need a different roster, and we need something deeper than "It's the Titans, but this time with random character X instead of Cyborg!" Just about everything worth saying about the core Titans roster, as a team, has already been said. If we can't let these characters finally move on and escape the black hole that has become Perez's NTT nostalgia, we might as well give them some new dynamics to bounce off of. (sorry for the rant, I really hate nostalgia driven Titans)

And the "army" idea is a hold over from the Batman Inc stuff. I think it'd be a different way to approach a team book, and maybe help it stand apart. And if we're mixing Titans and Infiniter's, its basically a small army already so why not go for broke?

Glad people liked the Vegas idea, I didn't even think about superpowered performers like Zatanna and Mister Miracle making appearances. That makes it even better and gives the city more life.

Yeah, its bloody brilliant man.

[WhipWhirlwind]

Thanks. But that "Bludhaven is Vegas" idea is excellent. I'd humbly like to fold that concept into the one I posted, because it's far better than my "Bludhaven has a problem with smuggling" idea.

I actually like both equally. When a port city becomes not a port city, the existing labor force has to make do somehow. Easy to imagine a union boss taking a deal from someone they don't fully comprehend in the name of keeping hours/paychecks up. See The Wire Season 2.

[9th.]

Nightwing McArthur.jpg

I love the wings concept, I picture a similar thing in my mind when I invisionsed him gliding off of rooftops.

[Jackalope89]

Dick could take up residence of Circus Circus!
...
I'll stop now.

[byrd156]

I love the wings concept, I picture a similar thing in my mind when I invisionsed him gliding off of rooftops.

The gliding wings should make a comeback.

[Pohzee]

The gliding wings should make a comeback.

Sort of like Batwing, I think it would be cool if Nightwing had a proto-Beyond suit. A nice bridge between towards the possible future.