Dick Grayson: Robin, Nightwing, Batman, Agent of Spyral Appreciation 2019

[Godlike13]

The idea that fans killed Grayson needs to die. It’s not true. Just look at Ric.

[Arsenal]

Said this in the Superman thread, but ...

Dick is Leviathan and "Ric" is just DC running out the bad storyline to be the perfect red herring for the big twist in the Bendis story.

I’ve been saying that.

[Rac7d*]

The idea that fans killed Grayson needs to die. It’s not true. Just look at Ric.

Yeah the bitterness needs to end it had a good run but spy agency’s are undeveloped in dc sand alienated him from major dc projects. Then again here we are with him out of commission for HIC

[K. Jones]

I saw that and I think there may be some interesting credence to this.

Take for example the conversations with the heroes in the Leviathan promo.

Batman: Your war on crime accomplishes nothing. I've tried it your way.

He addresses Batgirl as Barbara and she is the first person he tries to convince to join his cause.

Plastic Man: You and I were born into a broken world and it almost killed us. We both figured out we needed to start over.

And then of course the Spyral/Leviathan connection from Grayson.

Some of this is pretty generic and not strong evidence, but I'm still kinda hoping for it because literally anything else is better than what we have right now. Particularly anything spy related or that puts Dick in a place of importance in the DCU (which he isn't right now.)

The current incarnation of Plastic Man was "reborn" into Plas during Forever Evil, yeah? In Gotham? When OWLMAN knocked him into waste chemicals? If so both Dick and Plastic Man died and were reborn during Forever Evil as a direct result of the specific meddling of Owlman. Not that I'm entirely sure how much A. New 52 and B. Plastic Man backstory persists after Rebirth. Like, truly nobody cared that Plastic Man was casually "born" during that event.

Continuing on that though ... obviously Plastic Man was in some kind of lockdown during METAL and came out of it, came out of an egg, basically, was sort of born into a broken world in the sence that he came back and the Dark Multiverse had legit broken the world. Nightwing had a weird Nth Metal dagger third eye spiritual multiversal awakening thing going on during Metal.

[OWL45]

Yeah the bitterness needs to end it had a good run but spy agency’s are undeveloped in dc sand alienated him from major dc projects. Then again here we are with him out of commission for HIC

The current DC major project Leviathan is centered around the spy agencies and the fact they were underdeveloped. He would have been a central figure in that story. I just think fans need to be open minded and not so rooted in nostalgia with some characters. With that said I think the character is at his lowest point in decades. I hope it gets better soon.

[twiztor]

i think the thing that bothers me the most is that this was a Tom King idea...correct? Ric/Dick Grayson/Nightwing hasn't appeared in a single issue of Batman since the headshot, has he? i guess i just can't comprehend why you would suggest this be done to a character within your wheelhouse and then just ignore it?

[Godlike13]

The current DC major project Leviathan is centered around the spy agencies and the fact they were underdeveloped. He would have been a central figure in that story. I just think fans need to be open minded and not so rooted in nostalgia with some characters. With that said I think the character is at his lowest point in decades. I hope it gets better soon.

Ric is probably going to out last Grayson, despite selling like **** and having terrible word of mouth. So again I say, this idea that fans ended Grayson needs to die. DC could give a **** about Dick’s fans or readers.

[Rac7d*]

The current DC major project Leviathan is centered around the spy agencies and the fact they were underdeveloped. He would have been a central figure in that story. I just think fans need to be open minded and not so rooted in nostalgia with some characters. With that said I think the character is at his lowest point in decades. I hope it gets better soon.

This is like 4 years later

They should have tied spyral checkmate and Amanda Waller somehow to ice it relevancy

[Restingvoice]

i think the thing that bothers me the most is that this was a Tom King idea...correct? Ric/Dick Grayson/Nightwing hasn't appeared in a single issue of Batman since the headshot, has he? i guess i just can't comprehend why you would suggest this be done to a character within your wheelhouse and then just ignore it?

One panel in the most recent issue.

Objectively, it's because they know Nightwing has his own series so anything happened to Nightwing can be handled in Nightwing so Batman series can just focus on what happens to Batman. The Nightwing series and all the other Batfam series counts as part of Batman wheelhouse

[Godlike13]

King doesn’t care for Ric. His idea was to shoot Dick in the head, that’s it, the stuff that came after, Ric and ripping off We Are Robin, is on the Nightwing team and King doesn’t want to touch it anymore then anyone else.

[nhienphan2808]

Ric situation now is just the second coming of that elseworld where Bruce thinks Superman killed his parents and went crazy, slapped Dick , erased his memories and threw him away on the streets with no thought about him ever. It’s incredibly fucked up because it is really happening in both mainverse and real world now and Bruce doesn’t even have the excuse of being a villain.

[dropkickjake]

I saw that and I think there may be some interesting credence to this.

Take for example the conversations with the heroes in the Leviathan promo.

Batman: Your war on crime accomplishes nothing. I've tried it your way.

He addresses Batgirl as Barbara and she is the first person he tries to convince to join his cause.

Plastic Man: You and I were born into a broken world and it almost killed us. We both figured out we needed to start over.

And then of course the Spyral/Leviathan connection from Grayson.

Some of this is pretty generic and not strong evidence, but I'm still kinda hoping for it because literally anything else is better than what we have right now. Particularly anything spy related or that puts Dick in a place of importance in the DCU (which he isn't right now.)

The word LEGACY is also highlighted on the Manhunter page. Dick being the first ever legacy character.

I don't think it will happen, but this could all be foreshadowing for Dick. If it were though, would this represent a true heel turn for Dick?

[K. Jones]

The word LEGACY is also highlighted on the Manhunter page. Dick being the first ever legacy character.

I don't think it will happen, but this could all be foreshadowing for Dick. If it were though, would this represent a true heel turn for Dick?

Yeah, the first "real one". Renegade Nightwing was a thing and was a brief storyline. And the cop-out / interesting story bit where it could be a result of the gunshot to the head and there'd be a split, and the whole Ric thing going on, makes for a good exit strategy for "fixing" Dick afterward. But as another sort of chapter in the recent history of Dick Grayson I'd kind of like if he ends up being Leviathan to live with it for a while, sort of a strange "Season 4" of the Grayson 1 / Grayson 2 / Seeley Nightwing / running stories with spies and such.

[K. Jones]

Ric is probably going to out last Grayson, despite selling like **** and having terrible word of mouth. So again I say, this idea that fans ended Grayson needs to die. DC could give a **** about Dick’s fans or readers.

It's all just because the book is titled "Nightwing", yeah? If Grayson had been branded as "Nightwing" sales would've been higher. And is basically just what I want the book to be. "NIGHTWING" ... secret agent.

[dropkickjake]

Yeah, the first "real one". Renegade Nightwing was a thing and was a brief storyline. And the cop-out / interesting story bit where it could be a result of the gunshot to the head and there'd be a split, and the whole Ric thing going on, makes for a good exit strategy for "fixing" Dick afterward. But as another sort of chapter in the recent history of Dick Grayson I'd kind of like if he ends up being Leviathan to live with it for a while, sort of a strange "Season 4" of the Grayson 1 / Grayson 2 / Seeley Nightwing / running stories with spies and such.

And while I don't think it will actually happen, it would actually provide a bit of context just how awful Ric has been. "Hey, one of our biggest names, Bendis, wants to use Dick as a villain/supershady spy mastermind. We need to do something so absolutely awful that the people who would normally not want to see this will at least be happy Ric is over."