From King's Twitter
@A_Flying_Wonder: Is Dick getting his memories back something that has to happen in your run as part of the ongoing Batman vs Bane conclusion, or is that solely in the hands of the Nightwing team?
Tom King: All that is out of my hands. Wish I could’ve done more Dick work here at the end.
*Deep breath*
Tracking down who's responsible for what in the great Ric Grayson saga is like detective work in itself. Has there ever been a character that change hands more often in one year than him?
King shot him
Percy created Ric
Lobdell insisted Ric continues
Editorial allowed it
Jurgens biding time
Someone wanted him to be Talon
Someone wanted him to only be back next year
Tynion or maybe whoever's bringing him back
I have to divide my annoyance to at least five people!
Last edited by Restingvoice; 09-22-2019 at 09:20 AM.
Seems to me the ones culpable are:
King who shot him and whose story needed Dick to be benched until at least BatCat were ready to take back the city. Lobdell might have campaigned but Dick would have still been benched right now even if he hadn't because King's story needs him to be.
Editorial for letting this go on knowing fans were unhappy. Knowing that Ric wasn't the only way to keep him unavailable. Get creative. No respecting the character enough to demand this development be used to explore the character deeper. Really get to the heart of the character. Allowing storylines that basically mock the character like Ric becoming a side kick to a bunch of randos after saying he didn't want to be a hero.
It could have been handled better.
Whoever introduced Ric working for the nightwings
I find that hard to believe since it contradicts King's whole Tim becoming Nightwing and helping Dick. Surely that needs more than 3 issues not to mention that King's story would be slightly different if Dick was a factor. For a start it's much more difficult to justify the beach issues had Batman had an ally of Dick's level and expertise around to intercept the venom for him for example
Nah, the whole “we’re the message” thing doesn’t work if it comes from Dick (or any of the half a dozen people Bruce has on speed dial that are equally as capable as handling the operation)
If anything, Dick’s presence would make it easier to justify them since they could frame it as Dick back in Gotham holding it down and getting everybody prepared while Bruce gets his **** together.
It's the Dynamic Duo! Batman and Robin!... and Red Robin and Red Hood and Nightwing and Batwoman and Batgirl and Orphan and Spoiler and Bluebird and Lark and Gotham Girl and Talon and Batwing and Huntress and Azreal and Flamebird and Batcow?
Since when could just anybody do what we trained to do? It makes it all dumb instead of special. Like it doesn't matter anymore.
-Dick Grayson (Batman Inc.)
The one who said DC editorial didn't believe in Ric was Lobdell himself who in the same interview said it was him who want to explore Ric.
So first King prepared two options. Cure his wound with Zatanna if DC allow the story to be short or make Tim Nightwing if DC want Dick incapacitated longer, but then of course later Bendis is using Tim so he can't use that one anyway.
At this point King didn't know what DC will allow, and I don't think he even came up with the amnesia idea either because Ben Percy was preparing the vertigo story.
At this point they're just thinking Dick will be incapacitated but there's no Ric yet, and they didn't know how long.
Then whoever at DC decided on amnesia, so Percy changed the story and created Ric, and after they saw Ric, Bat editor(s) believed it won't last long, but then Lobdell came, and he convinced them to make it last longer.
Last edited by Restingvoice; 09-22-2019 at 12:28 PM.
In the BleedingCool news about Nightwing's return someone actually posted this comment:
Feels almost surreal that Didio would want Dick involved in their big plans. Except maybe the big plans involve killing him off and sending Bruce in a rage, because that is original.Or he and some of the other Titans get captured by the big bad and it is very stressful for the JL big leaguers.... *rolleyes*No No No.
I was there and Dan Didio said they're working on bringing Dick back cause they got big plans for next year and need him for that. They said nothing about him being a part of Tynion's Batman. Tynion only mentioned Lucius Fox specifically as a character he intends to use.
King didn't prepare anything for after he shot Dick. He only said that he told editorial that he was going to shoot Dick regardless if they cared or not and what they did afterwards with Dick was up to them. King had no involvement in it. He told them if they didn't want to deal with it then they could just have Zatanna fix Dick in Nightwing with a spell, or they could follow up on it. King didn't care since whatever they did it would have zero effect on King's own plans in Batman.
Also the idea with Tim taking over as Nightwing was never an actual pitch made by King. It was just something he said would be interesting in a podcast, but it was never something he actually planned out or told editorial about. The only thing that we had evidence of was that Percy planned on giving Dick vertigo and was going to continue his Dark Web story before all that got scrapped. My guess is it got scrapped because they needed Dick out of the way for King's Batman story and just giving him vertigo wasn't enough, so they upped it to amnesia as a way to write him out of all the Batman books while King's story was going on.
Ah ok
The way King's story's been written, even if Dick is fine after a short story arc and can go back to Gotham, he's not gonna do much and end up staring in disbelief as Batman punched Tim like the others, and then joining Tim and Damian staring helplessly at City of Bane.
Between the shooting and the cavalry call, he only need to drop one panel saying Bruce banned Nightwing from Gotham since he doesn't want him to get shot again. That's about as much effort as everyone that's not a Nightwing book in explaining his absence.
So from where I'm looking, jury's still out on whose idea exactly was the amnesia since by the sound of it, King didn't really care if it's amnesia or vertigo as long as Dick gets shot and Bruce was traumatized. Then the rest continue as I mentioned.
Last edited by Restingvoice; 09-22-2019 at 03:27 PM.