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

[WonderNight]

Do you mean creative are tired of not being able to actually do anything with nightwing and not interested in more bludhevan, day job, street nightwing. Or nightwing in general?

[oasis1313]

The new directions for Batgirl sold well because it was different, and there were more stories

I feel like there is reader and writer fatigue for NW plus stories about Batman, you can use Dick because after Killing Joke, not sure you can use Babs. So naturally Dick is the go to for anything bad that happens for the Bats. (Ric, Forever Evil and so on)

I get fatigued on my job, too--but I get paid to push on past it and do the right thing for the department. There's no excuse for half-assery unless your Boss, the Publisher, the guy who signs your paycheck, says, "I want this book to fail so please write it as miserably as possible."

[Aahz]

Getting rid of the double ship probably was so they could bleed out the Ric story until the Summer and not have to do more with it.

I don't really think it's surprising that they couldn't keep the book double shipping after the sudden change of the creative team.

[oasis1313]

I don't really think it's surprising that they couldn't keep the book double shipping after the sudden change of the creative team.

Didio would probably say once-monthly shipping is too much, and he'd prefer not to ship the book at all.

[L.H.]

A little spoiler from JL #20
spoilers:

Dick is the Batman in the Sixth Dimension. Bruce died, and he took his place in a quite different Gotham. He is also calling himself Dick.

end of spoilers
Snyder kinda made my day.
Can this be a hint that he really wants to write a Nightwing arc?

[OBrianTallent]

At this point I would just about take anyone as long as we got Dick Grayson: Nightwing back and not this decimation of character we have now.

[Grayson - The Dark Heir]

Jimenez also co-wrote these issues. And the future Batman design is almost the exact same design as his second Dick Grayson redesign for Earth 2: Society. Jimenez has said he does like Dick, so it's always possible he just wanted to reuse his design and then Jimenez and Snyder decided the future Batman didn't have to be Bruce....
spoilers:

It's hilarious when you think about it. Aside from the future JL maybe being evil and/or not really the future JL, they've presented as "evolved" or better versions of the JL living in a better world. The Flash is a Jay-Barry-Wally composite that has full control of the Speed and Still Forces. Superman is all Zeus-like. John is a White Lantern with full access to the White Entity. Diana is like Hippolyta but stronger since she knows magic. And so on. But Batman? The only "evolved" thing about the future Batman is that it's Dick under the cowl. There's nothing special about him, aside from him being Dick. He doesn't have some fancy futuristic suit, he doesn't have Brother Eye up, he didn't make any deals with any devils. He's just Dick, and a member of the future, evolved JL. That's pretty cool imo.

end of spoilers

[dietrich]

Nightwing was painful. That's normal now.


As much I love DickBats not really a fan of Dick becoming Bruce after batman stories because it Underlines that Nightwing is a sidekick.

Robin's Primary school, Nightwing is Secondary School and Batman is University.

It gives them licence to treat him as a sidekick and keeps him down

[dietrich]

Jimenez also co-wrote these issues. And the future Batman design is almost the exact same design as his second Dick Grayson redesign for Earth 2: Society. Jimenez has said he does like Dick, so it's always possible he just wanted to reuse his design and then Jimenez and Snyder decided the future Batman didn't have to be Bruce....
spoilers:

It's hilarious when you think about it. Aside from the future JL maybe being evil and/or not really the future JL, they've presented as "evolved" or better versions of the JL living in a better world. The Flash is a Jay-Barry-Wally composite that has full control of the Speed and Still Forces. Superman is all Zeus-like. John is a White Lantern with full access to the White Entity. Diana is like Hippolyta but stronger since she knows magic. And so on. But Batman? The only "evolved" thing about the future Batman is that it's Dick under the cowl. There's nothing special about him, aside from him being Dick. He doesn't have some fancy futuristic suit, he doesn't have Brother Eye up, he didn't make any deals with any devils. He's just Dick, and a member of the future, evolved JL. That's pretty cool imo.

end of spoilers

Almost like Morrison already said this. Wait he did in Reborn.

[L.H.]

I think that the Sixth Dimension spoilers:

is built upon the hopes of the actual JL. A perfect world, Barry reunited with Jay and Wally, the son of Kendra and J'onn, the future selves of Diana and John...and Dick following Bruce steppe, but in asunny Gotham. To each of them, is a dream come true. Let' see how It turns, but this sure shows love for the character.

end of spoilers

Thinking of Morrison, 10 years ago we had DickBats... I want so bad a time machine, right now...

[oasis1313]

I think that the Sixth Dimension spoilers:

is built upon the hopes of the actual JL. A perfect world, Barry reunited with Jay and Wally, the son of Kendra and J'onn, the future selves of Diana and John...and Dick following Bruce steppe, but in asunny Gotham. To each of them, is a dream come true. Let' see how It turns, but this sure shows love for the character.

end of spoilers

Thinking of Morrison, 10 years ago we had DickBats... I want so bad a time machine, right now...

I had the day off so I've been wallowing in my Morrison B&R trades, funny you mentioned Morrison today. Wonder how much it'd cost to bribe him to come back.

[Schumiac]

I don't really think it's surprising that they couldn't keep the book double shipping after the sudden change of the creative team.

Seriously. They obviously can't even be arsed to do a decent story monthly, it is very repetitive, doing it bi-weekly would have been impossible.

I was going to leave the discussion there, but two parts of it were eating at me after thinking about it a bit.

One is that King didn't need to do anything with Dick's relationship since it was already established, but that same argument could be made for Catwoman. Her relationship with Bruce is just as established, but King is building his entire run around her while Dick got one issue to joke around and then got shot. I understand what King was trying to do with his story, but I don't think he put the time in to really make it work because of how little he invested into using Dick to build up that emotional tie for his 100+ issue story.

But the second part, and more important part that I wanted to respond to, was the idea that the Nightwing writers couldn't ignore Dick getting shot in the head. They very much could have. The perfect example for this was what happened to Dick in Forever Evil. Dick got his secret identity exposed to the entire world. Everyone knew that Dick was Nightwing and about his connection to Bruce Wayne, but Snyder and all the Batman writers (outside Grayson writers) basically ignored it. Such a gigantic reveal that should have completely changed the course of Batman's mythos was ignored by the Batman office. So it really should work both ways if a Nightwing writer doesn't want to deal with **** that messes up their own story, but they have to work under the main Batman book and that is a MAJOR issue for how messed up books like Nightwing have been since the start of the New 52. It is something that bothers me immensely.

Catwoman and Bats have history, yes but King is going for the "love of his life" thing which always needs work. Dick's position in Bruce's life is rather clear. Besides King is basically writing a Bat/Cat fanfiction mixed with his rendition of Knightfall, so of course Catwoman will have more presence in the story. I don't expect Nightwing/Dick to be all over it. Doesn't mean Dick getting shot isn't significant within the story and for Bruce. It is. Tim, Jason, Damian. Any one of these could be shot in the head too and it wouldn't be the "same" imho because in all those stories Dick would have been there to help Bruce out. Shooting Dick gives the emotional blow and takes out Bruce's main support system all at once. That is why to me it plays an important part in his story.

I am waiting to see where King goes with it all before I make a final judgement but I am certainly "judging" what he has done so far, and so far, to me, it feels like he is a writer whose ego has gotten so huge that he gets these ideas in his head which he feels are "cool" and without thinking much about them, what the ramifications would be or if they make sense within the story etc etc just goes ahead and does them. And as there is absolutely no one keeping him in check, this is the mess we have. He isnt just hurting Dick, the Batman/Bruce fan in me is also hating what he is doing to him, esp the fact that Thomas is involved in all this. It is just wrong and doesnt make sense to me and the whole story is so pompous and trying hard that all I can do is make fun of it. And I actually rather dislike the Bat/Cat ship now (and the fact they call themselves Bat and Cat. uggghh)

After Forever Evil Dick's ongoing got canceled and turned into Grayson. I would say that is a big case of his own title not being able to ignore whatever happened then too. The id reveal was not going to effect the Bat-titles, it was going to be contained as something done to Nightwing/Dick with no relation to Bruce/Bats which got "taken care of" by declaring Dick dead and sending him off as a spy. Where he could still "interact" with Bruce so wasn't totally cut off. Bottom line is, if editorial says "he is not Nightwing anymore, he is Grayson, the spy" that is what his writers has to write. If editorial says "he is not Dick anymore, he is Ric" that is what his writers has to write. Does it suck? Big time. And I am especially bothered by the fact that what one writer who is not even the writer of the character does to him in some other story is allowed to effect the character this much. I am pretty sure no one asked Nightwing writers if they were "Ok" with this. What King wanted, King got. It is very very disrespectful, to the character, to the other creators and to the fans of the character. A character having his own on-going has to mean something, they shouldn't be treated like play things. But unless you are one of the Big Three you always run the risk of being used and discarded for the sake of someone else's story I suppose...

And it just occurred to me, Bruce had amnesia and a cop got to play Batman in his absence and now the same with Dick... And King is basically recycling Knightfall... Not very creative are we, DC?


PS: Seeing Batman 67, Nightwing writers arent the laziest of the writers in DC's employment, after all... I know King is trying to stretch things out to 100 issues but gosh, have some decency, make an effort.

[Ascended]

Shooting Dick gives the emotional blow and takes out Bruce's main support system all at once. That is why to me it plays an important part in his story.

I can see the point of shooting Dick to further this narrative of Bruce's. It's an attack on Bruce via his support system. It makes sense, you go after the loved ones. Far from the first time this has been done to the Bat family.

But there's no justification for letting a Batman story totally derail Dick's book. Not only has this thrown the title off the rails for what, almost a year now? but it screwed up all the plans Percy, Dick's actual writer, was in the middle of executing. That's just not very polite, professionally.

If you needed Dick off the board for the duration of this Knightfall 2.0, then just toss a blurb on the first page of Nightwing "this story takes place six months after KGBeast shot Dick." Or whatever. Now we've established that Dick was out of the game for King's story but Dick's book can actually continue. And its a minor time-lapse, really, not really any different from the time-lapse that lets Batman have all his bones broken in JL but be fine in his own titles.

[Schumiac]

I can see the point of shooting Dick to further this narrative of Bruce's. It's an attack on Bruce via his support system. It makes sense, you go after the loved ones. Far from the first time this has been done to the Bat family.

But there's no justification for letting a Batman story totally derail Dick's book. Not only has this thrown the title off the rails for what, almost a year now? but it screwed up all the plans Percy, Dick's actual writer, was in the middle of executing. That's just not very polite, professionally.

If you needed Dick off the board for the duration of this Knightfall 2.0, then just toss a blurb on the first page of Nightwing "this story takes place six months after KGBeast shot Dick." Or whatever. Now we've established that Dick was out of the game for King's story but Dick's book can actually continue. And its a minor time-lapse, really, not really any different from the time-lapse that lets Batman have all his bones broken in JL but be fine in his own titles.

Agreed totally... It sucks and it is rude, unfair and horrid form from both King and bat-office in general which shows their total disregard for other creators and Dick and his fans...

And yeah, I wish they would have done the "disclaimer" thing where he continues to have his stories but set in the future. OR, if DC cant have that, I would even settle for his book having a "nostalgia" phase where they delve into past untold adventures or whatever to pass the time (could be his version of "stuck in his own brain" thing). Anything but this. I don't know if editoral would veto such suggestions, like if they are dead-set on there being an amnesiac Ric character whose entire existence seems to be about telling us how Dick was crazy and was wasting his life playing the hero etc etc.. I can't fathom how they could possibly think the current story any good... So part of me thinks, editorial's general disregard for the character aside, Lobdell and co can't be bothered to do anything with him either. Like, they didn't even try to make this somewhat readable and bearable.

[oasis1313]

Jason has shown us what Lobdell can do when he has "ownership" and the guiding vision for a character. If Lobdell could have gotten Nightwing when he started on Red Hood, he could have likely written something wild and cool, and maybe been able to protect Dick from Didio a little.