Dick Grayson: Robin / Nightwing Appreciation 2020

[Badou]

As bad as the Batman family is I'd rather he stay in it than go back to the Titans. The Titans as a franchise has been an unmitigated disaster for nearly 2 decades. Maybe outside of the Johns era team they have been completely irrelevant. The single best thing that happened to Dick as a character in my opinion in the last 25 or so years was becoming a solo character and not having to rely on the Titans. Since it shielded him from their collapse. Branching off from the Titans and even ending his romance from Starfire was the correct move in my opinion given how those characters and franchise imploded. Sure, the Batman family has many issues and I wish things where better there, but it scares me to think about how bad off Dick's character would possibly be if he never became a solo character. He probably would have been killed off like so many of the other original Titans and written out from even more stories.

[Rac7d*]

That's that's Bruce's family, where Bruce is the head not dick. Part of growing up is moving the hell out and starting a family of your own.

But if family is important for Nightwing than can someone explain to me what the heck was the new52 teen titans?

DC had no problem of moving nightwing on that "family".
Nightwing is like the character angel from buffy a great supporting character but wouldn't have ever reached his potential without getting his own show and independence.

But nightwing wouldn't get his independence so nothing going to change for him so I don't care anymore.

If Nightwing starts a family of his own then Bruce is old and that’s a no no

Just like how supergirl will be 17 forever

[Pohzee]

This may be an overstatement of Dick's importance, but could it be possible that the Titans franchise would not be in the dire straits that it is right now if Dick had never left?

To be fair, it was floundering when he left, but is it possible that it could have seen a resurgence with the right creative team rather than having lost its focus- being drawn between both younger heroes and also Dick's generation, not really satisfying either party.

[Godlike13]

As bad as the Batman family is I'd rather he stay in it than go back to the Titans. The Titans as a franchise has been an unmitigated disaster for nearly 2 decades. Maybe outside of the Johns era team they have been completely irrelevant. The single best thing that happened to Dick as a character in my opinion in the last 25 or so years was becoming a solo character and not having to rely on the Titans. Since it shielded him from their collapse. Branching off from the Titans and even ending his romance from Starfire was the correct move in my opinion given how those characters and franchise imploded. Sure, the Batman family has many issues and I wish things where better there, but it scares me to think about how bad off Dick's character would possibly be if he never became a solo character. He probably would have been killed off like so many of the other original Titans and written out from even more stories.

Hypothetically speaking, what if they were serious about pushing the Titans and making them prominent again? Which i know is not the case, but lets say someone like Hickman is coming on Titans and gonna do his thing. Would you then be ok if he went back to the Titans exclusively then.

Personally speaking im starting to revalue what i thought i would want with Nightwing. Like im a Dixon guy, that was my entry point, so i always valued his solo. But im coming to the point where im even questioning that. Solo Nightwing is in a rut (even before Ric), Titans is a halfway house and pretty much a non starter when it comes to current comics, the JL to me would just be him further emulating Batman, Grayson was great but even that i think that ship has sailed and now it would be like going backwards, and Ric was just ignorant and insulting. Im glad its ending, but at the same time im not particularly excited that he's probably coming back just to fall back into his old usual.

[AmiMizuno]

Okay, how do we do that? Why should the TT be taken seriously? My idea is that something happened to the JL and the TT has to feel that hole. In this forum, we have come up with ideas. What are yours?

I mean so far many of us said he should keep Bludhaven and be acrobat or circus at the strip. That a lot of times the circus will go travel and Dick recuses young Talons from being taken or at least tries to deprogram them. Even saves them to TT or let them be in the circuses life

[Zaresh]

Relatively on topic.

I will forever recommend to anyone who want to know anything about the titans the Wolfman/Perez run. Old stuff, but good old.

Bye! (vanishes like a good ninja)

[AmiMizuno]

Relatively on topic.

I will forever recommend to anyone who want to know anything about the titans the Wolfman/Perez run. Old stuff, but good old.

Bye! (vanishes like a good ninja)

What could be used to help out the Titans now? Any story ideas? Sometimes the best way to get things back is to go to the past.

[Zaresh]

What could be used to help out the Titans now? Any story ideas? Sometimes the best way to get things back is to go to the past.

Regardless of how old and visited it is, there's still stuff you can use or consider, I think.
First of all, they had their own identity as a group. They weren't just a rip off of the JL, like Tim's team, for example. Even when some of them were sidekicks.
They had a healthy balance between teen drama and action/adventure.
They had their own villains and arguably their own plots and support cast.
And they had an overarc that was very selfcontained, I think, for a while at least.

But I was mostly, shamelesly trying to catch readers who would enjoy a read I did enjoy myself. I do the same for JLI when the chance arises xD.

[Badou]

This may be an overstatement of Dick's importance, but could it be possible that the Titans franchise would not be in the dire straits that it is right now if Dick had never left?

To be fair, it was floundering when he left, but is it possible that it could have seen a resurgence with the right creative team rather than having lost its focus- being drawn between both younger heroes and also Dick's generation, not really satisfying either party.

I don't think it changed much in the end since he was still involved in the Titans books after he became a solo character and moved back to Batman editorial. The quality of their stories just were very poor back then, and how DC looked at their franchises changed with the Titans becoming less important to them until Johns revived it when he changed focus to Tim's generation.

Hypothetically speaking, what if they were serious about pushing the Titans and making them prominent again? Which i know is not the case, but lets say someone like Hickman is coming on Titans and gonna do his thing. Would you then be ok if he went back to the Titans exclusively then.

Personally speaking im starting to revalue what i thought i would want with Nightwing. Like im a Dixon guy, that was my entry point, so i always valued his solo. But im coming to the point where im even questioning that. Solo Nightwing is in a rut (even before Ric), Titans is a halfway house and pretty much a non starter when it comes to current comics, the JL to me would just be him further emulating Batman, Grayson was great but even that i think that ship has sailed and now it would be like going backwards, and Ric was just ignorant and insulting. Im glad its ending, but at the same time im not particularly excited that he's probably coming back just to fall back into his old usual.

Probably not because I don't know what even a Hickman could do, but obviously I wouldn't say no to him or another big writer wanting to write them. The Batman franchise will always be DC's most important franchise. So even if the situation is far from perfect, and I wish he was used better there, I don't have to worry about the Batman franchise collapsing like with the Titans.

I've repeated it so much now, but at its core the Titans franchise is a team about young heroes. Once those young heroes age into adults and you have generations of heroes behind them now they lose that core identity of what the Titans are. It's a fundamental problem. How do these adult Titan characters fit into this team that is built around being young heroes? I've never seen anyone come up with a real answer. It's always just having them continue doing what they always have where they continue to get treated like young heroes despite being adults where they relive the nostalgia of their past teams, have them just become mentors to the actual young Titans characters which takes away agency from the adults and puts it on the young heroes to be the driving force of the franchise, or just have them operate as a Justice League-lite team. None of those really seem to fix the core issues.

But I don't know what the answer is either. The Titans in other media are as big as they have ever been. You have a live action Titans show going into its 3rd season, you have the Teen Titans GO cartoon which is probably CN's most successful cartoon where it even produced a TTGO movie, you have the Young Justice cartoon which was revived and uses a lot of Titans elements, and there is even rumors of the original TT cartoon being revived as well. You have all this success in other media but none of it is reflected back to the comics. We just had Abnett's Titans book which I still stand by was the worst written Dick Grayson I have ever read, even above Ric, so I really don't know what needs to be done to fix it. I'm at the point where I'd rather have Dick join the JL even if it is a lesser role and have him slowly work his way up the ranks there with all the problems that brings instead of throwing him in another Titans book.

[Ascended]

This may be an overstatement of Dick's importance, but could it be possible that the Titans franchise would not be in the dire straits that it is right now if Dick had never left?

To be fair, it was floundering when he left, but is it possible that it could have seen a resurgence with the right creative team rather than having lost its focus- being drawn between both younger heroes and also Dick's generation, not really satisfying either party.

I don't think Dick's presence would have saved anything. Wolfman ran out of road long before he actually left and DC had no clue how to go forward, or even who and what the Titans were supposed to be. If Dick had stayed in the Titans editorial he just would have gone down with the ship.

That's no reason to keep him in the Bat office now, thirty-ish years later however.

Hypothetically speaking, what if they were serious about pushing the Titans and making them prominent again? Which i know is not the case, but lets say someone like Hickman is coming on Titans and gonna do his thing. Would you then be ok if he went back to the Titans exclusively then.

Exclusively as in no solo? No, I wouldn't be cool with that. I want Dick to stand on his own as a IP, which he can and has done before and can do again. And yes, he was basically a solo act back in the Dixon days. Part of the Bat clan, but he'll always be part of that family. He still had his own setting, supporting cast, and villains, and important stuff that happened to Nightwing actually happened in the pages of NIGHTWING! He was a solo act then, and there's no reason he can't be again.

Now, I wouldn't argue if DC got serious about the Titans, re-opened their editorial group (Titans don't have their own anymore right?), and sent Dick there where he would headline his solo as well as lead the team in the Titans book. I'd be completely fine with that.

That said, I'm not really hyped about the Titans idea either. Yes, a good creator with a smart idea could come in and revitalize the franchise. OR they could do something new and different, let the characters move on and grow, and see what that looks like.

That's what I'd like to see. Dick's in his mid 20's, maybe even inching up on 30. What's the next phase of his life look like? What's the next step for Dick Grayson? You answer that, and you have a direction to take him. But you gotta answer those questions first. I have answers I like.....but that's just fan fiction. Unless DC takes me up on my offer to take over the character for almost no money we'll never see it.

[Pohzee]

If Dick gives up his solo to go to the Titans, then the Titans writer has full reign to make changes to the character and do more with him than Abnett did. Given that Dick is arguably the most important Titan, I think it would drastically improve the book. Would it be better for Dick? I think so. It'd take him in a more interesting direction than back to C-list solo stories in Blüdhaven.

[AmiMizuno]

I mean if we look at YJ Dick did have his own Solo adventures while also being in the team. So if we go with that maybe he should be in case of emergency or just goes on missions with them even now and them. Dick's history with the Titans is also important. So there should be a balance.

[Pohzee]

Dick was for a time a character defined by his change and growth, and I think we can all agree that right now his biggest issue is stagnation. Reading Mister Miracle, an odd thought that I had was that it would've been nice for Dick to have taken that next step. A mature story about him adapting to fatherhood. But obviously that story has been told and it could never happen because that would definitely start to age Bruce up quite rapidly.

[Godlike13]

Between Wally and Roy, even Donna, I feel like we have seen that with his generation before. Though I agree with what your getting at. When he was raising Damian I think that was a clever maturation. Familiar yet different.

I do think you are touching on something though, how do you build on Dick’s maturation going forward. With the catch that you don’t want to age the world, and don’t want to just do the same thing that was done with those around him. Cause I’m sorry but that’s boring.

[Pohzee]

I know its been discussed on here before to generally mixed reception, but the only thing that really comes to mind is taking on a sidekick (Damian or otherwise) or taking a mentorship role by expanding the Titans X-Men style.

There's some obvious hangups, both ideas have already been explored to some degree, such as with Damian, and it also runs the risk of making Dick take the backseat in his own title to develop new or younger characters. But I feel as though a natural progression for the DCU's first sidekick would be to take on one of his own. The previously mentioned pitfalls could be avoided by careful writing to keep the focus on Dick. To make the stories a reflection of his own time as a sidekick, using his insights and experiences to guide his teaching methods. Everyone before Dick started this as independently as an adult- he is the first one to have grown up in this universe. He can empathize with the frustrations of sidekicks, and could perhaps better gauge their capabilities and manage their frustrations. Focusing on this insight as well as contrasting his mentorship versus the mentorship that he received from Batman could keep the focus on Dick.

There's some other obvious potential benefits that have been discussed to this, such as building up the Nightwing brand. Throw the kid on the Teen Titans or Young Justice to build the presence of Nightwing in the universe alongside Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, etc. Have Damian express insecurities about feelings of jealousy and replacement if Dick takes on a new sidekick.

Better or more ideas are welcome of course. He could buy a house and get a mortgage or something.