The Appeal Of Dick/Babs

[Confuzzled]

Hmm, I don't know. Selina is considered as endgame assuming Bruce settles down instead of losing himself to a neverending war. Where did 'DCAU trying to establish Talia as the one' come from? Dini himself had Bruce admit that Selina was the one for him in Heart of Hush.

[Wat]

Dick is back with Barbara till the next writer who doesn't like them together and have them shot or something so they can't be together for convoluted reasons.

[Godlike13]

Well yeah I know this. Wasn’t it Priest who was once writing Titans that said he didn’t like Dick anymore or something becuase he was too boring and he didn’t have much room to write for him.I also believe Bruce Timm also doesn’t care for Nightwing as well. And of course we know all about Dan Didio admitting that Dick wasn’t going anywhere. But, with that being said, it’s also mostly bat editorial not actually developing Dick in a way that sets him apart and doesn’t make him stale. I actually think Dick suffers from the same thing that characters like Hal Jordan suffer from whcih is that for two characters with such great history and significance, they really are written as boring and have many of thier characteristics and unique ideas given to other characters. They even have their love interests shared by their respective groups lol

Many writers have been open about bat editorial being dicks about Dick. Like the rumor that DC gives Nightwing to writers that they want to keep around for future bigger projects or A list characters, but currently don’t have anything for them to do yet.

Bat editorial has taken more chances with Dick then the Titans has in decades. The most boring Dick has been written has been in Titans. With their cookie cutter leader guy they feed to the rest of the cast to mask the disparity. There has been plenty of shit with the Bat editorial, but nothing with the Titans has been any better since NTTs. And this idea that it the Bat editorials fault is just not fair. Titans books don't do anything with him beyond boring leader guy that has to be there. And anytime anyone point that out its met with well he has a solo. As in he has book and the other don't, so they don't need to do anything with him.

[OOPS]

For me, its about Dick accepting who he is, which is part of a family. To me, Kori represents the stage of development where we difference ourselves from the family and family expectations. But eventually most of us mature beyond that stage where we stop struggling for identity, and accept who we are. I see Dick and Babs as a mature relationship.

Also, I see it as a relationship that honors his other relationships. Kori doesn't really accept Damian. She tolerated him, but doesn't accept him. The same with how the outsiders from the family view Batman and other familyvmembers.

Which for me is fine. I don't particular care to read super powered character stories.

[The Kid]

Hmm, I don't know. Selina is considered as endgame assuming Bruce settles down instead of losing himself to a neverending war. Where did 'DCAU trying to establish Talia as the one' come from? Dini himself had Bruce admit that Selina was the one for him in Heart of Hush.

Batman Beyond had Bruce refer to Talia as the one. In B:TAS, Selina was a love interest for a few episodes but I'd argue the episodes with Talia/Ra's were more 'epic' for lack of better word

[SiegePerilous02]

I think in the DCAU, there really isn't a clear cut love interest that is The One for Bruce. Andrea may actually fit the bill the most, she only had one appearance but it left an impact.

There was going to be another Batman Beyond movie centered around Selina I think that sounded just as dark as ROTJ, but it never came about. Had that happened, she may have one upped Talia, but even so Selina, Talia, Zatanna, Barbara and Diana are all sort of grouped together as his loves and he ended up with nobody. Dini writing Bruce/Selina in a different canon is kind of moot, he didn't call all the shots in the DCAU, Timm did.

[The Kid]

I think in the DCAU, there really isn't a clear cut love interest that is The One for Bruce. Andrea may actually fit the bill the most, she only had one appearance but it left an impact.

There was going to be another Batman Beyond movie centered around Selina I think that sounded just as dark as ROTJ, but it never came about. Had that happened, she may have one upped Talia, but even so Selina, Talia, Zatanna, Barbara and Diana are all sort of grouped together as his loves and he ended up with nobody. Dini writing Bruce/Selina in a different canon is kind of moot, he didn't call all the shots in the DCAU, Timm did.

That's true although he does specifically mention Talia as special in BB and even Terry implies that Bruce acts like she was the most important one. But yea, Andrea would probably fit the bill if you're looking at most important

[K. Jones]

Hmm.

"The appeal". I've read comics for years and for years we've had Dick/Babs as a thing that's just an ever-present thing. Have Dick and Barbara had other relevant love interests over the years? Totally. Do we see the cycle or pattern of writers constantly trying to rekindle and break this thing up? We do. But living with it for a long time as a reader I guess I sort of tend to overlook the actual nature of where Dick/Babs even comes from - "the appeal" has kind of been divorced as a concept from the ... well, the conceptualization of the characters and their original interactions.

Dick Grayson, "Robin", obviously debuted way back, almost at the beginning. 1940, only a year after Batman really. And it was the adventures of Batman & Robin for 27 years. More than a quarter of a century, Batman & Robin were a thing. Dick was a kid, there was the odd "Dick meets a young girl and likes her, but she's secretly a crook! Or it's just childish! Or whatever 40s and 50s angle, end the story, reset back to status quo, same bat time, same bat channel." Bruce's girlfriends at least tended after the first one-offs to have multiple appearances, what you could count as the Golden or Silver Age equivalent of guest roles and thus "relationships", up to and around the introduction of Vicki Vale as a proper recurring role and then Batwoman as a much more elaborate role. And then, a few years into "Batwoman" and the "dynamic trio", they gave us the first Batgirl - much has been made of introducing Batwoman and Batgirl as an ersatz way to prove the "not gays" for Bruce and Dick. Whether successful or not as a set of concepts to add to the Bat-Mythos/Gotham dynamic, and whether or not the intention was to hide from Frederick Wertham's judgment or whatever, the big deal is that it's still the first "expansion of the Bat-Family" beyond just Batman Bruce Wayne and Robin Dick Grayson. Because there was no "Bat Family" of characters until 1956 (16 years in) and there was no Batgirl until 1961 (21 years in).

And it worked for a while conceptually, until it didn't.

By the mid-60s there was already that growing movement and all that back-and-forth between what Marvel was doing and the same kind of "class of writers" playing around with things, ushering in the proper Silver Age. Stories got slightly more sophisticated over the course of the Sixties. I'll skip over the history lesson and just get to the fact that Barbara Gordon, Batgirl debuts in 1967 and corresponds to the Batman '66 TV show and the sort of renaissance; Batman is doing camp Pop Crime on TV with popularity, the comics are following suit, albeit taking themselves and the Camp Pop Crime 100% seriously diagetically. And something about the notion clicks. This stems from a couple things.

Like Harley Quinn and a few other characters, Babs was created for the TV Show - the concept coming from Bill Dozier, the producer, that rightly so, Batman & Robin probably needed a female representative, a female superhero so it wasn't all just femme fatale crooks or damsels, a heroic role model for girls. Differently from Harley Quinn, though, the idea jumped immediately into the comics and Batgirl ends up debuting there first, what with production schedules and so forth. Gardner Fox and Julius Schwartz are in the midst of revamping and revivifying DC Comics with slick artists like Infantino, and Batgirl becomes the brainchild of some really talented creators who think to themselves; "what if it's the rebellious daughter of a mainstay of the Gotham landscape, Commissioner Gordon, and gives us that dramatic secret identity tension?" - this is the dynamic, the kind of root of the character that is the concept so strong that it's still one of the primary Barbara Gordon tropes or focuses now, 50+ years later. She's tenacious and does her own thing and has that secret-identity thing with Jim Gordon that makes things a little soap opera interesting with his dynamic with Batman & Robin, her, and frankly brings Gordon in as more of a character in his own right than just handing Batman cases. So it's for the Batman '66 TV show, it's launched simultaneously in the height of the Comics Silver Age by some of the best creators, Barbara Gordon is a big market push they handle very well ... and it sticks. They stick to the idea, the TV show cements it in pop culture, the Batman Family grows by one.

All of which is to say, in 1967-68, the Batman Family is Bruce Wayne Batman, Dick Grayson Robin, and Barbara Gordon Batgirl.

It's still, 30 years after the creation of Batman, a team of Three Characters. That's all of them, the sum total. There are no other love interests or possible "better matches" for Dick or Barbara because she was just created ... the writers are playing with the dialogue and dynamics and having fun injecting that Barbara Gordon energy into the stories, and the original "chemistry" between Dick and Babs is just that; the writers finally getting to play with a female ally for the Dynamic Duo that can keep up with them. Flirting with the Boy Wonder didn't take long to become a mainstay.

By the mid-70s, Denny came into Batman and started telling a lot of Bruce Wayne stories that didn't really have a lot of Robin, all in his effort to get Batman kind of back to that Pulp Hero invention. I mean he uses Robin, you can't resist but use Robin, but he uses Robin less, and so Robin and Batgirl's adventures kind of expand out into their own back-ups and team-ups. To further explain this out via in-story logic, Dick goes to college, Barbara is back and forth hanging out with him, back in Gotham, and on the road and falls into that storyline about getting involved with politics. Dick meets some girls, in particular Lori Elton, his Hudson-era girlfriend. He's still teaming up with Batgirl frequently. In retrospect, that's probably the first example of Dick being "on-again/off-again" with Barbara even while he dates another girl. Simultaneously, Barbara has a romantic foil in the form of Jason Bard, who is introduced in her back-ups. It all culminates in the Batman Family title coming out, which transitions everything right up to the 80s. Dick & Babs more or less have been flirting, or not committing to the idea of a real relationship for 13-15 years, but in fan's heads, it's a Ship that's already sailing, bolstered by memories of Batman '66.

Nothing really properly "happens about it" until after The Killing Joke shakes things up wildly in '88. Dick went in a different direction through Teen Titans and then New Teen Titans and Starfire was the thing throughout the entirety of the 80s and early 90s, but eventually Kim Yale makes Babs into Oracle, then your 90s generation of like Dixon and Co. properly hook them up "on-screen".

I'm probably getting away from the point.

From 1940-67 there was no Batgirl, obviously. From 1967-80 there was flirty, if somewhat CCC chaste constant team-ups with Dick & Babs that retroactively we register as a teen romance of sorts. From 1980-95, more or less 15 years, there's no movement on that front in the comics. But Batgirl does debut in Batman: The Animated Series, just as she did in 1967 - TAS pulls massive inspiration from the Schwartz/Fox/Infantino era in addition to the O'Neil/Adams era, 60s and 70s all the way. So I think it's the repetition, 25 years later, of that introduction of that dynamic that makes Dick/Babs into something of a trope or refrain in the Batman Family Dynamic. By the time you've got Gail Simone coming into prominence and Brubaker & Rucka revamping Gotham to resemble The Animated Series more, it's no small wonder they finally push the button completely on Dick/Babs being a thing. And it's just been a push and pull of writer, editorial, book direction and whatever other random circumstance makes it into a constant on-again/off-again relationship ever since.

I think the appeal comes from lots of places, not the least of which is the chemistry of Burt Ward & Yvonne Craig playing off one another (his indignance, and her stepping into the action), but then far more effectively the Dini/Timm era dynamic and the voice work of Loren Lester & Melissa Gilbert. I think a LOT of it comes from the fact that they were the only game in town; literally the only two sane, healthy individuals with screen time in Gotham City. Batman had his freaky relationship with Catwoman, a bad guy. These two kids had that spark of a thing. I think retroactively there's a slight nostalgic appeal to it that goes with that sort of "If Robin is Super-Hero High School" then Batgirl is/was his High School Sweetheart, as Commissioner Gordon's daughter it's the "girl next door" situation. Is this TV Sitcom mentality? It sure is. At the end of the day I think it really comes down to quantity of appearances together in More Popular appearances, nostalgia, and the original conceptualization of Babs by the creators being something with stronger lasting power and appeal in general.

Within the comics canon itself, I think as people it's obvious they compliment one another very well in some ways, not all ways - and are really good kids with strong skill-sets and who match one another's personality without overpowering each other. Was Dick, a poor kid from the circus, ever really in the same league as Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran? You tell me. There's fans of that pairing in particular, and I wonder if there's any parallel there with "I dunno, is Steve Trevor in the same league as Princess Diana of Themiscyra?" It's a Romantic notion, the blue-collar kid marrying the Super-Princess.

As a person relating to them, I do wonder if it's actually possible for Dick and Babs to trust one another romantically ever again.

[kjn]

*stares in awe at K. Jones*

There is but one addition I want to make here, and that is that the first "real" relation between Dick and Babs happened right at an otherwise important period of their characters. Both had just started as leads of their own titles, and Babs as Oracle even went from being an important secondary character to a lead character with a unique role in her own right. Chuck Dixon wrote both titles, and he was one of those few comics writers who understood both the need for interpersonal drama and was good at writing it. The teenage romance that K. Jones described was followed up with both of them as adults.

And Dixon was followed up by Gail Simone on Birds of Prey, who is another of those comics writers who not only matched those qualities, but I also read as a writer in love with shipping.

[SiegePerilous02]

I think the appeal comes from lots of places, not the least of which is the chemistry of Burt Ward & Yvonne Craig playing off one another (his indignance, and her stepping into the action), but then far more effectively the Dini/Timm era dynamic and the voice work of Loren Lester & Melissa Gilbert

I agree with your whole post, but this bit stood out. I think a lot of the appeal in their early interactions in BTAS was the chemistry between Lester and Gilbert that didn't continue when she was replaced by Tara Strong. Strong was good as Babs too, but I think it was a combo of her voice change, Dick's character getting relatively gruffer and things not ending well between them that lead to their chemistry not being as good in TNBA. Even her voice actress in Subzero, Mary Kay Bergman, had something with Lester that was lacking with Strong. Maybe it had to do with the more detailed early designs that had more personality in them?

Also, most of Barbara's early appearances were written or co-written by a female writer, Byrnne Stephens, and three of those episodes have the heavy Dick/Babs interactions. Stephens didn't come back for TNBA and that's when Timm's kind of gross idea to pair her with Bruce really started to get some hints. In terms of shipping, we may be seeing the difference in appeal between a female script writer and male producer.

[Starrius]

I remember watching the 1960s and 1970s Batman/Robin cartoons.
There was no hint of romance between Dick and Barbara in them.
Bat-mite had a crush on Batgirl in 1970s cartoon.

I watched the 1970s Batman/Robin cartoon in the 1970s.
I watched the 1960s Batman/Robin cartoon in the 1980s.

I am 50 years old.

There definitely was no hint of romance between Dick and Barbara in the 1960s Batman live action show.

[Rakiduam]

For me, its about Dick accepting who he is, which is part of a family. To me, Kori represents the stage of development where we difference ourselves from the family and family expectations. But eventually most of us mature beyond that stage where we stop struggling for identity, and accept who we are. I see Dick and Babs as a mature relationship.

Also, I see it as a relationship that honors his other relationships. Kori doesn't really accept Damian. She tolerated him, but doesn't accept him. The same with how the outsiders from the family view Batman and other familyvmembers.

Which for me is fine. I don't particular care to read super powered character stories.

to me that reads a lot like settling for something, don't go for the life you want, accept the life you got. I agree it is what many people do while growing up, but it's not all that appealing to read.

I remember watching the 1960s and 1970s Batman/Robin cartoons.
There was no hint of romance between Dick and Barbara in them.
Bat-mite had a crush on Batgirl in 1970s cartoon.

I watched the 1970s Batman/Robin cartoon in the 1970s.
I watched the 1960s Batman/Robin cartoon in the 1980s.

I am 50 years old.

There definitely was no hint of romance between Dick and Barbara in the 1960s Batman live action show.

I remember being young and watching Batman:Tas, and Barbara was dreaming of Batman and Batgirl kissing in the roof, when Dick wake her up annoyingly. Didn't see the romantic chemistry there.

[SiegePerilous02]

I remember being young and watching Batman:Tas, and Barbara was dreaming of Batman and Batgirl kissing in the roof, when Dick wake her up annoyingly. Didn't see the romantic chemistry there.

I watched that as a kid as well. Even as a kid, the dream was framed as intentionally silly while the voice of Barbara's actual love interest woke her back up to reality. Because Bruce ever actually reciprocating a schoolgirl crush would be really stupid, right?

Dick and Babs had a bit of the "Slap-Slap-Kiss" trope dynamic in play in BTAS, especially when they were Robin and Batgirl. They annoyed and teased each other but in a way that made it obvious they liked each other. She didn't really have any of that going on with Batman beyond a one sided schoolgirl crush that is framed as something silly while Bruce seems supportive of them in Subzero.

[lilyrose]

I think Catwoman kind of is Batman's definitive love interest. It's becoming even more cemented lately, as I keep seeing versions of things where they're always together now- the Hush movie, the Injustice movie, the Long Halloween movie, the upcoming Batman movie. They've always been teased but it seems like now the thing is to make them an actual couple, not just the old will they won't they. I think the Tom King Batman run made that change more permanent.

[Rac7d*]

Hmm, I don't know. Selina is considered as endgame assuming Bruce settles down instead of losing himself to a neverending war. Where did 'DCAU trying to establish Talia as the one' come from? Dini himself had Bruce admit that Selina was the one for him in Heart of Hush.

Its between the two Selina his long time love of Talia the mother of his child
Talia is often on the wrong side and may or may not of drugged him to concieve their child, so it noever easy to make her the right choice
but its less about the back and forth but more so their is not any discourse on it, because Talia doesnt have a fanbase

Dick and babs is met with discourse because fans of Kory oppose it.

You dont see threads like this for Clark Bruce Ollie Diana or anyone else. Is it because no one cares or people just accept what is with them? Only Dick Grayson Barbra Gordon Koriand'r have this issue.