Dick Grayson/Robin/Nightwing/Batman Appreciation 2023.

[Konja7]

Such attractive people...

Dick is attractive, but he makes weird faces in the first page.

[Frontier]

With Titans tower now In Bludhaven. How do you what that to play out in? Like what affects on Nightwing and Bludhaven would you like or don't want to see?

I expect them to clean up most of the crime in Bludhaven or feel totally out of place .

This probably isn't going to happen but it would be interesting to see if the effect of the Titans in Bludhaven is like "why we don't put a Superhero team in Gotham."

Dick is attractive, but he makes weird faces in the first page.

Just flexing hard .

[Claude]

I actually wonder if "Titans in Bludhaven" is going to be the in-universe excuse for Dick being absent from the city a a lot leading his "New Justice League" - even if both are called "Titans".

It's the kind of "have your cake and eat it" thing that feels very Taylor - you get an exciting new Team AND the classic one! Dick as a beacon to a team of heroes AND stories of him and all his old pals!

You get show Dick "fixing" Bludhaven from its Blockbuster-era corruption, while not killing off its role in stories by scaling it up to "Metropolis" style threats rather than early Gotham ones, like the upcoming Neron story.

Wouldn't hate it. And you could still do solo Nightwing stories against that backdrop.

[Frontier]

I actually wonder if "Titans in Bludhaven" is going to be the in-universe excuse for Dick being absent from the city a a lot leading his "New Justice League" - even if both are called "Titans".

It's the kind of "have your cake and eat it" thing that feels very Taylor - you get an exciting new Team AND the classic one! Dick as a beacon to a team of heroes AND stories of him and all his old pals!

You get show Dick "fixing" Bludhaven from its Blockbuster-era corruption, while not killing off its role in stories by scaling it up to "Metropolis" style threats rather than early Gotham ones, like the upcoming Neron story.

Wouldn't hate it. And you could still do solo Nightwing stories against that backdrop.

I wonder if he can consistently keep that up. It didn't seem like he quite knew how to do villains for Jon in his Superman book.

[Ascended]

I'm hoping that this works more or less like Waid's first Flash run where Jay, Jesse, Bart, Max, and other speedsters would show up for a "big" arc, but would be absent (or at least not in costume) for smaller ones. It worked; if Wally was running solo, we assumed the other speedsters were off doing their own stuff (sometimes Waid would even say so directly), and if they did show up it didn't feel out of place.

As for how this affects the city....I'm hoping that Bludhaven moves away from being a street level city and gets a little more "Metropolis" rubbed into it. I don't want or need the Blud to go fully sci-fi high concept like the City of Tomorrow, with gods and alien armadas arriving every other day, but I think it'd be good if the city weren't *just* a street level setting. And honestly, I think Taylor has been inching in this direction anyway. The Titans have been showing up consistently since almost the start of the run, Heartless and some of the other new story elements are a little offbeat....I think leaning harder into those sensibilities could potential work and be sustainable.

Just as an example; Taylor's been tackling social problems in the title (not terribly well, I think, but better than some other writers), so maybe a post-Titans Bludhaven story would involve illegal immigrants....but they're literal space aliens rather than Mexicans or whoever. Who was it who treated Bludhaven like a mix of Metropolis and Gotham? Seeley? I'm looking for something along those lines. Percy's motorcycle death race, illegal aliens from the Vega system, stuff like that.

But I don't think the Titans are going to call Bludhaven home for long. This feels like a short-term status quo, but one that hopefully leaves a lasting impression on Dick's mythos and home city.

I wonder if he can consistently keep that up. It didn't seem like he quite knew how to do villains for Jon in his Superman book.

Yeah, that's a concern. But honestly, Taylor feels like a totally different writer on SoKE than he does Nightwing. One big thing too, is the "threat metric" is a little different; with Jon you need a crazy powerful villain who can keep a Kryptonian busy, but with Dick and the Titans you don't need planet breaking raw power so much as you need a threat that gives everybody something to do and highlights their varied skills and talents. You don't need Zod, you need the Superman Revenge Squad y'know? More villains on the page, but less raw power among them.

Vic and Wally are probably the characters that'll throw things off the most. Donna and Kory are powerful, but not on the level of Vic and his New God tech, or Wally "speed god" West. But Taylor handled Wally pretty well in that two issue story with KGBeast and DC tends to ignore how powerful Vic is anyway, so....we'll see. I think Taylor can pull it off, at least well enough to not be a total disappointment, and I'm still thinking this is short-term so Taylor won't have to maintain it for long.

[Frontier]

I'm hoping that this works more or less like Waid's first Flash run where Jay, Jesse, Bart, Max, and other speedsters would show up for a "big" arc, but would be absent (or at least not in costume) for smaller ones. It worked; if Wally was running solo, we assumed the other speedsters were off doing their own stuff (sometimes Waid would even say so directly), and if they did show up it didn't feel out of place.

As for how this affects the city....I'm hoping that Bludhaven moves away from being a street level city and gets a little more "Metropolis" rubbed into it. I don't want or need the Blud to go fully sci-fi high concept like the City of Tomorrow, with gods and alien armadas arriving every other day, but I think it'd be good if the city weren't *just* a street level setting. And honestly, I think Taylor has been inching in this direction anyway. The Titans have been showing up consistently since almost the start of the run, Heartless and some of the other new story elements are a little offbeat....I think leaning harder into those sensibilities could potential work and be sustainable.

But I don't think the Titans are going to call Bludhaven home for long. This feels like a short-term status quo, but one that hopefully leaves a lasting impression on Dick's mythos and home city.



Yeah, that's a concern. But honestly, Taylor feels like a totally different writer on SoKE than he does Nightwing. One big thing too, is the "threat metric" is a little different; with Jon you need a crazy powerful villain who can keep a Kryptonian busy, but with Dick and the Titans you don't need planet breaking raw power so much as you need a threat that gives everybody something to do and highlights their varied skills and talents. You don't need Zod, you need the Superman Revenge Squad y'know? More villains on the page, but less raw power among them.

Vic and Wally are probably the characters that'll throw things off the most. Donna and Kory are powerful, but not on the level of Vic and his New God tech, or Wally "speed god" West. But Taylor handled Wally pretty well in that two issue story with KGBeast and DC tends to ignore how powerful Vic is anyway, so....we'll see. I think Taylor can pull it off, at least well enough to not be a total disappointment, and I'm still thinking this is short-term and will probably end when/if Dick takes over the new League.

Taylor seems more at home writing Metropolis-esque settings than he does any other setting, even though he didn't do much world-building for Metropolis at all when he was writing Jon. Although I wonder how that kind of Bludhaven might jive with everything else.

I'm not convinced Taylor is good at properly scaling/handling threats or the response to them, but I guess this might be a chance to show off what he can do with the Titans.

[Ascended]

I have my concerns too, SoKE really did not impress me. I'm cautiously optimistic but saying I'm confident would be an overstatement.

Another thing in Taylor's favor though, is that this isn't a team book. It's still Dick's solo, so Taylor doesn't need to give everyone proper panel time. Taylor doesn't necessarily need to write the threat scaling, he just needs to write Dick's part in it. So maybe there's some crazy Crisis battle happening, but if Dick's role is to sneak past some guards and steal some plot device item, Taylor doesn't have to write the big battle, just Dick sneaking through some heating ducts. Maybe this'll give Taylor the wiggle room he needs to make the scaling transition and maintain it?

I dunno, we'll see. But so far I don't feel like Taylor has done me too wrong. This run hasn't always been everything I've wanted it to be but I got no real reason to complain and the last year or so has been especially good, I think. Since that "single shot car chase" issue I feel like the title has elevated to a new level and I'm pretty satisfied. But we'll see how this Titans thing goes, I'm notoriously against them being an official team again.

And I don't know what kind of Bludhaven Taylor is building here, but given the time he spent re-establishing the classic-esque Dixon one, I don't think Taylor is gonna shift the city too far off course. I mean, he just introduced a pirate bank last issue he obviously has plans for, and spent more than a year dealing with Blockbuster and city corruption. I don't think he would've put in all that work to solidify the foundation if he was going to rip it all away. Certainly he seems to be introducing changes, but I think he means to make it an organic evolution and stay true to the city's core. Whether he pulls that off, if it's his intention? We'll see.

[Claude]

I wonder if he can consistently keep that up. It didn't seem like he quite knew how to do villains for Jon in his Superman book.

Other people have made fair comments, but also - yeah, Heartless is fine but Taylor isn't the guy to create the new Sinestro or whatever, sure.

But having the NTT characters around just gives him more options - if you have Kori around, you can bring in aliens. Beast Boy, you can use The Red. Cyborg gives you the Techno Thriller bits that Percy never quite managed to bed-in.

And bringing in "bigger" villains gives you a chance to give Dick bigger wins - one thing I think that got some people's backs up about the current run is that Dick never really had a big combat victory. For my money, that's Taylor visibly refraining from having Dick knock the snot out of Blockbuster or Heartless for as long as possible because... Well, does anyone here not think Dick could take those characters? It's not a triumph if he's not the underdog.

Going "bigger" let's Dick fight outside of his weight category more often.

[Frontier]

Other people have made fair comments, but also - yeah, Heartless is fine but Taylor isn't the guy to create the new Sinestro or whatever, sure.

But having the NTT characters around just gives him more options - if you have Kori around, you can bring in aliens. Beast Boy, you can use The Red. Cyborg gives you the Techno Thriller bits that Percy never quite managed to bed-in.

And bringing in "bigger" villains gives you a chance to give Dick bigger wins - one thing I think that got some people's backs up about the current run is that Dick never really had a big combat victory. For my money, that's Taylor visibly refraining from having Dick knock the snot out of Blockbuster or Heartless for as long as possible because... Well, does anyone here not think Dick could take those characters? It's not a triumph if he's not the underdog.

Going "bigger" let's Dick fight outside of his weight category more often.

The thing is though, Taylor has never struck me as the kind of guy who could capitalize on that kind of stuff so well.

Now, granted, I could be being biased here but it feels like rather than maximize on all of that he would probably just do smaller scale and intimate stuff instead of diving deep into their background and character settings. I could be wrong though.

I think you could do a good Nightwing vs Blockbuster fight.

[Matt Rat]

Someone's stirring up a rumour about Dick and crediting it to BC as the source

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/blee...rumor-is-fake/

[marhawkman]

Other people have made fair comments, but also - yeah, Heartless is fine but Taylor isn't the guy to create the new Sinestro or whatever, sure.

But having the NTT characters around just gives him more options - if you have Kori around, you can bring in aliens. Beast Boy, you can use The Red. Cyborg gives you the Techno Thriller bits that Percy never quite managed to bed-in.

And bringing in "bigger" villains gives you a chance to give Dick bigger wins - one thing I think that got some people's backs up about the current run is that Dick never really had a big combat victory. For my money, that's Taylor visibly refraining from having Dick knock the snot out of Blockbuster or Heartless for as long as possible because... Well, does anyone here not think Dick could take those characters? It's not a triumph if he's not the underdog.

Going "bigger" let's Dick fight outside of his weight category more often.

I love him in team books though. Mari Grayson in the possible futures was also great.

[Matt Rat]

Spoilers for Nightwing#100.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/nigh...2023-spoilers/

Solicits and covers already gave much of this outcome away

[Mantis-Ray]

I think what I find most funny about all this, is the possibility of Taylor finally writing the Titans like actual characters instead of voiceless deus ex machinas he calls in whenever he needs any help

Still half and half on the possibility Starfire ever talking though

[Frontier]

Spoilers for Nightwing#100.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/nigh...2023-spoilers/

Solicits and covers already gave much of this outcome away

spoilers:

How much actual leading did Dick actually do in Dark Crisis again...although that might just be me remembering the actual story quality over the events. I don't really see why the League needs to step back and evaluate so much especially since they're still around other than for "story reasons." Hey, some actual positive BrucexDick content! But that "I love you dad" is a little too on the nose. I know he had Bruce explicitly call him "son" but now Dick calling him "dad." Hey look, it's the cartoon Titans! And Donna! And Beast Boy still has that eyepatch. Yeesh.

end of spoilers

[Felipe Silveira]

It seems like an eternal preparation.