Dick Grayson: Robin, Nightwing, Agent of Spyral - Appreciation

[joybeans]

CONVERGENCE: HAWKMAN #2 features a bonus GRAYSON story written by Tom King and Tim Seeley and illustrated by Mikel Janin.
Dick and Spyral join the mile-high club as they attempt to save a young boy from an airplane mid-flight.

There's the May preview.

[Godlike13]

That's a rather odd and unfortunate placement.

[JasonTodd428]

That's a rather odd and unfortunate placement.

Perfect, yet another preview I'm interesting in reading in a book that I have absolutely zero interest in picking up. Gah! Guess I may as well just download them instead even though my computer is gonna hate me for doing that.

[joybeans]

They'll be free on Comixology.

[Dzetoun]

That's a rather odd and unfortunate placement.

Yeah, New Teen Titans would have been better, or else Detective Comics, which is featuring Earth 2 Grayson from before the Crisis. But look at poor old Gotham Academy, stuck in the back of Green Lantern Corps, of all places!

[Vinsanity]

If his "death" had any weight to it I would agree, but it doesn't. No one cares he is dead and it had no impact. Everyone is doing exactly what they would normally be doing if they thought he was alive. It is nothing more than a tool so they could avoid dealing with certain things, namely the entire world knowing his identity. Nothing would change about the Grayson series really. The character would be able to move more fluidly in the DCU and build stronger bonds because he wouldn't have to awkwardly hide himself in certain ways, but I've talked about this enough so I'll leave it there.

See I want interaction with the DCU characters but he is a spy, a spy should hide himself. If they think he is dead it helps his mission not get compromised. I can see why you think of the narrative and the Bat Family but I mean in terms of being a spy, being 'dead' is kind of a good thing.

[Godlike13]

It also reflects Kathy's path.

[Dzetoun]

See I want interaction with the DCU characters but he is a spy, a spy should hide himself. If they think he is dead it helps his mission not get compromised. I can see why you think of the narrative and the Bat Family but I mean in terms of being a spy, being 'dead' is kind of a good thing.

Depends on what you see as most important for the character, I guess. I think a lot of people enjoy the spy angle and think it's neat, but fundamentally aren't interested in it as THE main focus of the book. Rather, they are interested in seeing Dick Grayson return to some of the traditional roles and attributes he had before the New 52. In fairness, Seeley, King, and Doyle often seem to strongly encourage such ways of thinking. To wit, Doyle saying the best thing about the creative team is that "they really get Dick Grayson," and so forth. Now, to a lot of people the essence of Dick Grayson is in his relationships and ability to form lasting connections across a wide range of characters. To the extent that the spy angle fits with that (and in a lot of ways it fits perfectly), it will likely be very popular. But if it starts to really get in the way, for instance if people get the idea that being a spy is prohibiting Dick from forming lasting friendships or even revealing himself to family and allies over the long haul, then I suspect exasperation and disgust will rapidly overwhelm the approach's popularity.

[Csjbo08]

It's important to remember that even though Dick Grayson is 'dead', he's still forming relationships, the biggest one right now is with Helena Bertinelli. Midnighter has interacted with him and knows Dick Grayson is alive, and there seems to be a lot of elements from Grayson in Midnighter so it wouldn't be out there to see them meet again. We know he's going to connect with Kathy Kane, we know he's going to form some type of bond with Tyger, something will happen between him and Lex. I don't think that him being "dead" really prevents Dick Grayson from making meaningful connections, we're seeing some being built right now.

It might not seem like he's making a lot of connections because we're witnessing these interactions grow in present time, we're not looking back at a decades worth of stories involving Agent 37.

[JasonTodd428]

They'll be free on Comixology.

Yeah, I already know that but for the sake my aged computer and my own eyes I was hoping not to have to go that route. Oh, well.

[Badou]

See I want interaction with the DCU characters but he is a spy, a spy should hide himself. If they think he is dead it helps his mission not get compromised. I can see why you think of the narrative and the Bat Family but I mean in terms of being a spy, being 'dead' is kind of a good thing.

The problem with the setup is that him faking his death to infiltrate Spyral only really works if he faked his death to throw Spyral off the trail of them figuring out who he is. Then it makes sense to keep his distance from all his old relationships and friends so Spyral doesn't discover who he is and use them against him. That is the classic spy setup. Here Spyral already knows who he is. All he is hiding from them is that apparently Batman was the one to make him join Spyral for "some reason", but everyone in Spyral knows he is Dick Grayson and Nightwing, as does the entire world. He knows they know that too. If Spyral wants to get Dick to do something all they would have to do is threaten to do something to Haly's Circus, Gotham, or any random innocent civilian because they know the type of hero he was. He is powerless. Them knowing he is close to Babs/Batgirl is sort of meaningless given what they already know.

I mean sure, the only characters he was interacting with before the reboot were basically just Bruce and Babs. Characters like Starfire or Superman wouldn't suddenly care if he is alive or dead because he has had no interactions with these type of characters in the reboot. So him pretending to be dead doesn't impact any of them and only really impacts the characters he was close to, so the Batman family. It just becomes another obstacle in them reestablishing these relationships.

The thing is Bruce knows he is alive, Jason is basically "dead" as well and running around the DCU so Spyral can't really use him, and Alfred, Damian (who was dead at the time) and Tim have had barely any interaction with Dick in the reboot. Alfred did get a slight reaction to his "death" in Nightwing #30, but Tim and Damian don't seem to be that close with Dick anymore, so crafting a story where Spyral uses them against Dick doesn't really work when the characters have been so uninvolved with each other so far.

So when you take a step back and look at it the only person Dick's "death" has any impact on out of the entire DCU is Babs. Just Babs. It sort of shows how meaningless it all is which is why I find it so frustrating. All Bruce would have to say is that Dick is alive but somewhere doing an important mission for me instead of lying to her about him being dead causing her pain. Since the main reason for the "death" I believe was to get around the whole "exposed identity" plot. Other than that the death doesn't really do anything.

[Vinsanity]

Depends on what you see as most important for the character, I guess. I think a lot of people enjoy the spy angle and think it's neat, but fundamentally aren't interested in it as THE main focus of the book. Rather, they are interested in seeing Dick Grayson return to some of the traditional roles and attributes he had before the New 52. In fairness, Seeley, King, and Doyle often seem to strongly encourage such ways of thinking. To wit, Doyle saying the best thing about the creative team is that "they really get Dick Grayson," and so forth. Now, to a lot of people the essence of Dick Grayson is in his relationships and ability to form lasting connections across a wide range of characters. To the extent that the spy angle fits with that (and in a lot of ways it fits perfectly), it will likely be very popular. But if it starts to really get in the way, for instance if people get the idea that being a spy is prohibiting Dick from forming lasting friendships or even revealing himself to family and allies over the long haul, then I suspect exasperation and disgust will rapidly overwhelm the approach's popularity.

For a lot of people I guess it is relationships but for me it is the story. If you're a spy like James Bond or Ethan Hunt, you don't really have many relationships because of the work. Ethan can't see his wife, James Bond in the novels can't really have a proper relationship with a woman or she'll end up dead. I think for a spy, being dead is a good thing. He still has relationships as the poster Csjbo08 pointed out and it still allows him to be a spy.

I also see the point of view from others including Badou but personally I don't really care much about how other people feel about Dick's death or that he doesn't have relationships with the greater DCU, I want awesome stories. That's just my point of view.

[jules]

The problem with the setup is that him faking his death to infiltrate Spyral only really works if he faked his death to throw Spyral off the trail of them figuring out who he is.

Though that's not really how I see them using the death. Spyral know who he is, and he knows that they know. It's the reason why they recruited him. What being "dead" does is distance him from the rest of the Bat-family, and give Spyral a reason for why he'd throw his lot in with them rather than stick with the alliances he previously had. It makes him someone who seems to be at a loose end and available for recruiting, whereas an identity intact, officially alive Nightwing wouldn't have been interested at all. Though mostly I think it's the Dick-Grayson-is-Nightwing reveal that's the important bit, rather than the death, for getting Spyral on the hook.

The death mostly interests me because Kathy Kane was thought dead before she showed up in Batman Inc, Helena Bertinelli is thought dead enough to convince Helena Wayne that the identity is available for recycling. And it seemed to be a bit of a theme with Spyral personnel.

And Minos is "dead" now, whether he was before or not. I'd really like to know if Tiger is "dead" too.

[Csjbo08]

The problem with the setup is that him faking his death to infiltrate Spyral only really works if he faked his death to throw Spyral off the trail of them figuring out who he is. Then it makes sense to keep his distance from all his old relationships and friends so Spyral doesn't discover who he is and use them against him. That is the classic spy setup. Here Spyral already knows who he is. All he is hiding from them is that apparently Batman was the one to make him join Spyral for "some reason", but everyone in Spyral knows he is Dick Grayson and Nightwing, as does the entire world. He knows they know that too. If Spyral wants to get Dick to do something all they would have to do is threaten to do something to Haly's Circus, Gotham, or any random innocent civilian because they know the type of hero he was. He is powerless. Them knowing he is close to Babs/Batgirl is sort of meaningless given what they already know.

We know how and why Batman convinced Dick Grayson to stay 'dead' and infiltrate Spyral, it's not a mystery, it's pretty clear cut. Batman thought that he could send Dick Grayson into Spyral and prevent them from uncovering the secret identities of Earth's superheroes. Now we know that Bruce and Dick are pawns in a larger game set up by Kathy Kane. Kathy Kane wants Agent Grayson to become her Batman, but she wants to do it in a way where Dick DOESN'T know he's being turned into Kathy's own Batman. She wants Grayson to grow comfortable as Agent 37, so Kathy wouldn't give Dick the ultimatum "If you don't do this, we'll blow up half of Gotham", because he'll fight back and she might not get what she wants. Besides, Kathy Kane is not a mustache-twirling villain, she's much smarter than that.

[DGraysonWorldsGreatestSpy]

I am really excited to see how Kathy works behind the scenes to push Dick further into the Web of Spyral and the small glance we had of her shows that the Tim and Tom understand her motivations and skill level in the spy world.