In Defense of Seeley, King and NIGHTWING #30

[Conway]

Eternal has certainly been very bad indeed with regard to this situation, I agree. Likely that is because most of the issues we are now reading were scripted before the current direction came together. But still, an extremely bad performance all the way around in this regard.

As far as Johns goes, as I've said on another thread I am starting to wonder if he is not getting too much blame. The current Justice League issue actually dovetails pretty well with Forever Evil 7, Bruce's behavior and all. It's as if no one made clear to Johns that Dick was supposed to be "dead" at the end of the event. Rather, he seems to have been under the impression that Dick would be gone on a mission, but nevertheless everyone would understand that he was still alive. I wonder if the Bat Office didn't tell him they needed Dick to die in the murder machine, but then be revived so that he could be hidden. Johns apparently interpreted that as them wanting a one issue cliff-hanger, which he provided. Maybe in the turmoil of the Bat Office, with editors and writers coming and going, no one followed up adequately with Johns and therefore the misunderstanding didn't come to light until it was too late to do anything about it.

Then he should have read the interviews, because the rumor of Dick's death started a couple months before FE #1 hit the shelf. They had plenty of time to thresh it out, especially once they delayed #7 for two months for a new story. As for the dovetail, Bruce didn't even act like Dick was dead while trying to deny that he was Batman. Here it was a few days after the death of someone that was obviously close to him and he's going out to the opera with an eastern European model. If that's true then Barbra would be even more mad at him than she has shown. All in all it is the lamest "death" any hero has ever had in DC much less for one that is 75 years old.

[oasis1313]

Then he should have read the interviews, because the rumor of Dick's death started a couple months before FE #1 hit the shelf. They had plenty of time to thresh it out, especially once they delayed #7 for two months for a new story. As for the dovetail, Bruce didn't even act like Dick was dead while trying to deny that he was Batman. Here it was a few days after the death of someone that was obviously close to him and he's going out to the opera with an eastern European model. If that's true then Barbra would be even more mad at him than she has shown. All in all it is the lamest "death" any hero has ever had in DC much less for one that is 75 years old.

Barbara isn't mad at Bruce because she doesn't care, either. And at the root of it ALL is an editorial hierarchy that doesn't appear to care about much of anything except cashing paychecks. Ah, for the good ol' days of Julie Schwartz, artists and writers toiling away for 20 hours a day, hunched over drawing boards in small rooms cloudy with stale cigarette smoke, trying to make a middle-class wage.

[Badou]

Johns deserves the blame for treating the character like garbage in Forever Evil and deciding to expose his identity to the world as a gimmick to help sell his event. He probably also deserves the blame for not having any interest in figuring out what to do with the character after piling all this crap on him. He obviously knew from the start that he exposed Dick's identity because he wanted to tell his Lex/Bruce story in Justice League, but he had no interest in what doing all that meant for Dick's character.

But I also think that it wasn't his idea to have the character pretend to be dead. That does seem like it was something the Batman office came up with to try and deal with the Forever Evil fallout while they wanted to tell these other stories, like Batman Eternal. Having him pretend to be dead means they can ignore his character in the other books for a while. I just think we could have still had this Grayson series just as it is without all these dumb hangups with him having to pretend to be dead to like 4 people while most other heroes know he is alive. It sucks that it wasn't planned out better, but I guess there is nothing that can be done about it now. It's just that the lack of a resolution with such major events really bothers me and acts as a distraction for the new Gryason series.

[Dzetoun]

I don't think it matters that much if that plot point flops, as i don't think Dick being dead is going to play that big of a role. We not getting inner monologues in Grayson, and from all that ive heard them say so far it doesn't seem like they're interested in having Dick be angry or whiny. So i don't really see him dwelling on it much. Its just an excuse to get him from A to B.
I think we want it to be a big deal because we feel it should be, and it should, but clearly they have other priorities. Which isn't ideal, but whatever. And plus Dicks not actually dead. Its sounds like there is so much more going one with Grayson. So really im over it, and ready to just move one.

I do hate to see such poor execution in general. And they did talk about those conversations with Bruce. I really could do without an angst-fest in those like we used to get in all the Bruce/Dick interactions c.1995-2005. However, I understand where you are coming from. The whole thing has been so badly set in motion that if that particular plot point flops then I suppose it deserves to. And of course to be fair, which was the point of beginning this thread, we have heard nothing so far from the creators themselves, who are the ones with the most invested in any ongoing plot points with Grayson. So we will see.

Barbara isn't mad at Bruce because she doesn't care, either.

Once again to be fair, Barbara is actually the one character we have heard something from, other than that minor mention from Tim. And, of course, she is probably the one character more than any other that we really need more from, given that Damian is dead. We will see, I guess.