My name is Oswald, and I realized today that I may have accrued the largest collection of screenshots and downloaded images on my Blogger page in the last month than most bloggers do in their entire career. Seriously, I am surprised I haven't received a warning about Cloud Storage limits for the amount I upload here. I suppose it only makes sense, considering that for how much I tend to write on my various posts that pictures are necessary to keep you the reader from getting bored. I know I would get bored from reading through a novella of text each day if their wasn't pictures attached. That's probably the reason I turned to comics so long ago, to keep my interest consistently up.
For those new to the blog, I appreciate you checking out what I have to say. We like superheroes here, but I realized a few weeks back that so many characters out there are freaking confusing. Some of the biggest names in the graphic storytelling history are almost eighty years old, and in that time, so many different things in their stories happened. For new readers, not wanting to trudge through eighty years and hundreds of issues of comic books is completely understandable. When I started reading through comics back in 2014 (hardcore reading, not just as a passing whim), I started with the most modern stories available for my favorite characters, but that meant I missed out on so much of their history and the allusions they made in their stories. I started this segment three weeks ago as my Friday Feature, calling it Who's Who? and intending to give you the reader a run down of literature's most famous characters. I think next week that I will look into someone from my own, textual literary past, but this week, I will be sticking with some DC comics history.
I was really excited for this week's post as of about Wednesday, considering that before then I had no idea what the hell I was going to talk about. Then it hit me. I was going through so many of these cool but obscure characters that I knew nothing about, so why not go into a character that is well known, that I love, but has a huge history. Seriously, guys and gals, I may be the biggest Nightwing fan ever, but even I didn't know a quarter of his most important historical moments. So today, we will be looking into my favorite superhero ever, Richard "Dick" Grayson, the first superhero sidekick and the most important.
Who's Who? DC Comics' Nightwing
As per usual, I will start with the character's publication history, but in a much different manner. I will be mixing the character's biography in with this history for a change, simply because it is easier to understand, especially when I get into the most recent modern reboots, where it will become more of a straight biography segment, before I get into Dick Grayson's various superheroic skills.
Dick Grayson first appeared on the scene in Detective Comics #38 in April 1940. The story begins, as most great dramas do, with tragedy. Richard Grayson was the child star of the circus trapeze act, the Flying Graysons. Having been born into Haly's Circus, Dick grew up training to work beside his parents in their "death-defying" trapeze act. As the boy grew older and displayed great practice and skill, the two person act became a three member family act. When Dick was twelve, he stumbled into a meeting between Mr. Haly, the owner of the circus, and Gotham Mafioso Tony Zucco. Zucco was attempting to extort money from Haly, protective "accident insurance" that would keep Zucco and his boys from destroying Haly's Circus. Haly refused Zucco's extortion, and Grayson prepared for his act.
Zucco wasn't happy about the occurrence, tampering with the circus trapeze before the show started. When the Flying Graysons, at the start only Dick's parents, started the routine, the line snapped, sending Richard Grayson's parents to their deaths. In the aftermath, Bruce Wayne, who was attending the show, approached the boy in his Batman persona and told him to stay away from the police, that they worked for Zucco and that they would get Dick killed. The boy listened, instead allowing himself to be taken in by the Dark Knight to be trained and take revenge against the darkest forces of Gotham City as the first kid sidekick, Robin.
In the end, the rest of his biography for the next 30 odd years is a bit muddied, staying stuck in the context of "saving the day with the Batman." Here we slip into a little publication history, as that is the most important and interesting piece of this interim period. Robin was constructed as a total, out-of-left-field experiment. In fact, his introduction was surrounded with possibilities to have the kid ejected from further storylines if the public disliked him. He was built as a means to market to the younger readers, teens that had been exposed only to the adult characters like Superman and Batman. As cool and impressive as Batman was especially, his darkness and mystery was meant as an adult noir story told in the style of the capes and tights crowd. Robin was a means to draw in younger readers, and in that front, he was insanely successful. DC bargained and hit the jackpot. He was meant as an inspiration to a new generation of readers who only received respect insofar as they were going to be future adults. Other than that, they were meant as menial labor or soldiers in a time of great war. Robin spoke to them as a hero, that you didn't need to be an adult to make a difference in an adult's world. You could stand beside your parents or your teachers or the soldiers of WWII and still make a difference. This of course also has its roots in a number of homefront war publications that asked for the kids of America to give to the war effort whatever they could.
On this front, he and Marvel's own teenage prodigy, Spiderman were constantly in a war of publication and theme. While Robin represented a young sidekick that was a great aid to his adult hero counterpart, Spiderman was a young hero in his own right, not needing any form of adult to support his vigilantism. To counteract this, DC took Robin and a pair of his fellow comic book sidekicks into their own comic, which laid the ground work for the early incarnations of the Teen Titans. This team up, set in DC's team up series The Brave and the Bold No. 54 of July 1964. The picture can be seen below. This teamup was a direct attempt to again empower the youth populace of America in the aftermath of The Seduction of the Innocent and the birth of the Comics Code Authority. At this time, Comics had become policed for assumed corrupting content involving violence and "devious sexual undertones" so all comics had to be passed through the waiting arms of the CCA in order to be published in the highest issue count possible. If the "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" tag was not present on the upper right corner of the book, not only would parents be more than hesitant to buy the book for their children but most vendors would keep it out of their stands. To keep things kid friendly while still empowering these youths to make change in the world, DC created their first sidekick teamup, Kid Flash, Aqualad and Robin.
The issue saw the first appearance of villain Mr. Twister, and though the story itself is somewhat forgettable, what it represents is not. This was the first team of teen superheroes and would go on to form the basis for the first iteration of the Teen Titans team. In many ways, Spiderman was just one teenager in a million, a special lucky kid, where as this new team up showed that any kid with enough desire and force of will could become a hero.
Sidekicks, though, became of a facet of the Golden Age of comic books, and as 1970 rolled into view, the life of the comic book sidekick spun toward extinction. To be fair, Dick Grayson was Robin for 30 years, the longest of any other sidekick in their history. When Neil Adams and Danny O'Neil took over the Batman comic book series, their first move was to drive the character to much darker storytelling. With the CCA lightening up, it was time to move past the ultra-campiness of the silly and over-the-top Adam West representation of '66 Batman. To bring this darker storytelling, they needed to do several things, and to fan's riotous chagrin, one of those things was removing Robin from Batman's main story. To be fair, DC did use this opportunity to experiment on Dick Grayson, see if he could stand on his own two feet as a character, and he got his own strip title at the back of every Batman issue. It wasn't explained until 1987 why the pair had broken up in the first place in canon, though a comic was released at that time describing a story of how Robin was shot through the arm in the midst of a battle with Joker. It was minor damage, but as Batman become more and more familially attached to Dick, becoming more and more his adoptive father, Batman couldn't allow his son to be killed on his watch. So Dick goes off on his own, more likely to be killed because he has no support.
Before any of this had been revealed, though, DC couldn't fully determine Robin's popularity on his own with only a few small pages at the end of every Batman comic. They couldn't tell if his apparent sales popularity had to do with the sales of the Batman comic or if he was pushing those sales. In another big, history making move, DC pulled Robin from the Backyard of the Batman series and plugged him into a little comic titled DC Comics Presents No. 26. Not really the most catchy name on the planet, but it worked. On a sidebar on the front cover, it read that the team at DC would be releasing a snippet of their new series, The New Teen Titans, which Dick Grayson as Robin would be heading. This happened in 1980, and the series was widely successful for the next sixteen years.
One of the big moves that DC made in the early years of this comic, 1984 to be exact, was to give the once Robin his own true identity. In this year, DC began releasing issues of a New Teen Titans storyline titled "The Judas Contract," which will be adapted to animated film at the end of this year. In this story, Teen Titans' villain Deathstroke enlists the help of his own teenage superhuman to infiltrate the Titans and turn them against each other. I won't spoil anymore for fans of the upcoming movie, but as it turns out, this acted as the impetus for Robin to step out of the shadows of his former mentor and take a name for himself. In one random turn of a decision, or at least at the time it seemed this way, Dick Grayson showed up to his Teen Titans' Meeting in a black and blue costume and called himself Nightwing.
Though I could not find the exact issue when story was fully explained, Dick actually took the name Nightwing from an old Superman from earlier in the character's career. When Superman was locked away with Jimmy Olson, the pair become a mythical pair vigilantes from Krypton's history named Nightwing and Flamebird. In the Secret Origins of Nightwing story (there have been a few, so excuse the lack of issue title), that mythical pair of vigilantes is reimagined into a single hero, cast out from his family. Robin, being emotionally close to Superman as they had both lost their parents to tragedy and were forced into a foster home situation (happily forced if that makes sense...), listened intently to the story, stating beforehand that Robin was a name he longer felt attached to. Superman said, like the vigilante from the story, Dick had been cast out of Batman's Shadow and into the real world with an identity that was given to him. Taken inspiration from the man of steel, Dick took the name of the fabled warrior and joined the Teen Titans as Nightwing.
This will be the last main discussion point before I move into the updated New 52 history of the character, but Dick stayed a Nightwing for nearly 18 years. He even took his own city, Bludhaven, which was an even bigger hellhole than Gotham. More and more, he became his own person. That is until 1994 and Bane was introduced into the Dark Knight's Rogues Gallery in one back-breaking turn of events. Literally. If you've seen The Dark Knight Rises, you have an inkling of the events, but Batman didn't just recover in the cave. He was out of commission for two real life years. In that time, the mantle of the bat passed to a religious warrior named Azrael, whose personal mental issues drove him to kill. Dick and Tim Drake, the current Robin, stopped Azrael, and seeing the need for a Batman in Gotham, Dick Grayson took the mantle. He would remove the cowl after two years of service, but after Final Crisis, Batman was presumed dead, and it was Damien Wayne this time, Bruce's son, who had to convince Dick that the world needed a Batman, so he took up the torch of his foster father, and the foster siblings became the new dynamic duo until Bruce's return in the Blackest Night.
The New 52
When DC rebooted their universe in 2011, many of their most popular characters had their origins more deeply explored, and Nightwing's unknown past became intrinsically tied to his present circumstances. Tying into the Night of the Owls storyline, Dick Grayson's history was one of the deepest readaptations of the famous character's past that he has ever gotten. When Dick was a boy, he wasn't just a talented acrobat, but a prodigy. His incredible skill on the wire made the boy arrogant and dismissive and he drove his two best friends, Raymond and Raya, away. After he was trapped in the Zero Year blacked out Gotham with the two, their forced teamwork reignited their friendship, and they continued this way until Grayson's parents were killed by Zucco's people. This part of the story did not change, though Dick wasn't on the wire that night, grounded for sneaking out his lessons during the day.
In a bigger shift from his original story, Dick was approached by Bruce Wayne, and not Batman, and he was taken to the Wayne Care Center, an orphanage in the city. Unbeknownst to those at the Care Center, Dick was obsessed with finding Tony Zucco, with bringing him to justice or killing him. Night after night, he snuck out of his room and followed the activities of the Batman, helping out where he could. One night, Batman took him back to the Batcave. Dick, having put two and two together, revealed that he knew Bruce was Batman and Bruce agreed to train and adopt the boy. He went through months of training, never seeing the streets of Gotham in costume.
One night, as Batman was trailing a trained assassin named Lady Shiva, the Dark Knight was badly injured by the assassin's weaponry. Dick, having fashioned his own armor in secret, arrived on the scene as Robin. He was badly beaten, though Batman appreciated the boy's heroism. Just before he left, he was in talks with Alfred. I only bring this up because it is important for understanding how different Dick Grayson is from Bruce Wayne.
Dick: Am I a bad son, Alfred?
Alfred: Master Richard, Why on Earth would you ever--
Dick: Bruce still visits them, you know. His Parents. Once a week. And the clock that leads to the cave is still set to the time they died. All these years later... Their Deaths are still what drives him.
Dick: My dad used to say I looked too far forward. That I brushed off the things I didn't want to deal with. Is that why it doesn't hurt the same way anymore, Alfred? Is that why, why I think about them, I only think about their lives? Am I brushing off what happened to them?
Alfred: What you're doing is healing. You're accepting that things change.
The most important piece of his involvement in the New 52, though, comes from Nightwing's part of the Court of the Owls storyline. In Batman's arc, it is revealed that a secret organization by that name has been running Gotham from its underground for years, using an Assassin called the Talon to keep a balance in the city. It is revealed as Haly, a father figure to Dick, is dying that there is a list of names hidden in the boards of the circus ring. This name includes Richard Grayson, and as the story progresses, it becomes apparent that Haly's Circus acted as a training ground for new Talons, with the Haly family sacrificing its best and brightest to the court. After Dick was taken into Bruce Wayne's custody before the court could capture and brainwash him, it was his friend Raymond that was taken to the Court, though he was beaten and left to die because he was unworthy.
It was revealed that Nightwing's great-grandfather, Albert Carver, was the most recent Talon, reinforced by a rejuvenating serum, and that his destiny with the Court was yet to be fulfilled. As the New 52 continued, Dick played key roles in all of the Bat family events, but it wasn't until his apparent death in the Forever Evil story arc that he again switched names, this time to Grayson. Batman sent him undercover of his faked death into the heart of a spy organization named Spyral. It wasn't until the end of the New 52, when he was reunited with the rest of his Teen Titans allies that he reclaimed his mantle.
Those were all of the story elements that you needed to know to get caught up on Dick Grayson's main storyline, but now it is time to see what makes him such a capable ally to the bat.
Skills
Of course, it makes no sense to talk about powers with Grayson because he is a normal human being fighting beside Gods. That said, though, he does have some incredibly extraordinary skills at his disposal, even if they are only within the range of possibility for a human person. The following information is everything I could scrounge up on his many skills and abilities.
Grayson is at the peak level of human conditoning and is an acrobatic prodigy, displaying incredible aptitude professionally at Haly's Circus and in combat beside Batman. Though he doesn't have extended combat use with the weapons, Dick is an expert Marksman, and has utilized that and his skills in espionage while undercover at Spyral. He also displays a genius level intellect, his training with Batman involving rigorous breakdowns of tactical analysis and investigation techniques, escapology, intimidation, and Tracking. One of his best skills in the field, though, does not come from the Dark Knight himself, but Alfred, who used his theater background to teach the young Master Richard the art of disguise. Dick was able to go for days posing as the Joker in Arkham.
Also versed in stealth, swordsmanship and various forms of weaponry, Dick is most well versed in his martial arts abilities, impressing the mistress of martial arts herself, Lady Shiva. He has even been able to best his mentor in this area. He is most proficient with his Escrima sticks and his staff. Most important to his character, though, is that he is an incredibly skilled leader, seemingly able to garner friendship and allies from a number of the DC universe's young heroes and the Justice League themselves.
As Nightwing, Grayson has several technologically advanced pieces at work in his suit. His mask is capable of GPS tracking, thermal imaging, and detailed visual breakdowns of crime scenes. His gauntlets are outfitted with a number of useful devices including remote bombs, sonic devices, and a grapple line. His favored mode of transport is his motorcycle, and he favors his personalized Escrima Sticks in battle. These sticks can shoot grapple lines and smoke bombs, as well as release high voltage electric shocks through the ends. When he joined up with Spyral, he was given several technological implants that allowed him to sync with other people's brains and hynotize them, as well as visually alter his facial structure to hide what lies underneath.
I will end with my favorite modern Robin moment, after his first meeting with the Justice League.
So there we go, 77 years of superhero history. I tried to condense it down to the most important moments, but there were a lot, so I hope I didn't get rambly. This is the most thorough break down of the character that I could give, and it was incredibly fun to research it. Thanks a lot to ComicsExplained on Youtube for the invaluable information. There's my favorite superhero guys, but it wasn't until today that I realized just how important he really is.
Tomorrow, I'll be posting on my Weekly Haul about some of the cool stuff I got this week, though the rest of next week is up in the air. Sunday will probably be a bit shorter of a post, so I can focus on my homework and application submissions, so just to warn you.
Bunkum and Balderdash, Citizens of the Internet! Have a wonderful day! ~OZ
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