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scans_dailyIn the past, I've posted from the original ending of Dick Grayson's Robin career, a long organic process of growth, told across both Batman titles, and primarily in the Teen Titans (Where Dick was a much more prominent character than in the Batverse at the time).
I've detailed telling the Titans, telling Bruce and Jason and putting on his Nightwing costume for the first time
And it struck me (and also following a post bylego_joker that uses one of the panels herein) that in the interests of fairness and comparison, I should post from a couple of other iterations of the story. Starting with the first revamp... such as it was.
This is from Batman #408, the story which first introduced street punk Jason Todd, replacing former circus acrobat Jason Todd. And in order to bring him in, they had to get Dick out, in almost unseemly haste.
We open with the Joker having stolen a famed diamond necklace, the "Hopeless Diamond".
Of course, Batman does not take kindly to that, and as he confronts the Joker on the roof, Dick as Robin clambers over the wall behind the Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime is waffling on about having stolen the necklace all by himself, without any henchmen. It's HIS achievement, without gang members to sully the purity of the theft.
That last panel there was used to promote this issue, with the tagline (and title of this issue) "Did Robin Die Tonight"?
Ah, journalistic integrity at it's finest there Gotham News copter-jockeys!
No, Bruce, I really don't think you are sorry.
See, now this just makes no bloody sense to me at all. Dick has been Robin for many years, he's been injured worse than this at a younger age than the 18 or so he is here, so Bruce going into paranoid protective mode just doesn't work.
Also in this new Post-Crisis take on the DCU history (where Batman Year One happened and Bruce was not, as he had in the Pre-Crisis DCU, ever used the name and costume of Robin himself, albeit briefly) Robin is not Bruce's identity to decide the fate of, it's Dick's. He created the name Robin, and when the writer (In this case Max Allan Collins) isn't deliberately writing him as fairly irrelevant (Being taken out quite so easily by the Joker for example) he earned the reputation of Robin.
The problem seems to be that Bruce can't see Robin as being anything OTHER than a child, never mind he's a successful solo hero and leader of one of the best superteams the DCU has to offer. That's Bruce's problem, not Dick, so why should Dick suffer?
It also overlooks the fact that Dick is quite clearly not going to allow this to stop him being a hero in his own right (he all but says as much), so what exactly does Bruce gain by any of this? He'll have his partner back? Nope. Will Dick retire from heroing and lead a normal civilian life? Not likely.
We'd later find out that Dick had left Wayne Manor that night, only being persuaded by Alfred to take some money with him, and had tried gogin to college, but had dropped out after less than a year, and then had somehow magically become Nightwing on his own.
Of course, another issue with the Post-Crisis revamp was that, since there was no bottle city of Kandor, Superman and Jimmy Olsen had never had adventures there as the non-powered heroes Nightwing and Flamebird, so there was no heroic legacy name of Clark's for Dick to honour by assuming, and that had been a major part of him taking the name in the first place (See the third link at the start of this post for that)
It took until September 1999, in the World's Finest maxi-series for this to be addressed canonically, though not specifically. Written by Karl Kesel, a writer who always loved throwing in references to past continuity that might not actually be canonical anymore, but never let it stop him telling a FUN story. It's set some time before the events outlined above.
Mr Mxyzptlk has returned to Earth to play merry hob with Superman as per usual, and when he materialises, the first person he meets is a minor Arkham escapee who goes by the name Overdog. His psychosis manifests in the delusion that he can see and talk to a weird little being called Bat-Mite. Intrigued by this as an idea, Mxy makes the delusion and reality and creates a fully formed, self aware Bat-Mite (something few other writers would have dared do in the grim and gritty 90's, even in a flashback story)
The two of them appear to Clark and Bruce (who is visiting the Daily Planet offices) and they proceed to argue about who is the better hero, Superman or Batman (as they were wont to do back in the Golden Age too)
So they set he heroes a challenge, to rescue a hypnotised Lois Lane, who Mxy has (rather creepily when you think about it) dressed in a sort of showgril outfit. Mxy knows that Lois loves Superman, but doesn't care for Clark. He also knows that Clark is also head over heels for her, but wants her to love him for Clark, not Superman, so Superman gives her the cold shoulder. Bat-Mite thinks that Superman having an emotional link to Lois will give him an advantage (not sure how that works) and so evens the score, which gives us these rather awesome panels.
Ahem....
Sadly (for me at any rate), though they want to use Lois as their "damsel in distress", they don't want ot use Robin as the "Boy Hostage".
Mxy creates a tall building with Lois trapped at the top, and the heores have to get her down. The first to rach her wins. And to stop Superman from flying up at super-speed, Bat-Mite creates swarms of Kryptonian octo-birds.
I like the fact that none of the heroes give a crap about the competition, they just want to save Lois. And now we get this terrific little homage...
Robin's idea is to use Batman's momentum to swing him right round and back up to the roof. where Batman and Superman arrive at the same time, only to find that Lois is perfectly fine and has been taking care of the octobirds herself by throwing rocks at them.
...vanishing.
Next the four of them find themselves stuck in a giant funhouse maze. And again, whichever hero team gets out first, wins.
Dickie boy is not having a great time of it...
Ah Robin's in quicksand, and all's right with the world.
It's pretty obvious that the two heroes that Clark was about to mention were Nightwing and Flamebird, but then... DEATHTRAPS!
Meanwhile...
Awwww, Bats is all woobie about his little bird (Though I have to say that that's a nice way of Bruce expressing his emotions, and which provide more of an explanation for his behaviour via a vis Robin than Batman 408 manages in it's entirety)
And back at the deathtraps, Superman is undergoing death by liquorice whip and Robin is investigating a new career as a Tootsie-pop.
This, of course, is the Neal Adams designed "Grown up Robin" suit that appeared a time or two, notably in a JLA/JSA team up, where the Robin's of Earth 1 and Earth 2 guest star.
Meanwhile, back at Batman and Lois part of the maze, Mxy grants Lois her wish to be Superman's equal by giving her super powers, and Batmite retorts by giving Batman superpowers too. Thuis allows them to avoid their own deathtrap, involving a giant typewriters (Very apt for Lois, and anyone who read the Golden age stories which featured any of Bill Finger's giant prop plots)
And so our heroes make their way out, all changed in some way, more or less.
See someone didn't get altered all, and Mxy aims to change that...
Love that assessment of the whole World's Finest (and Lois) dynamic.
Bat-Mite suggests that the desire to want to be something more than you are is universal, not just humans, or Kryptonians, or even imps from the 5th dimension. Clearly having had a nerve touched by this, Mxy storms off in a huff, HE doesn't need ANYONE, or want ANYTHING, so there! And the next time he visits this "Ramada Inn reality" (love that), he'll PROVE it, and so saying, says his name backwards and disappears.
And so the story ends, with Lois and Robin vanishing off, and Clark and Bruce left pondering their respective wishes (Well, Bruce doesn't believe in wishes, but he does believe that you can do anything you put your mind to) and whether they might actually get along better as Clark and Bruce than they do as Superman and Batman....
Now as noted, Nightwing doesn't exactly get name checked here, that wouldn't actually happen until the NEXT iteration. and that'll be the subject of the next post in this series; Dick giving up the Pixie Boots V2.1 (aka Nightwing: Year One)
I've detailed telling the Titans, telling Bruce and Jason and putting on his Nightwing costume for the first time
And it struck me (and also following a post by
lego_joker that uses one of the panels herein) that in the interests of fairness and comparison, I should post from a couple of other iterations of the story. Starting with the first revamp... such as it was.This is from Batman #408, the story which first introduced street punk Jason Todd, replacing former circus acrobat Jason Todd. And in order to bring him in, they had to get Dick out, in almost unseemly haste.
We open with the Joker having stolen a famed diamond necklace, the "Hopeless Diamond".
Of course, Batman does not take kindly to that, and as he confronts the Joker on the roof, Dick as Robin clambers over the wall behind the Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime is waffling on about having stolen the necklace all by himself, without any henchmen. It's HIS achievement, without gang members to sully the purity of the theft.
That last panel there was used to promote this issue, with the tagline (and title of this issue) "Did Robin Die Tonight"?
Ah, journalistic integrity at it's finest there Gotham News copter-jockeys!
No, Bruce, I really don't think you are sorry.
See, now this just makes no bloody sense to me at all. Dick has been Robin for many years, he's been injured worse than this at a younger age than the 18 or so he is here, so Bruce going into paranoid protective mode just doesn't work.
Also in this new Post-Crisis take on the DCU history (where Batman Year One happened and Bruce was not, as he had in the Pre-Crisis DCU, ever used the name and costume of Robin himself, albeit briefly) Robin is not Bruce's identity to decide the fate of, it's Dick's. He created the name Robin, and when the writer (In this case Max Allan Collins) isn't deliberately writing him as fairly irrelevant (Being taken out quite so easily by the Joker for example) he earned the reputation of Robin.
The problem seems to be that Bruce can't see Robin as being anything OTHER than a child, never mind he's a successful solo hero and leader of one of the best superteams the DCU has to offer. That's Bruce's problem, not Dick, so why should Dick suffer?
It also overlooks the fact that Dick is quite clearly not going to allow this to stop him being a hero in his own right (he all but says as much), so what exactly does Bruce gain by any of this? He'll have his partner back? Nope. Will Dick retire from heroing and lead a normal civilian life? Not likely.
We'd later find out that Dick had left Wayne Manor that night, only being persuaded by Alfred to take some money with him, and had tried gogin to college, but had dropped out after less than a year, and then had somehow magically become Nightwing on his own.
Of course, another issue with the Post-Crisis revamp was that, since there was no bottle city of Kandor, Superman and Jimmy Olsen had never had adventures there as the non-powered heroes Nightwing and Flamebird, so there was no heroic legacy name of Clark's for Dick to honour by assuming, and that had been a major part of him taking the name in the first place (See the third link at the start of this post for that)
It took until September 1999, in the World's Finest maxi-series for this to be addressed canonically, though not specifically. Written by Karl Kesel, a writer who always loved throwing in references to past continuity that might not actually be canonical anymore, but never let it stop him telling a FUN story. It's set some time before the events outlined above.
Mr Mxyzptlk has returned to Earth to play merry hob with Superman as per usual, and when he materialises, the first person he meets is a minor Arkham escapee who goes by the name Overdog. His psychosis manifests in the delusion that he can see and talk to a weird little being called Bat-Mite. Intrigued by this as an idea, Mxy makes the delusion and reality and creates a fully formed, self aware Bat-Mite (something few other writers would have dared do in the grim and gritty 90's, even in a flashback story)
The two of them appear to Clark and Bruce (who is visiting the Daily Planet offices) and they proceed to argue about who is the better hero, Superman or Batman (as they were wont to do back in the Golden Age too)
So they set he heroes a challenge, to rescue a hypnotised Lois Lane, who Mxy has (rather creepily when you think about it) dressed in a sort of showgril outfit. Mxy knows that Lois loves Superman, but doesn't care for Clark. He also knows that Clark is also head over heels for her, but wants her to love him for Clark, not Superman, so Superman gives her the cold shoulder. Bat-Mite thinks that Superman having an emotional link to Lois will give him an advantage (not sure how that works) and so evens the score, which gives us these rather awesome panels.
Ahem....
Sadly (for me at any rate), though they want to use Lois as their "damsel in distress", they don't want ot use Robin as the "Boy Hostage".
Mxy creates a tall building with Lois trapped at the top, and the heores have to get her down. The first to rach her wins. And to stop Superman from flying up at super-speed, Bat-Mite creates swarms of Kryptonian octo-birds.
I like the fact that none of the heroes give a crap about the competition, they just want to save Lois. And now we get this terrific little homage...
Robin's idea is to use Batman's momentum to swing him right round and back up to the roof. where Batman and Superman arrive at the same time, only to find that Lois is perfectly fine and has been taking care of the octobirds herself by throwing rocks at them.
...vanishing.
Next the four of them find themselves stuck in a giant funhouse maze. And again, whichever hero team gets out first, wins.
Dickie boy is not having a great time of it...
Ah Robin's in quicksand, and all's right with the world.
It's pretty obvious that the two heroes that Clark was about to mention were Nightwing and Flamebird, but then... DEATHTRAPS!
Meanwhile...
Awwww, Bats is all woobie about his little bird (Though I have to say that that's a nice way of Bruce expressing his emotions, and which provide more of an explanation for his behaviour via a vis Robin than Batman 408 manages in it's entirety)
And back at the deathtraps, Superman is undergoing death by liquorice whip and Robin is investigating a new career as a Tootsie-pop.
This, of course, is the Neal Adams designed "Grown up Robin" suit that appeared a time or two, notably in a JLA/JSA team up, where the Robin's of Earth 1 and Earth 2 guest star.
Meanwhile, back at Batman and Lois part of the maze, Mxy grants Lois her wish to be Superman's equal by giving her super powers, and Batmite retorts by giving Batman superpowers too. Thuis allows them to avoid their own deathtrap, involving a giant typewriters (Very apt for Lois, and anyone who read the Golden age stories which featured any of Bill Finger's giant prop plots)
And so our heroes make their way out, all changed in some way, more or less.
See someone didn't get altered all, and Mxy aims to change that...
Love that assessment of the whole World's Finest (and Lois) dynamic.
Bat-Mite suggests that the desire to want to be something more than you are is universal, not just humans, or Kryptonians, or even imps from the 5th dimension. Clearly having had a nerve touched by this, Mxy storms off in a huff, HE doesn't need ANYONE, or want ANYTHING, so there! And the next time he visits this "Ramada Inn reality" (love that), he'll PROVE it, and so saying, says his name backwards and disappears.
And so the story ends, with Lois and Robin vanishing off, and Clark and Bruce left pondering their respective wishes (Well, Bruce doesn't believe in wishes, but he does believe that you can do anything you put your mind to) and whether they might actually get along better as Clark and Bruce than they do as Superman and Batman....
Now as noted, Nightwing doesn't exactly get name checked here, that wouldn't actually happen until the NEXT iteration. and that'll be the subject of the next post in this series; Dick giving up the Pixie Boots V2.1 (aka Nightwing: Year One)
Innuendo?
Date: 2013-06-10 11:35 pm (UTC)Hmmm, ;)
Re: Innuendo?
Date: 2013-06-10 11:55 pm (UTC)Re: Innuendo?
Date: 2013-06-13 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 01:01 am (UTC)Bruce: "Now that you're eighteen and have been working with me for years, I've decided you're too young and inexperienced for me to allow you to risk your life as Robin."
Dick: "But Bruce, I'm eighteen. You can't stop me from being a crime-fighter on my own. How exactly does your refusing to work with me and making me create a new identity keep me safer?"
Bruce: "Do not question my goddamned judgment. Now, excuse me while I go find a younger kid with no training or experience, to take your place..."
no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 02:09 am (UTC)I seriously do not envy Collins' position here - the man was probably under massive pressure to get Dick's story arc out of the way as quickly as possible, and get Jason in as quickly as possible.
Though, maybe he could've tried to do it in more than two measly issues...
Ooh, posting stuff from Nightwing: Year One next? I'd better hurry and stake my claim on that one myself (well, just one chapter in particular) before someone else sweeps in. Otherwise, my series of reviews of Every Chuck Dixon Joker story ever will never come to fruition!
no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 03:08 pm (UTC)I've always loved the notion of Nightwing being inspired by the Kryptonian legend. :)
Mxy is quite insightful! ;)
And the first story has the best Batman-carrying-Robin pose EVAH!!! ;)
Great post! :)
no subject
Date: 2013-06-25 09:54 pm (UTC)