The last section looked at how Dick Grayson gave up his Robin identity and became the new hero known as Nightwing. This page looks at some of the later changes to that tale.
Retcon is short for "retroactive continuity" -- a term to originate in the letter pages of DC Comics. Originally, it meant establishing new details of characters' histories. Later it became used as a noun and verb for when comic book creators would contradict old stories.
While Dick Grayson’s adoption of the Nightwing identity permanently became part of the DC Comics canon, the way Dick became Nightwing and Jason became Robin was subject to changes.
Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s New Teen Titans was the toast of DC Comics. And those creators were tapped to create DC Comics’ big 50th anniversary celebration in 1985 – a 12-issue mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths. During this momentous crossover event, with nearly all of the publisher’s characters, a battle occurred at the dawn of time. The multiverse of many parallel Earths was reborn as a new single Earth. This allowed the DC writers and artists to make any changes to reality they wished. Superman and Wonder Woman comics started over with new issue ones. But the changes in Batman comics happened more slowly, with flashback storylines revealing the changes to continuity.
Batman #408 (June 1987) “Did Robin Die Tonight?” by writer Max Allan Collins and artists Chris Warner and Mike DeCarlo presents the revised changes between the Robins. Dick Grayson’s Robin is shot and near fatally wounded by the Joker. Batman wants the general public to believe that Robin really did die, as he can’t put a kid in danger like that. The older teen Dick Grayson hates that idea.
Dick agrees to let Robin stay dead, but “You can’t keep me from pursuing my own destiny.” Bruce Wayne looks supportive of this.
It doesn’t make sense. Bruce Wayne feels it was a mistake to continue to expose Dick Grayson to the dangerous life of crime-fighting, but he’s perfectly happy if Dick Grayson continues to risk his life … just as long as he’s not around? This makes Batman into a jerk – which admittedly he already was in many of the Batman and Robin stories of the early 1980s.
But now it robs Dick Grayson of his agency. He no longer voluntarily stops being Robin. His transition into Nightwing seems like he’s choosing second-best, because Batman won’t let him be Robin any more.
And in the same issue, some weeks after firing Robin, Batman finds that the front wheel of the Batmobile have been stolen by a street kid – Jason Todd.
He drops Jason off at Ma Gunn’s School For Boys, little realizing that Faye Gunn runs a criminal gang of children. Maybe Batman isn’t a fan of Charles Dickens, you’d think he’d suspicious of anyone with a name so close to Fagin from the novel Oliver Twist.
The next issue Jason helps foil Faye Gunn’s criminal gang, and at the issue’s end, Batman calls his new young charge “Robin”. In issue 410, Jason trains and is eventually presented with the Robin costume, now made of soft body armour. The new Dynamic Duo fight the classic Batman foe Two-Face, who it turns out was responsible for the death of Jason’s parents.
Many fans like that Jason Todd is no longer a circus acrobat like the original Robin, but something is also lost in the new expedited history. That becomes especially apparent when the original Robin returns for a visit.
In Batman #416 (February 1988) Nightwing meets the new Robin for the first time, in a story written by Jim Starlin with art by Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo. Robin tries to bust up a drug smuggling ring on his own but the crooks get the better of him. Nightwing rescues the young hero and chews him out. For one thing, there were no drugs in the building, the shipment was going to arrive the following night. There’s little evidence to make the charges stick.
Jason Todd seems unconcerned, and Nightwing tells him he’s going to stop by the cave tomorrow to talk to Bruce.
When Batman tells Jason that Nightwing was the original Robin, Jason fears that Dick might want the Robin identity back. He doesn’t. Dick Grayson has come to talk to Bruce. First, they catch up on what happened since Batman fired Dick and left him his a cheesy grin. It turns out that what happened is everything that happened to Dick Grayson since 1969. Going to college, hanging out with the Titans – all of that is now said to happen in the wake of him being fired by Batman.
Dick demands to know why if Batman felt he couldn’t take the responsibility of having a 19-year-old fight crime that he quickly decided to get himself a new and even younger partner. Bruce talks about the good he’s done for Jason. But Dick keeps pushing through Bruce’s lies until Batman admits that he was lonely – that he missed Dick.
Dick brings Jason two gifts – the original Robin costume and his phone number. Nightwing tells the new Robin to call him if he needs to talk. “Thanks.” Jason says. “Bruce is not much of a talker.” “I know,” Dick replies. “That’s his biggest problem. Don’t let it be yours.”
Together Nightwing and Robin bust up the drug-runners. Batman watches at a distance with fatherly pride.
Big spacetime events transformed DC continuity many more times to come, allowing later writers and artists to revisit the transition from Robin to Nightwing.
Nightwing #101 (March 2005) begins a flashback story arc “Nightwing Year One” by writers Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon with art by Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens. In this new version of history, Batman still fires Dick Grayson as Robin – but it’s because Robin had already been showing too much independence, spending more time with the Titans. It restores some of Dick Grayson’s agency.
In Nightwing #134 (September 2007), Marv Wolfman rewrites history again. In a flashback to times past, Batman seems prepared to fire Robin, but instead it is Dick who quits – declaring that he wants his emancipation.
The co-creator of Nightwing gives Dick Grayson back his agency.
At least for a time, the DC Universe was rebooted once again in 2011 after a storyline called Flashpoint. The heroes had less history than before with only five years between Superman's public debut and the current stories. Much of the history with Dick Grayson and his successors needed to be compressed to fit this new timescale.
1996: The First Ongoing Nightwing
Comic Book Series
2016: The First Issue of the Current
Nightwing Series
When Wolfman and Perez first made Dick Grayson Nightwing, the New Teen Titans was the most popular comic at DC. In the years that followed, the Titans waned in popularity – and Batman became immensely popular once again – due the ground-breaking comic book mini-series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller in 1986, the Batman movie in 1989, and the many Batman movies and TV shows that followed. Nightwing was pulled back into Batman’s orbit.
Nightwing starred in a one-shot special in 1995 and a four-issue mini-series the same year. In 1996, an ongoing Nightwing comic book debuted – and for the most part there’s been a Nightwing comic book ever since. (With brief breaks for when Dick Grayson temporarily assumed the role of Batman or when he spent 20 issues as a non-costumed spy in a comic titled “Grayson” from 2014-2016.)
When writer Chuck Dixon and artist Scott McDaniel launched the first ongoing Nightwing series in 1996, they gave Dick Grayson a new home – the city of Blüdhaven which is about a half-hour drive from Gotham City. In its original depiction, this was a city rife with even more than corruption than Gotham. Under other writers, Dick moves back to New York City or Gotham City, but eventually he returned to a reborn Blüdhaven.
The romance with a space alien like Starfire had little place in Batman’s street-level crime fighting world. While he’s had many romances, Dick Grayson’s main on-again / off-again love interest became Barbara Gordon –the sometimes Batgirl. For many years, starting with an injury in 1988, “Babs” Gordon fought crime from a wheelchair as the computer hacker and master planner Oracle. (In 2011, she regained the ability to walk and her Batgirl identity. But there are many fans who prefer Babs as Oracle, and in late 2020, it seems she's headed back to that role.)
The Robin Hood connection is not entirely forgotten. The 2016 comic book event Rebirth relaunched a lot of DC characters and under writer Tim Seeley, it was established that Dick Grayson was obsessed with Robin Hood.
In one storyline, a criminal plants a clue in Dick’s copy of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle.
Tim Seeley also played with many Robin Hood concepts during his time on the book. For example, Dick’s own sense of vigilantism was tested under the sway of the more extreme vigilante Raptor. He also hung around various reformed villains, even dating one – which might be seen as a slight reflection of the Merry Men.
In Nightwing #77 (cover dated February 2021, but on-sale during December 2020) by writer Dan Jurgens, Nightwing investigates Dexiturn – a company that specializes in buying up small companies and turning them around for big profits, usually at the expense of the acquired companies’ staff. Someone has hacked their computer systems, locking them out unless they pay 2.7 million dollars.
Nightwing discovers that the hacker was an ex-employee of one of the acquired companies – turfed into an unfriendly job market. She lives in a community of homeless people.
Nightwing doesn’t arrest this criminal. Instead, he sets her up with a new job at a much-changed Dexiturn – newly acquired by Bruce Wayne. And Bruce Wayne provides accommodations for those who were struggling. I expect Robin Hood would approve.
As for Dick Grayson? He spends Christmas with Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon and his various successors as Robin.
In his late teens, Dick Grayson sought to break away from his father figure. But now, he's not merely a young sidekick but a vital member of a family of heroes. (Some have dubbed him "Batman with social skills.")
The mantle of Robin the Boy Wonder, Batman's young partner, did not end with Jason Todd. In the final section, I'll look briefly at those other caped crusaders who make up a flock of Robins.
NEXT:
PREVIOUSLY:
PART 1 - The Golden Age of Comics and the Development of the Kid Sidekick
PART 2 -What's In A Name? Robin and Robin Hood
PART 3 - Early Adventures (including Robin's origin)
PART 4 - Batman and Robin meet Robin Hood in The Rescue of Robin Hood (Detective Comics #116)
PART 5: The Caped Crusaders in 1950s and 1960s Comic Books and Television
PART 6 - Batman and Robin Meet the Archer (1966 TV episodes)
PART 7 - Robin Leaves the Nest (1969 - 1975)
PART 8 - The Dynamite Duo and Goodbye, Hudson University (1975 - 1980)
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