I just saw someone say that Dick is canonically the angriest batfamily member and was wondering what you thought of that??
I need people to understand that takes like this are the most simplistic, reductive, incurious media interpretations known to man. Not just about Dick. It could be about Dick, or Bruce, or Jason, or Damian, or Tim, or Alfred the cat. Period. I would have muted the word “angry” by now were it not an incredibly common word in the English language. It makes me genuinely miffed.
Angry about what, I ask you? What are these characters angry about? This is pretty damn critical. If person A is more “angry” than person B because A’s house burned down and B just got a puppy, well, yes, the statement that A is more angry than B is true. Does it tell me anything about A or B? No. God forbid we incorporate a little bit of context into why people are so angry.
Onto the actual point: I can’t say anything about whether or not Dick is “the most angry” Batfamily member because, as established, I think the statement of angriest is nonsense. But as for “does he get angry”? Sure. But from the vast, vast amount of both Dick and non-Dick I’ve read, I don’t feel his anger is exceptional. In fact, in lighter times, he is one of the slower people to anger. He is not naturally ill-humored. Why does he get angry? Well, as I think Watters communicates well in Nightwing #137, Dick gets angry because he cares too much, and that culminates in anger sometimes. And, by nature of this anger stemming from passion and care, it results in a very strong anger.
The major things that do cause anger:
1) Worry or alarm over a loved one. Most of the shouting matches and fights Dick has gotten into start because he either thinks there is something wrong with the other person and this will help (see: Outsiders), or because something the other person did hurt him. But, honestly, I don’t see the number or severity of interpersonal conflicts Dick gets into to be exceptional. Comics are soap operas. Everyone fights all the time about everything; Dick just tends to be more obvious in the underlying hurt that causes it. Bruce Wayne: Murderer is a great example of this. Joker Last Laugh is also great for this, but it should be noted that his inhibitions were lowered, which caused him to lose restraint and kill the Joker. He was tormented over this for weeks after. It was a major consequence of this event, actually. His anger would never have naturally crescendoed to that degree.
2) People are dead, or hurt, or there is some other perception of failure, and he feels culpable. This is the big one, and frankly, why I find the talk of “angriest” so stupid. Of course the guy is going to be angry. Devin Grayson, Marv Wolfman, Peter Tomasi, and Dan Watters have all had arcs where a large civilian casualty event that Dick was responsible for (to varying degrees) led to him stalking down targets and fighting with righteous anger. Again, the descriptor of “angry” feels silly here. Like, yeah, he’s angry. Because people were dead, and he cares about those dead people. He cares too much, because of how he values life and how responsible he feels, and this leads to an emotional reaction. The anger is not in a vacuum.
My TL;DR would be that this take is nonsense to begin with. No one is “the most angry”, because emotions do not exist without the context of their invocation. Insofar as this person wants me to engage in the argument, I’d still disagree with them, because Dick is explicitly quite happy, reasonable, even a lead negotiator in tenser moments, when shit is not hitting the fan. It’s just that shit frequently hits the fucking fan, especially for him, and he cares too much to be dispassionate.
And as a final note, WHY THE FUCK DO PEPLE WANT TO DESIGNATE AN “ANGRIEST”??? Where did this obsession come from? Who decided there needed to be an angriest? Is nuance and character complexity illegal???? Do you need your media describable in 5 words or less????? Jesus Christ, dude.
