Phew, right back at you. I’m sorry about the mammoth chuck on text below - I’ll try splitting up my answer to keep track of everything.
1. I know Ollie and Bruce have worked together and that’s why I see them as friendly - but not friends. They’ve (and Hal) have been on the same team long enough to know each other, but I see their differences as far too rooted in principle to be dismissed as friendly arguments. For example, their differing treatment of their kids - Ever since the 80s (before the JL became significant) Ollie was always far more open about caring for and loving Roy than Bruce was with Dick. Ollie always disagreed with Bruce’s treatment of Dick (for example how he just replaced him without asking). He even called him out on his behaviour with Jason before the Batwriters hand waved it away (just like that panel where Ollie says Dick is Bruce’s kid and Bruce says he’s more than that. Well, okay??? that doesn’t mean Ollie’s wrong about him being young and needing support!). When Ollie (Snowbirds) kicked Roy out, he went after him in the same arc and apologised and didn’t demand forgiveness and worked for it in contrast to Bruce’s ‘I can do no wrong’). Bruce, on the other hand, kicked Dick out for the temerity of …. having friends and opinions of his own?
During Outsiders, Roy and Ollie were talking about Dick’s struggles post Donna’s death (something Bruce never bothered to do) and Ollie said, quite disapprovingly/pityingly that Dick loved Bruce too much to actually step out of his shadow (in relation to Dick naming them the Outsiders). Just, overall, Ollie and Hal have said multiple things regarding Bruce’s (lack of) ability to be a good father.
There’s a difference between Ollie’s arguments with say, Clark or Diana and his arguments with Bruce - I’d say he actually liked the former. So, yeah, I don’t actually see them as friends.
2. Like I said, Roy managed to team up with other superheroes post Ollie’s death and he wasn’t anywhere near as on edge or angry with them. It was Bruce’s behaviour in particular that he was criticising - and with good reason, reasons that he’d always disliked Bruce for.
Also, how did Bats prove his assumptions wrong? He was as controlling and arrogant as ever? Plus, he arrested Cheshire in front of Lian anyway?
And even if Roy WAS on edge, he had valid grievances about the way Bruce was treating him. I don’t think his criticisms don’t count just because Roy was upset?? Like, Bruce WAS being an controlling, condescending jerk throughout the issue. Plus, you don’t say someone is the PRICE your friend had to pay for being as good as they are if you like said persion. Roy’s criticisms of Bruce’s effects on Dick’s iffy self esteem were very valid and are a reflection of what Roy thought of him.
3. Roy didn’t interact much with Bruce around IC, so most of his interactions with Bruce were BEFORE that, when Bruce was normal, so you can’t excuse it away really. PLUS, Roy didn’t know about the mind wiping, so to him, Bruce was being his normal, paranoid self anyway? Not that it was out of character for him - basically any Bat appearance in the NTT anyone?
Also, Roy’s comments about Bruce have been pretty consistent and different Titans have described Bruce pretty unflatteringly as the various events (from different writers over the years) I’ve mentioned above show - you’ll notice they haven’t said the same about the other mentors.
4. About the Wally panel, I know it’s a different relationships, but I don’t remember Bruce and Wally interacting very significantly when Wally was Flash (please lmk it you do).
Also, it was quite clear that Wally wasn’t mad about the heart thing per se, he was being snarky because Bruce was being controlling and jerk-ish. The Titans weren’t a sub-branch of the JL OR funded by Bruce, and as such Bruce had the same right to control them that the TITANS would have had to shut down the JL post Tower of Babel or post IC or during Flashpoint or during one of their many failures. So, yeah, that wasn’t the writers milking the batman is a jerk thing (they usually gloss over most of the shitty stuff he does), just Wally insulting Bruce after Bruce was an annoying hypocrite. Bruce kinda just assumed he had control over the Titans despite all of them being adults who’d fought crime for like a decade. I can’t imagine ANY of the Titans liking that or thinking very highly of the man.
Also, Wally didn’t want to die either - he wasn’t trying to, and only used his powers when not doing so would have killed Dick.
I posted it to show what Wally generally thought of him - especially combined with how he and the Titans KNEW what a jerk Bruce was to Dick. And with how he basically told Dick that him becoming like Bruce would be the worst thing in the world - that he (Wally’d) have to mourn him (implying they wouldn’t be friends anymore).
Also, most of the fights the Titans had were about DICK occasionally acting too Bruce-y for their tastes. So, yeah, don’t see the original being a hit.
I can’t find the panel, but in one of the recent comics, Bruce criticised Wally for letting Irey join him and Wally told Bruce off about the number of Robins he’d had and had gotten killed - so I definitely think Wally, like the other titans quite dislikes Bruce. Again, an example of what I think is the Titans’ collective dislike of Bruce starting with his treatment of Dick and expanding with his dismissal and condescending attitude towards them.
5. ‘Dick becoming Batman was a disaster from a comic universe perspective since different writers had different ideas of what it would mean for Dick to take the cape and cowl.’
I don’t agree?? I’ve read the end of Nightwing 1996, BftC and Grant Morrison’s run. In all of which (as well as occasionally in his solo), Dick worries about becoming like Bruce - it’s part of why he doesn’t want to take on the cowl - and how to be different while still being the Batman, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. Yes, Dick ended up being a different kind of batman, but that took time and effort and it doesn’t take away from how worried he was that it would happen. Like, Dick’s said SO MANY TIMES that he didn’t want to become Bruce, and that he was scared of becoming like Bruce and so on.
The cowl swallowing him was a pretty legitimate fear that HE expressed multiple times, in different series, under different authors. Yes, it didn’t happen and Dick was different kind of Batman, but becoming as controlling and depressed and cut off from people Batman was a fear Dick had battled with (for years). And Wally and Donna only CAME to Gotham because he had cut himself off from his friends and any non-Gotham heroes. They were scared Dick WAS becoming like Bruce - and from their responses, they didn’t think it was a good thing. And their specific criticisms are a reflection of their rather poor opinion of Bruce. Which is what I was pointing out.
Like, Dick NOT becoming like Bruce doesn’t invalidate his fear that he might (and saying that kinda cheapens his efforts to not do so?).
5. I know Dick originally quit being Robin himself, but there are FOUR different versions where he didn’t, so I’d say him quitting Robin of his own free will and giving Jason Robin is the anomaly at this point. It’s like how Jason was originally the child of acrobats - him being from the streets isn’t really considered a retcon anymore. I don’t think you can dismiss the most popular/known version of Dick transition from Robin to Nightwing as just weird?
Like, over the years, Bruce has gone from being a good, if awkward father to a botherline abusive one (according to most writers’ versions of him and in multiple series). And I think the Titans’ opinions of him reflect that reality. In one version (where Dick found out about Jason being Robin in a newspaper), Kori was standing right behind him in Titans Tower. Pretty sure the OG Titans knew what Bruce did.
There’s even a strip of him and Roy talking about it when Roy says they (Dick and Roy) never mattered to them (Bruce and Ollie) (this was directly in the aftermath of Snowbirds, so at least Ollie had the excuse of Roy’s and his relationship was the worst it had ever been, but you’ll notice atleast Ollie apologised and tried making it up to Roy).
So yeah, in conclusion, I think Roy dislikes Bruce the most of all the Titans.
6. Kori wasn’t being sensitive?? Bruce was super judging of her willingness to kill and disapproved greatly of her being with Dick. And yes, Dick should have stood up for her (he later admitted that he had no right to ask Kori to change her beliefs like that when as Kori’s ever been was accepting of Dick), but it doesn’t change the fact that Bruce was an arse to her when he shouldn’t have been. Also, I forgot exactly where (I think it was after hers and Dick’s interrupted wedding) that Kori was thinking about how Bruce had always judged her and never liked her for Dick.
Even Tim knows Bruce never really liked her, and he basically hero worshipped him.
Bruce even dismissed hers and Dick’s relationship to Barbara Gordon, saying ‘that thing with the alien won’t last’. Really don’t think she’s being over sensitivity.
There have been multiple times Kori (and the others too, but mainly her) have noticed the effect going back to Gotham had on Dick - most notably when Kori said ‘he [Dick] hasn’t been the same since he came back from seeing Bruce’ (after Jason’s death, when Bruce punched Dick, blamed him for Jason dying and kicked him out). And while (maybe) the way Bruce made Dick feel is on him, it doesn’t change the fact that Bruce was being kinda dismissive and annoying even in the Outsiders/NTT crossover WHICH WAS WHAT Dick was angsting over (and Kori meant when she and Wally agreed to not liking the way Bruce was treating Dick). Like, who just decides a JOINT case means you get to take over completely?! He had no right to tell Dick HE was ‘going over the line’ when all Dick did was correct his misinformed strategy. While Bruce may have finally admitted to being wrong and ended up praising Dick, it doesn’t erase that his actions (especially to Titans who’d never met him before) would come across as dismissive of their autonomy and accomplishments.
The other Titans were around when Dick found out about Jason’s death and couldn’t have thought much of Bruce’s decision not to atleast try informing or messaging him.
And the reason Dick quit the Titans was, as he said, not because of him or them, but because Bruce and Tim needed him 'cause Bruce couldn’t keep his shit together. Again, something I’m pretty sure the Titans held against Bruce - not that he needed help, but that Dick still was so loyal to a man who’d hurt and betrayed him time after time. I’ve had friends bend over backward for AWFUL parents, and I’ve always kinda blamed the parents for not even having the decency (after ruining their childhoods) to let them go.
That’s my point really - not that Bruce is a terrible person necessarily, but that he tends to be arrogant and controlling around the Titans, and that his horrible, borderline abusive treatment of Dick (especially post flashpoint) didn’t endear him to them, as evidence by their multiple comments about him.
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