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@nightwingology
Batman: Urban Legends #23
Bruce: *glowers in repression of emotions*
10 year old Dick Grayson: I understand your mission and the loss of your parents and I love you and we're partners and you're part of my family now
Bruce *weeping into his cowl*: okay
Quadruples are fucking insane like those guys are spinning so god damn fast holy shit
That CANNOt be real like that is not a real speed a human being should be able to achieve
an article about the first rl kid who did it:
Quick quick redraw
Joker: Last Laugh #1
Tim named Dick’s car and the name matches with the Redbird 🥺 they are the brothers ever
One of my fav carnivalistic constructs (within the literary theory of the Carnival) is the crowning and decrowning of the carnival king. (for more context on my fixation on The Carnival check this meta out)
So to summarize, crowning/decrowning is a ritual within the carnival and it represents the shifting between hierarchy that the carnival makes easy. It goes hand in hand with the blurring of boundaries and the destruction of hierarchy, in the carnival the Fool becomes the master, he is crowned King.
So just taking the first part of this ritual, crowning is super familiar when you look at robins, it gives the powerless power, and I think you could pretty easily think about that in relation to all the past Robins. It's about being a child hero, it's about being powerful being important for the first time in your life. It's about being small and young but not powerless. It's about going from being a bystander, a victim to being the hero.
But crowning is not the key of this ritual.
This is more of a function of robin as a literary device, but you can't read a Dick!Robin story today without knowing that it ends that it changes that it all burns down. You can’t read Jason!Robin or Steph!Robin story without knowing death is imminent
especially Steph in this sense, like in a very in and out of universe way her rein as robin as very much "contains the idea of immanent decrowning"
and the death and the birth piece, right when one robin dies another is born. They need each other to function to create what becomes known as Robin!
The existence of We Are Robin is such an interesting instance of this happening because anyone can be crowned! Anyone can become King. The point is the mask, the mantle, what you can symbolize. “We are Robin” aren’t all fans of explicitly Robin, some prefer Batgirl or Batman. But they all chose to embody Robin because Robin is the mantle that is created to crown, to uplift children like them, to blur boundaries. But “We Are Robin” by existing shows that Robin can crown anyone. But they will always be decrowned, death is always near, as Troy showed, and all the Robins eventually returned to what they were.
Think to Dick passing forward his Robin suit to Jason, to Tim, the way that traffic light colors become iconic, the “joyful relativity” that comes with circus colors that comes from being part of a family
But the other thing about this crowning and decrowning is the idea of replaceability. It is inevitable. It is celebrated.
From a Doyalist perspective, this is kinda how the Robin mantle now functions in literature. It's not about the "precise item” that is replaced, but about the mantle and its history. Batman is always Bruce wayne but robin is interchangable for many, it doesn't matter to many people what the "item" is who the person is under the mask but the process of what robin can add to the adaptations the fantastical that Robin adds
You have Batman adaptations that have Tim/Jason hybrid characters, you have Batman movies that have Robin be like a cop guy whos middle name is robin, you have people arguing what robin is the robin in tt03 (its dick obvi but they do have comics with that team where the robin is named tim but for all intents and purposes is Dick).
It's that famous Grayson line:
Robin serves the narrative. Under the domino mask it is whoever was elevated to King, assigned to bring us the fantastical.
and it's never forever
Robin has an end date, there is a decrowning immanent — all the robins stop being robin at the end of the story, the inevitable decrowning some of them die, others are reborn, they leave the time of liminality that is being robin and become something different. They grow up.
But also I think this is key that makes this ritual work in context is that Robin is tied to childhood. It’s tied to the power of a child, imagination and joy and unbelievable anger and emotion. Because it came from a circus child the decrowning is inevitable. Shedding the childhood ability to live external to society's rules to turn the world upside down to laugh is inevitable. Because growing up is inevitable. But when you are a child, when you are Robin, that is all you are.
Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson's Dynamic Duo (According to Grant Morrison)
"You know, the feral young Batman from 1938 who’s out there with guns in his hand and he’s fighting vampires and crooks, I thought, well, imagine that’s Batman at 20, you know."
"And then he meets this kid when he’s late 21, and the kid’s this little working class circus kid who’s totally cocky."
"And this introverted young Norman Bates Batman is suddenly, “Wait a minute. This is the kid that died in me. This is everything that I wanted to be.”
"And the two become friends, and it’s not creepy. It’s like, “He’s my best friend and my brother and he's everything I wish I could be.”
"And the kid’s looking at him like, “He’s everything I wish I could be.”"
Source: Fatman on Batman: Grant Morrison, Batman #681 and #682.
In regards to this post like u can really tell Watters is really sinking his teeth into the history of comics and literature and what role Dick Grayson as a character has played there.
- Dan Watters
And this piece about bridging these two genres, these two worlds is something that not only the carnival does, but something Bahkin calls its essential function in literature itself!
When Batkhin talks about the carnival breaking down genre barriers he also highlights how everything in consumed in the carnivalistic worldview, into he fantastical. Watters uses the fantastical as an example of what Robin brought into the world of comics to become this bridge
And Watters demonstrates how comics destroy boundaries between genres right in the arc! Balancing between a fantastical fourth dimension tale and a crime story about corruption. This serves not only to comment about authoritarian policing structures but to demonstrate the barriers between genres that do not exist in comics
From the world of Batman a crime story. From the world of superman a fourth dimensional crossover, the mythical figure of Nightwing. 80 years later Dick is still bringing the carnival in to break thematic barriers.
- Dan Watters explaining why he created Zanni
By claiming Dick was the bridge between these characters, Watters is claiming Dick Grayson as a character brought the circus into comics and is a big reason why we have the universe we have today! With the carnival to break down barriers, characters and comics now transcend boundaries. Superman and Batman do belong in the same universe.
- Watters again
Which is also super interesting as from an in-universe perspective Dick arguable also plays the role of connecting heroes and breaking down barriers, as the "only guy alive who every superhero trusts" with connections with every generation of hero!
i was scrolling through pinterest and i saw this dude that rlly looked like dink so i knew i had to draw him
this is me procrastinating on a full body full render commission kia if ur seeing this i’ll get on the grind later 🙂↕️
I'm curious, do you know if Dick ever or frequently wore his cape closed as Robin? I love when Jason wears his cape closed, and I couldn't picture any panels of Dick doing so, but I've read very little of his Robin run.
Hmm not that I've been able to find skimming through my little collection of screencaps, but honestly I'd doubt it just because by the time comic art became as fluid as that Dick was in his college era. I feel like I miiight have seen him do that in a Titans comic once or twice but I'm not sure and I don't have any panels saved. Shoutout to my followers if anybody has any examples I'd also love to see
Closest I could think of off the top of my head was the cover of Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet
I’ve read the first chapter of DC K.O. Knightfight, and I finally have a bit of time to draw again☺
Dick Grayson and the Literary Tradition of the Carnival
The Dan Watters run recently got me thinking a lot about literature and comics
Introduction: Robin and the Carnival
The theory of the Carnival emerges in Mikhail Bakhtin’s "Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics", a key work in literary theory that is in conversation with said Russian author. Bathkin introduces Carnivalisation as a translation of the "folk carnival" into literary tradition. The idea here is to take folk rituals -- the circus, the carnival, the feast, the celebration -- and see how those ideas continue into literature in a cultural sense. The key ideas are:
Reversals; de-hierarchization: everyone is an equal in the carnival. There are no boundaries between spectators and the performers, no hierarchies, no rank.
The World turned Upside Down: Kings become paupers, fools being wise men, anyone can be king. What was once up is now down.
Liminality: Temporary condition of chaos and freedom. Nothing is immortal, everything changes. Complete chaos and complete freedom. Being external to society. The rules no longer apply.
Profane: the metamorphosis is unfinished, it is ugly, it is vulgar, it is profane, shocking outside of society.
and finally, and probably most important --> The culture of laughter: You are able to turn all of these ideas upside down, to be anti establishment and powerless because of laughter. Laughing at power is an ability to take the power back. The joy and laughter of the carnival is the KEY to carnival
So starting here, we can understand Dick Grayson, and even more specifically the creation of Robin as something belonging to the literary tradition of carnival.
Robin brings laughter and light - the colors of the suit, the attitude, the jokes; these all brings the carnival. And, just like the carnival, he uses the laughter to mock and win against stronger opponents.
Other than laughter, Robin also represents the reversal/de-hierarchization piece of the carnival innately. He creates child heroes and in doing so inverses power hierarchies. The powerless become the powerful. The victims become the heroes. The children triumph over the villains. But he is also a reversal to Batman himself, in his bright circus colors.
More than being the carnival, Robin brings the carnival to Gotham. He is the light to the world’s darkness.
And finally its focus on the circus. Bahkin takes great care to reference that even though Carnival has died and evolved since its origins in Western medieval celebrations, its legacy still lives on in the modern day within literature, performance, and especially the circus.
Robin is from the circus, the successor of carnival, and as such he takes a lot of carnival with him.
Watter’s Nightwing and the Carnival
So as we can see, Dick Grayson as a character is intrinsically linked to the literary traditions of carnival. Furthermore, in the recent Watter’s run of Nightwing, a lot of the ideas of the carnival are cited and explored in relation to Dick Grayson as nightwing, with Zanni, the main villain of the arc, being the physical representation of the carnival.
For example:
The focus of the world of the Zanni is a new relationship with reality, with no “point” in the way that anyone outside of the circus would understand.
Its use of circus/carnivalistic language:
Its focus on Dick being from the circus, living as a member of the carnival
Its depiction of Zanni’s world as being one of dreams and visions.
Even with the way Dick is able to engage in these collective hallucinations as a member of the carnival, while others cannot
Zanni basically explicitly says it. As Dick created the mantle of Robin, as he performed and cackled on the streets of Gotham, he became a part of the circus. He was theirs.
The Profane
So using this connection to the literary tradition of comics, the circus and the carnival, Watters is playing with the COMICS themselves as a genre. Because while I love the Carnival and I've talked at length about Robin as a Trickster character, as being part of the Carnival, there are points in the literary theory that don't quite fit. The main one is the profane. The idea of the profane and grotesque is central to the carnival. and its like ugliness, shock value, orifices copulating, eating, defecating -- not particularly heroic traits.
One of the ideas behind the profane is things that do not belong in polite society -- the carnival is subversive, it provokes emotions like disgust to out of social boundaries and break down hierarchies.
But Zanni says the profane is no longer shocking and can no longer preform this role for the carnival, as it has been made "mundane through repetition"
Watters, through Zanni, also redefines the profane for the cultural context comics exist in. He redefines the profane instead of being about these bodily functions; it's about violence. It's about the ugliness of blood and being tied up. It's all these things that were so grotesque they made comics be banned.
Heroes are bound in a "deviant" fashion. It's the language of death traps. Comics are degenerate. They are violent. They are profane. They are the carnival!
Just like the grotesque and profane makes the carnival external to society and uses discomfort to flip authority, this new definition of profanity does this for comics. The push back against these happening in comics was because of the same kind of discomfort that makes people uncomfortable with the carnival!
He's using the moral panic and the comic code of the 1950s here as a vessel for the theme. He is using a real world events to plug this gap in literary tradition!! To close the loop and make the literary theory work!
So as Watters is connecting the theory of the carnival to Nightwing, DC comics as a whole, and Dick Grayson's literary history, he's simultaneously able to put it in the context of our society and how it was evolved and influenced from this literary tradition.
Comics reflect our society through their evolution and provide a way to contextualize and understand the carnival in the modern world. And of course this anchors comics as being carnivalesque and being a literary successor to the carnival.
The Death of the Carnival
Or at least they used to be! They no longer are. You know who else lost the carnival? Dick Grayson.
He left Robin. He stopped laughing. He became a leader, an older brother, and left the carnival behind.
But what does the death of the carnival mean? Remember when I introduced the carnival -- power of the powerless, flipping hierarchies, being anti-establishment. In the carnival, everyone is equal, there is no hierarchy.
The key to Olivia's fathers argument is literally this -- comics serve the same function as the carnival -- to undermine authority, to flip things on their head. And that is unacceptable.
As I’m sure many of you know, this reference to the “Children of Wertham” and this court case references the moral panic over comics in our world in the 50s and the rise of the comic code authority. When psychiatrist Fredric Wertham wrote his book “The Seduction of the Innocent”, blaming comics for degeneracy in society, parents were so appalled that the Comics Code Authority was created. The CCA censored violence, horror, and gore, and even comics that dealt with racial and religious prejudice. This is widely considered the end of the golden age of comics – and arguably the end of carnival in comics as well.
Just as Olivia’s father yells about respecting authority in Nightwing In our world, the comics code also focused on ensuring the establishment would be respected: "(3) Policemen, judges, Government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority." (The Comics Code of 1954, 1954)
While the villains in this arc are the carnival in some senses, in another big sense the villain is the system. There is an entire issue examining a police officer who killed a child. He is a “good cop” defined as doing things “by the book” - following authority and the rules. Dick’s sister as mayor authorizes military technology on the streets of Bludhaven to win an election. These characters are all the antithesis of what carnival is meant to be.
Frank the cop who always "did things by the book" including his abusive of his family and shooting a child. Mayor Melinda who to win the election brings in further power to the system.
And then Zanni and Olivia say the carnival is dying. It has died in Dick Grayson.
It has died in comics. What used to be anti-change and carnivalesque is now used to enforce the status quo.
Comics used to be about fantastical subverting authority, giving power to the powerless. Now heroes are affirming the establishment. Comics enforce the status quo.
In our world, Carnival died once. It survived through jokes and performances, the circus. Eventually it found a home in comics. But then it died there too, and became used to enforce the status quo. From the comics code onwards, comics shifting to prioritizing the affirmation of authority instead of flipping hierarchies, with the Tom Kings and Tom Taylors (in the literal last arc!) making the heroes work for the establishment.
Through our world, in their world, carnival is dying. It has been dying in Dick Grayson. He became serious, a part of the system, he lost his colors, his laughter. When you're a billionaire and the president likes you and you have control over the institutions are you really from the carnival? Zanni doesn’t think so. And he will do whatever he can to return Dick Grayson to the carnival from which he emerged.
Robin80!
twi | ins
The thing that made preboot Dick sooo compelling (and which I feel the Watters run has finally, for the first time since the reboot, stepped back towards at least in terms of characterization as opposed to as an actual plot point) is the he really was exactly like Bruce deep down. He chose to act differently because he (1) really did benefit from what Bruce had done for him as a kid; and (2) both saw how Bruce hurt himself through his behavior and experienced a lot of the worst of it first hand and realized he didn’t want to do that. But it’s, like, crucially an effortful decision. That’s why he always defaulted to acting like Bruce when he was too tired and stressed out to come up with something else.
The boy who, according to the fandom, had murderous tendencies and was Bruce's worst nightmare, btw:
Batman and Robin: Year One #12
Batman Incorporated #8
I don't know if someone ask you this already? But what is your top 10 favorite Nightwing villains?
So, I'm gonna answer this in a slightly different way. Rather than just a top 10 list, I'm gonna outline how I'd like Nightwing's rogues gallery to be structured.
First, a resident super thief and a resident antihero. I nominate these two. It'd be nice to populate the city with more masks that have some history with Nightwing. Red X and Vigilante both fit the bill. I'd love to see a grudging respect between Red X and Nightwing, and a sort of Punisher/Daredevil mixed with Batman/Two-Face dynamic with Vigilante.
I also think giving Nightwing a team of villains like the Sinister Six or Rogues would be cool. Maybe a revived Circus of Strange under the leadership of Raptor, with new members like Double Dare and Swashbuckler, as well as old ones like Big Top and Phosphorous Rex from Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin.
On top of Organized Crime I would still have Blockbuster with his string of B-list lackeys. But I'd throw in some regular wild cards, like The Judge and Blue Shrike. I'd also bring back Guppy as Nightwing's informant.
I'd also bring back Shawn Tsang/The Defacer and the Run-Offs, from Seeley's run. I liked Shawn as a character, and a group of villains who were in a support group, trying to be better, feels good with Nightwing's themes of forging your own path.
And, of course, I'll always love the Nightwing vs Deathstroke dynamic. These two should have beef on the level of Spider-Man and Green Goblin. Slade is the eternal thorn in Nightwing's side, and vice versa.
Reblogging this to say that I still want a Vigilante (whether a resurrected Adrian or Dorian) and Red X who is actually written well to be recurring antagonists in Blüdhaven.
I just don't know who could be under the Red X mask that would actually be satisfying.
