young, just me @noveltypens - Tumblr Blog

May 25

comics i like: nightwing 25

so I've never actually posted about this comic before because it's SO WELL-KNOWN - the comic that invented trainsurfing!! basically the most famous Dick & Tim comic ever!! - so it felt kinda unnecessary sdfdsfsd but look, what is the internet for if we cannot ramble.

one overall thing I love is its structure: it's a low-key "day in the life" comic. there's no big bad!! the whole comic is just "Dick & Tim hang out and chat while patrolling." but it manages to embed a whole lot of characterization and to develop their friendship along the way.

let's BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING:

(We open with a pitch-black panel with zero context. It's disorienting - you have to try to guess what's going on from the dialogue and character voices.) Tim: Are you sure this is a good idea? Dick: Shh! Listen. Tune into the changing sounds and - Tim: I'm not so - Dick: JUMP!! (We leave the pitch-black panel, now realizing it was in THEIR POV - because they're both blindfolded. They're mid-air, leaping toward a moving train.) Dick: Picture the scene. Tim: Uh huh. Dick: We slow our descent and leap right. Tim: Right.

First of all, this is just great concise "show don't tell" storytelling. No character explains to you what's going on; they don't talk about themselves; they don't explain how they got here.

But we learn a lot anyway, very fast!!

We know that Dick's sorta in charge and came up with this plan, because he's giving instructions and Tim's just saying "Uh huh" and "Right," but we also know that he's not exactly in charge and that they mostly agreed on it, because Tim's raising doubts rather than taking orders (so his objection is "Are you sure this is a good idea?" instead of "Do I have to?" - he's voicing doubts to a classmate who just got a great idea for their group project/hangout, not voicing doubts to a teacher who's given him an assignment)

We know that Tim's anxious and skeptical, but trusts Dick enough that he DOES just jump, even mid-objection, when Dick tells him to

We know that the sounds Dick was listening to must've been the sounds of the train, and that he was calculating the right time to jump in order to land on it as it went by, and we know Dick's good enough at this that he was tuning out Tim's objections to focus on the train sounds, because he's able to hear the right moment even though Tim is still talking

And so just overall in this very brief interaction you get the basic vibes of what's going on - they're doing something Tim doesn't know how to do yet and Dick does, and Tim's unsure, and Dick's pushing him past it.

Which is basically a mini-encapsulation of one of the themes of the whole comic, which will be that Dick thinks Tim is too cautious. It's not that Tim's wrong to feel nervous, Dick sometimes feels nerves too, as he'll admit a bit later, and the things they're doing are dangerous - but Dick's general argument is that you can't/shouldn't let those nerves control you & if you can, you shouldn't let them show. Even if you're scared, you gotta commit and not flinch. And WHY Dick thinks this is pretty simply demonstrated by the task they're doing! If you're about to jump onto a moving train, he who hesitates is lost. You gotta be able to make decisions fast and not second-guess them!

So already, you've got a sense of 1) what's happening, and 2) a bit of Dick and Tim's personalities and their relationship.

Dick's a little curt and authoritative here at the beginning, which you could read as Dick being impatient with Tim's hesitation, but mostly - as we'll see in a minute - Dick is having fun, so I tend to think that this is just a philosophical "hey I've got a good idea for training" trip, trying to prod Tim into loosening up and relaxing a bit, with an extra bit of nostalgia because - we'll also learn - training on a train is something which Dick once did with Bruce when he was quite young, and which Bruce apparently doesn't do anymore (perhaps because he has been SAD ever since Dick LEFT?? look you don't know!!), and there's an implication that Dick cautiously revisiting the memory.

Right at this moment, if Dick's sounding a bit bossy, then Tim's sounding pretty deferential. And that's sorta the most superficial layer of their dynamic - what it sounds like to an outside observer who's not paying much attention, like when Dick's showing up to boss teams around and Tim's telling everyone to listen to Nightwing.

But it's a bit more complicated than that, as we'll see in a minute...

(They both land on the train and roll.) Dick: Stay loose. Tim (hitting the ground behind him): Uh! Dick: Roll when you hit the train. What'd I tell you, Robin? Didn't I tell you it was easy? (In a hilarious sequence, Tim has now lost his footing on the train and is rolling backwards the other way, making a pained noise.) Dick: Ten thousand tons of rolling steel and we -- (brief moment of unease) Robin? (There's a visual closeup on Dick's face at this point, in case you hadn't noticed the blindfold - which is why he can't see that Tim just fell off.) Tim (catching himself on the edge of a train with a batarang, deadpan): Sure. Easy. I almost dozed off.

Here again you've got Dick's general advice to Tim: he needs to "stay loose." Go with the flow, roll with the punches. In the moment, this is just really important physical advice. The concern is that Tim will overthink, get anxious, and flub the thing he's trying to do.

In Secret Origins 80-Page Giant, a "Dick and Tim hang out" comic written around the same time, they're in Dick's apartment while this Enter the Dragon martial arts training scene plays on the TV:

"Don't think! Feel. It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you'll miss all that heavenly glory."

Look, this is obviously a famous martial arts scene, but I also don't think it's a casual choice on the writer's part! It's ~thematic~. Dick's martial arts advice to Tim generally boils down to exactly this: you are thinking too much at moments when you need to be trusting your instincts.

So part of this is about Dick being more experienced and giving good advice. But this advice also tells you something about Dick: Dick's an talented acrobat with solid muscle memory who simply doesn't have to second-guess his instincts because he's more fluid and athletic already. Whereas Tim's caution is partly temperament but it's also just a rational response to not being as athletic.

Which is also part of what this little sequence is telling us:

We know that Dick has a slightly more optimistic sense of Tim's abilities than Tim deserves, since he's in the middle of talking about how easy it was while Tim is almost tumbling off the train behind him ("Didn't I tell you it was easy?"); you can come up with a variety of different possible reasons for this gap (because it comes so naturally to Dick? because he has such a high opinion of Tim overall? because Tim's pretending it's easy?)

Tim's deadpan "Sure. Easy. I almost dozed off," even as he dangles off the train, gives you a better overall sense of Tim's personality that complicates the nervous/deferential vibe you get in the first few minutes. He's mostly obedient, in that he was taking Dick's instructions earlier without too much protest - but Tim's not purely deferential, because he's also kinda wry and snarky. That "Sure. Easy." has a bit of an implied eyeroll that's partly directed at Tim himself but also partly directed at Dick. It's low-key snark, which is typical of Tim; Tim tends to be snarky in plausible-deniability, who-me-snarky ways.

And Tim's deadpan here also complicates the "nervous" vibe - Tim was making a bunch of doubtful anticipatory objections before they jumped, but in the moment, when he's actually dangling off the train by a batarang, he's wry and definitely not admitting that he just fumbled the landing. If Dick figured it out, fine, but Tim's not about to tell him. He's got his pride!

Tim (climbing up, toward Dick, who's facing away): Batman did this with you when you were Robin? Dick: Yeah. And I was a couple years younger than you. Tim (dry): There's a break. Dick (grinning): I thought it was time for us to get out. The great outdoors. Just you and me. Tim: So you could kill me, right? Dick: Relax. This'll be great. Standing on one foot really forces you to fine-tune your sense of balance. Now listen to the rhythm of the train.

Here's where we start to get a better sense of their broader interpersonal dynamic, where they're both Bruce's students and they have a kinda snarky back-and-forth banter - think fraternity, martial arts, that kind of thing. The sort of teasing Dick does with Tim, and the snark that Tim gives back, has a particular upperclassman+lowerclassman flavor.

Dick was all serious when they were actively jumping, but now that they've landed he's confident and cheery and kinda reveling in the moment, with the arms crossed and the confident stance, and when Tim asks him if he did this with Bruce, Dick takes the opportunity to mayyyyybe poke at him a little and point out that Dick was a little younger than Tim when he did it - and like Tim's plausible-deniability snark earlier, this isn't necessarily a playful I'm-better-than-you brag, but, you know, maybe a little. Tim's wry and self-deprecating about it in response, because this isn't something he has a lot of ego in - he knows Dick's better - and then as the noises get louder he edges closer to Dick.

And then we get Dick teasing "the great outdoors! just you and me!" which is deliberately playful and making light of the situation and also kinda playfully poking fun at Tim's discomfort - it makes it sound like they're on a Fun Outing in the Woods or something, not a Blüdhaven train in vigilante costumes - to which Tim is snarking back "so you could kill me, right?"

And part of what I mean by the vaguely fraternity vibe is that ... like, yes, Dick is pushing Tim out of his comfort zone for impeccable vigilante reasons. But also, this is just a very familiar form of bonding!! It's not just a training mission. They're having fun. Dick is being the upperclassman who's all "I dare you to do it!" and then pushes you into the water, and Tim is the guy who is making protests about how the water looks cold and what if there are sharks and is this actually a good idea, and he's genuinely kinda unsure and this isn't something he'd normally do, but also there's a fun aspect in getting pushed out of his comfort zone; that's part of the thrill of the activity; it's why people do dangerous sports. Tim's wryly poking fun at Dick's maybe-enjoying-Tim's-discomfort-a-little-too-much - "so you could kill me, right?" - but underneath it all, he's enjoying the banter too.

And this is a low-key trust exercise. Tim can't know in advance exactly what's going to happen; he can't research or go at his own pace; he has to follow Dick's lead and take Dick's instructions on trust, even if he doesn't understand the logic behind them yet. He literally can't see what's in front of him, because he's blindfolded. That's unsettling! It's especially unsettling for Tim, a cautious person! And that's why it's a bonding exercise, like a trust fall, where you let yourself fall backwards and trust someone else to catch you. It's a bonding exercise because it's scary and because you're taking a real risk. But that's also why it's fun and exhilarating.

So they're hanging out, but ALSO it's a legit training trip (mostly) which is a fun way to practice actual skills, which is what Dick transitions back to: both reminding Tim again to "relax" and blithely reassuring him that "this'll be great" (partly genuine reassurance, maybe a bit of teasing still too - Dick will enjoy it even if Tim doesn't, and later on we'll see that Dick is maybe getting a kick out of Tim's struggle to keep up, in a prankster-ish way, and also getting a kick out of getting to boss him around), and then Dick's back to the actual skill, telling him to stand on one leg to practice his balance and once again reminding him to listen for audio clues.

PLUS we get a reminder that Tim's eternally curious about what Dick did when he was in this position - Tim's not really "looking" at Dick in that first panel, since he's blindfolded, but he's looking that direction and it's a typical pose for them, especially paired with one of Tim's questions about the past. And even though this isn't overthinking, it's still the same part of Tim's personality that leads to the overthinking, this constant way of making sense of the world by trying to analyze it rather than to feel it (in Prodigal, he and Dick have an exchange where Dick's miserably guilty about Two-Face's murders and Tim sees the emotion as a threat and detached analysis as the solution: we have to distance ourselves). You could equate Tim's overthinking / analysis thing with being kinda robotic, able to calculate math problems but indifferent to relationships - but instead of using the obvious cliché there, instead this comic shows Tim's analytical focus on psychoanalysis - trying to make sense of people more than things. The moment that Tim gets his bearings, the first thing he starts mentally deducing is not Where are we but instead What's going on with Dick and why did he get this idea, and then he deduces Maybe he did it with Bruce and then he's not sure (we know that Tim didn't do anything like this with Bruce, because this is the first time Tim's done it), and he knows that Dick and Bruce definitely don't hang out together now, so it'd have to be in the past, and then he asks.

Here's another fun moment, right after Tim confides that his girlfriend is pregnant:

Dick: You mean Ariana? Tim: No. You remember the Spoiler? Dick: Wow. And you - Tim: No! Some other guy!

I always like limited-information storylines, and here the comic's relatively cautious about what the characters know & don't know - they're sharing actual information that's relevant to their respective comics!!

Over in Robin, Tim recently broke up with Ariana, got together with Steph, and found out Steph was pregnant in the space of a week, so when Tim says his girlfriend is pregnant, Dick is 1) so shocked he loses his balance, and 2) assumes he means Ariana, and Tim has to clarify that it's the Spoiler, who Dick's only heard of in a vigilante context (thus "the Spoiler" not "Steph"). Dick also initially misunderstands and thinks they've slept together, which an embarrassed Tim corrects; Dick then asks about the thing that concerns him most - Tim hasn't told her his identity, has he? - and after Tim says he hasn't, Dick tries to pitch him on, hey, her dad is a villain, maybe you should avoid a relationship that complicated...? So you have an exchange of information + Dick's own individual perspective on it.

Meanwhile, over in Nightwing/Huntress, Dick and Helena recently got together - sorta - in a miniseries in which they impulsively slept together, Dick wanted to get serious (he doesn't do casual!), and Helena wasn't interested.

Tim doesn't know this until he's retaliating for Dick teasing about Steph by teasing about Dick's love interests, and Dick's defensive on most grounds (he didn't know Miggie was a murderer until after he dated her!) but Dick concedes that in retrospect sleeping with Huntress was "dumb." Now it's Tim's turn to almost fall off in shock and express reservations. (Dick tells Tim she dumped him, which is an extremely Dick way to think of it - Helena would probably say they weren't dating in the first place.)

And then here's Dick & Tim after Tim reveals he knows Helena's secret identity:

Dick: How do you know her name is Helena? Tim: I figured it out. Dick: Wise guy. Does Batman know her identity? Tim: I never told him. Dick: That's our little secret, huh? Tim: I promised her I wouldn't.

One of the things I like about the whole comic is that even though you have a lot of exchanges that amount to infodumping (you could footnote the whole comic with references to earlier comics), the comic is careful to always ground the characters in their world and their preoccupations. They're talking to each other, not talking to the comic book reader.

Because the characters don't already know things & have to learn them, their assumptions can give you a sense of characterization. Dick's quick to assume that Tim's slept with Steph - natural, given the pregnancy, but also an illustration of the different ways they approach relationships. Dick tends to prefer his relationships pretty serious (as he tells Helena, he doesn't do casual), whereas Tim is kinda scandalized by the idea; Tim is edgy about taking his mask or his clothes off, and keeps both Ariana and Steph at a distance even when dating them.

Similarly, upon discovering that Tim knows Helena's identity, Dick immediately demands whether Batman knows, going immediately to his own preoccupation with how much Tim is-or-isn't telling Bruce - a natural anxiety, given that Dick's relationship with Bruce is tense right now; at the same time, it's based on faulty assumptions - Dick used to confide a lot in Bruce, but Tim's partnership with Bruce is way more distant (among other things, he doesn't even live in Bruce's house) and involves a lot more of Tim lying and hiding things. Just in general, you get this consistent vibe where, in the absence of information, Dick's jumping to assume that Tim's relationships are closer / more intimate than they actually are, implicitly because he's judging them based on his own.

And then there's a Tim's dry "I figured it out" comment vs. Dick's "wiseguy" snark - Tim's technically answered the question and it's true that he did figure it out, but his answer is also kinda 1) evasive (obviously he figured it out, but how) and 2) subtly smug, in Tim's know-it-all way. Tim also figured out Dick's identity and just generally tends to spend a lot of time prying into secrets because it's the way he kinda acquires power - as we've been seeing, Tim struggles more with the physical side of vigilantism, but he is very observant and clever; his big moments often involve overcoming his physical limitations by being smart and manipulative and good at anticipating other people, like when - much later - he'll beat Shiva not in a fair fight but by trickery. Dick respects the cleverness but he finds the prying annoying, so his retort here is a bit of an eyeroll and expression of mild irritation.

More broadly, though - I think the testy exchange about Helena is a nice look at how casual slice-of-life friendly dialogue can still embed all kinds of elements of interesting friction. Dick & Tim have a good mutually-supportive relationship in N 25, where they're gossiping about girlfriends and Bruce and giving each other advice and looking after each other, but you've also got all these little textures that suggest ways where they don't see the world in the exact same way, and little tensions that they're not actually mad about ("wiseguy" is a joke as much as anything) but which you could expand into sharper tensions if you wanted to. A lot of comics that are trying to be fluffy & supportive might pointedly smooth away these sorts of minor textures - instead of Wiseguy, Dick might say something like Of course you figured it out, you are so smart <3, and you wouldn't have the testy moment where they establish that neither of them has told Bruce, because instead the assumption would be of course that everybody knows everyone else's secret identities and no one has meaningful secrets.

But IMO the little textures make this comic more fun and more character-revealing! Tim's cautious and he doesn't like being "in the dark" - metaphorically or literally - which is why he's uncomfortable on the train and also why he pries into other people's secret identities. Dick's private about his relationships both with Bruce and Helena and really doesn't like intrusion or prying; he likes to be in control, especially over the flow of information, which is why he's getting a kick out of this particular training exercise and also why he's unnerved when Tim knows something Dick didn't choose to tell him. So you can see various ways in which they're similar (Dick's actually being more evasive here, even though he doesn't think of himself that way; he wasn't gonna tell Tim Helena's identity at all) and also where they're different (despite being instinctively jumpier, Tim does basically trust Dick, whereas Dick is still kinda paranoid about Tim, which is why Tim is prodding rather than threatened when Dick's being secretive, whereas Dick is kinda unsettled when Tim knows things).

And then there's this bit!!! Now you've got a new piece to the ongoing thread where Dick doesn't like Tim "seeing" too much. A moment ago Tim knew stuff about Helena that Dick didn't want him to and Dick was grumpy. But now Tim's sounding naïvely admiring and wrong, so Dick's grinning and relieved, because he's back in control. So we get this implicit back-and-forth between the moments when Tim's getting dangerously close and figuring out things Dick doesn't want him to vs. when Tim's more in the dark.

Like I said, the implication of a lot of the comic is that Dick thinks Tim's a bit too cautious. But also, it's complicated!! When Tim - who's been paying attention to all Dick's cues - actually raises the possibility and says, I'm worried I'm too cautious, you and Batman are fearless compared to me - the exact thing we've been seeing earlier, with Dick jumping without hesitation when Tim was reluctant - Dick (amused and grinning, while Tim still looks worried) says, So we fool you too, huh?

So we take this moment to add nuance to the "Tim is cautious, Dick's more willing to take risks" binary we've been implicitly setting up - it's not that Dick is actually fearless or unaware of the risks, but also not that he's been faking fearlessness on the trains; it's just that different things scare Dick - and more broadly, part of Dick's whole point is that they don't have time for fear. It's not that Dick couldn't psyche himself out over the trains if he let it happen, which is why he throws himself so completely into the action and the movement, and why he's trying to get Tim to do that too.

You can see Dick making the same point here:

Dick's hit by debris and nearly falls, making a sound of pain. Tim (hearing the sound, anxious): NIGHTWING! Where ARE you? Dick (barely catching hold of the train): Right...here... hunh. Tim: This is crazy! I'm taking off the blindfold! Dick (managing to climb back on the train): NO! You can't change the rules when the game gets rough. Tim: But we could get killed! Dick: What's so different about tonight?

Tim's anxious for himself and also anxious for Dick; it's not that Dick couldn't be anxious about these things on some level - as he tells Tim, he's afraid of failure and of death - but also, if Dick let himself think about all that, he'd never stop. They could get killed any night; if he let himself obsess about it, he'd be off his game and then he would be in trouble. This activity is a "game" that Dick picked, on one level, but on another level it's deadly serious. Their day-in-the-life hangout doubles as a high-stakes trust fall.

So you've got characterization and nuance; you've also got some fun range - I love that this nice protective moment where Dick grabs Tim:

Is basically immediately followed by this prank where Dick deliberately doesn't warn him that he's gonna fall if he doesn't adjust for the different train's speed:

Dick (grinning): You adjusted for the combined speeds, right? Tim (catching himself): That was a dirty trick.

Look at that smirk sdfsfs. Look, look, this is all very serious and Dick's training him and so on, but also, Dick's gotta have some fun. Maybe sometimes at Tim's expense sdfsdfs

Final thoughts on trains & blindfolds

The basic gimmick of "hang out on a train" was so inspired that various later comics writers have copied/referenced it a lot, so it's worth pausing to note that this is just genuinely a very cool storytelling idea? Practically, the train ride allows you to establish a bit about Blüdhaven's infrastructure and its geography, because the train takes them around locations that they reference. It's also fun because they can jump around and so on.

BUT ALSO, something none of the later imitations use are the blindfolds, which is what for me takes this from fun to inspired, in a way that's very particular to Dick and Tim in this period. Nightwing: Year One briefly has Jason and Dick end up on a train, but not intentionally or as part of any training; there are various scattered references to Dick and Tim doing this in later comics, and there's a much-later detailed homage to N 25 in Nightwing 2016 - and although I love the existence of an homage and found this one delightful, I want to pick on it a bit, because I think its beat-for-beat imitations interestingly show up some of what you lose when you lose the blindfolds.

So e.g. in the original, Dick calls out "Tunnel" because he and Tim were distracted a moment ago and now they need to duck, but also because Dick knows the route and Tim doesn't and Tim can't see, so he's not gonna know to duck unless Dick alerts him, and Tim has to just unhesitatingly trust and respond to Dick's orders - which is specifically difficult for him because his own instinct is for self-reliance and caution, which part of the whole low-key theme of the comic. And so this is both part of ongoing character development for Tim plus a cool BAMF moment for Dick, who's so alert and knows this whole route so well he can literally do it blindfolded. By contrast, in the homage, Dick calls out "Tunnel" even though it's right in front of them and presumably Tim also has eyes fsfdsfs

The blindfolds are fun because they stand in for a lot of character-driven things that this comic is doing:

There's Dick training Tim, and wanting Tim to trust him completely and obey his orders without hesitation, which has been something Dick has pushed for ever since NT 65 when he made a big point of telling Tim that he needed to stop asking questions and also got him to watch a carousel without explaining why; and this is something that Dick wants that Tim is resisting in NT 65 and also resisting here (Don't question me; Shouldn't there be reasons for doing everything?); and that's sort of about Tim's real weaknesses of hesitating and questioning too much instead of just moving, and partly about Dick's own need for control.

Plus there's the whole arc of the early Nightwing comics which involves Tim trying to get closer to Dick, trying to "see" him better and catch up with him and chase after him and so on, with Dick paranoid about how much he wants to allow himself to be "seen" and paranoid about letting Tim in (again: literally and metaphorically, as in N 6 where Tim's break-in to Dick's apartment parallels Tim prying into Dick's case and thus learning his insecurities about it, somewhat against Dick's will).

And then there's the metaphorical level where all of this is a stand-in for vigilantism, for doing dangerous work "in the dark" because they just don't know what the ultimate result will be.

And also mmm. This is hard to articulate, but I feel like it's important that the comic is showing you how they're becoming friends; it is not telling you that they are friends. Like, they're bonding, yes, but this is a high-stakes and edgy kind of bonding, and - critically - it is not a fait-accompli. Like a trust fall, the blindfolding is enacting the bonding; it is forcing the trust. This is not a static story where they're buddies at the start and they go hang out at the mall or whatever because that's what friends do and then they're still friends at the end; you cannot reduce the comic to a single Instagrammable panel where you go "see, Dick and Tim like each other, so they are doing an activity together" because even though it appears plotless it actually has a secret plot. You are seeing them get closer in real-time via becoming complicit in each other's secrets ("seeing" more of each other, agreeing to keep Bruce in the dark) and because the nature of what they're doing is pushing them both a bit past their natural comfort zones.

And even though the comic doesn't beat you over the head with it, there is actually change here!

Remember that at the start of the comic, Dick tells Tim to jump onto a train going southbound, and Tim hesitates and protests and finally does, and then he almost falls, and Dick misses it, and Tim doesn't admit to it:

At the end of the comic, Dick again wants Tim to jump (this time onto a train going northbound), and Tim complains wryly but doesn't hesitate or need prodding, because he isn't as nervous anymore. This time Tim's got a much better sense of balance, but he tumbles again because he's misjudged the speeds, and Dick knew that would happen - because just like Tim has gotten more willing to push past the uncertainty, Dick has also gotten a better read on Tim! - but this time instead of showing you the distance between them, it shows their closeness; Dick's playing a prank and Tim knows he's just played a prank and they're both in on the joke:

They don't "see" each other at the start. But at the end, they do.

Anyway, IN CONCLUSION, I think my proposal is that being on the trains is actually less key to the dynamic of this comic than the blindfolds, and if you want to do a true homage to Nightwing 25, you can put Dick and Tim in any dangerous situation you like, but what's really important is that you make sure they're doing it without being able to see. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TRUST AND UNCERTAINTY AND BEING IN THE DARK AND TAKING RISKS AND MAKING LEAPS OF FAITH AND LEARNING TO ANTICIPATE EACH OTHER!

But the trains are fun too <3

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