#dickbats era

[violentbat]

Oh she's hilarious.

Batman: Streets of Gotham #6

[dickheadcanons]

The potential of a decade(s) long DickBatman and DamianRobin era literally haunts me at night.

Don’t get me wrong, one of the most interesting things about the Robins imo is how baked into each other they are. I know it’s a joke that Bruce will just adopt any random orphan in reach, but the truth is, especially for the boys, their entrance into the Batman world is predicated on the one before; Jason is only taken in because Bruce misses Dick, Tim only because Jason dies. (Steph becoming Robin is even more of a story choice, and not one I particularly like, but a narrative nonetheless.) Their narrative is tight in a way that “replaced sidekicks” aren’t usually. Somehow, they made a pure narrative choice (Dick needs to move on, readers wanted to see a dead Robin) into a very compelling character choice for Bruce too.

But Damian takes us back to the heart and soul of the dynamic duo. A young boy with a dead family, and a young man with a mission that’s too big for him.

Despite the differences, Dick is working to help Damian in the same way that Bruce worked to help him. And Damian, a wildly different person than Dick, still has really wonderful moments of giving Dick exactly the advice he needs to hear. Their partnership isn’t quite the same as Bruce and Dick’s (Dick and Damian are honestly much less damaged, comparably), but it’s closer than the others imo.

Damian and Dick purposefully take the original duo and flip it directly on its head. The exact opposite inside the same frame. They really felt like a new era. The perfect circle. If only we got a little more time before the close.