#In flashbacks... and I even dedicated a set of pages to the branch he runs... I'll give him a proper introduction eventually

[askbeannuts]

[Oh god, it's them, look how janky they look now that I haven't drawn them in... *checks calendar* 3 months? At least in Karola's case?? Maybe?? Look at her bobble-head-]

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[cosmicheromp3]

Hi, I’m kinda new to the fandom, and I wanted to read more about dick Grayson and the batfamily. Do you think you could recommend some comics I should start with?

hi, of course! i actually have a comic recs blog @whatthefuckisacomic, where there’s a batfam tag and a dick grayson tag that you can browse, plus a page dedicated to tips for starting out with comics. the batfam is a bit hard to rec for because quality can vary drastically from comic to comic, and it’s hard to go “you might have to read this because the event is important to understand what’s going on, but it’s a pain because the writer sucks”. for a starting point i’ll try to stay away from those, though.

under the read more i more or less ended up following a timeline for dick, but i tried to give you options in case something isn’t up your alley and you want to move on to something else. i hope it’s still easy to follow, and don’t hesitate to ask me any follow up questions! these are all gonna be pre-reboot recommendations, because dick’s characterization was very watered down with the n52 and i frankly prefer to just stick with stuff from before.

let’s get into it!

a good starting point for dick, because it’s easy to read and quite beginner friendly, would be robin: year one – i don’t like chuck dixon’s writing in general, but this is one of the exceptions where i would recommend it. an enjoyable origin story you can also read is batman: year three, published in batman #436-439, which mixes present time events (set after jason todd’s death) with flashbacks to dick’s origin. it’s not necessary to read batman: year one and year two before to understand what’s happening in year three, but they’re important batman stories, so if you’re interested in bruce i’d encourage you to read those too.

while we’re still on origin stories, if you want a comic that goes straight to the facts, thoroughly but superficially, and is quite useful to get a good idea for how dick became robin, formed the teen titans, then became nightwing, you can check out secret origins (1986) #13. just keep in mind that it details the pre-crisis version of events, so some of it has been retconned and it might conflict with other stuff you’ve read, or will read.

personally, i find that dick’s most enjoyable stories happen when he’s with the titans, so i strongly encourage you to check out the new teen titans, if you don’t mind older comics style.

as for dick becoming nightwing, you should read the original story where it happened, which would be the judas contract, an arc published in tales of the teen titans (it’s collected as a tpb for easier reading). marv wolfman recently wrote a story set during this time in the robin 80th anniversary special and it has great dick and bruce characterization imo. i don’t recommend reading the whole special if you’re not familiar with the robins already because there’s a lot of callbacks to other comics, but after you’ve read the judas contract you can check out wolfman’s story at least. again, these follow pre-crisis continuity, but they’re very much worth it.

then there’s the nightwing (1996) solo which is... a mess, mostly. tomasi’s run (collected under nightwing: freefall and nightwing: the great leap) is usually regarded as the best from that comic. other than that this solo can be mostly boring or plain bad at times. i read all 153 issues of it (it was one of my first batfam comics i read), and i’ll say that while it could be a drag it was useful in that following a comic going from 1996 to 2009 helped me find some important events in batman history when it crossed over – same can be said for the robin (1993) solo. i’d only tell you to check it out if you have a lot of time in your hands and very low standards, but please don’t start there. i’m only saying this cause it was useful for me when i was in a moment when i wanted to read everything. if that doesn’t apply to you, better to stay away.

that tangent out of the way, let’s go back to comics i do recommend lmao. nightwing: old friends, new enemies is a good one where he teams up with roy harper. another one to go with my dickroy agenda is outsiders (2003), but before you read that you need to read titans/young justice: graduation day to understand the context under which the outsiders are formed. dick’s characterization during outsiders is very particular because it’s set at a low point in his life after he’s lost donna troy; he might seem different than in other comics, but it’s very important to understand him as a character.

lastly, dick had a pretty solid stint as batman after bruce “died” – i always say that while being batman wasn’t good for dick, dick was good as batman. for this period in his life, you have batman: long shadows, then batman: the black mirror. for more batfam interactions during this time, you can read gates of gotham, and for his relationship with damian there’s batman & robin (2009).

these should give you a good idea of some important things in his character’s history. just as a reassurance: don’t be intimidated by the amount – he’s a very old character so it’s only natural there’s a lot –, and any of these you could probably enjoy without having read everything before (except i wouldn’t recommend you start with a comic like outsiders without being acquainted with his character first, since it has very specific characterization).

as for more general batfam comics, i know a lot of people point to gotham knights for that, but i personally haven’t read it so i can’t speak for it. and i can’t make this post without recommending batgirl (2000), because it’s just great. you might also want to read jason’s death (a death in the family) and tim’s subsequent introduction (a lonely place for dying) just because they’re so often referenced, and i could go on with other important events... but there’s so many i’d rather tell you to follow another character’s reading list, than read important comics without context for the sake of reading them. this is where i plug in my sideblog again; if there’s any other batfam characters you’re interested in reading more about, you can find them listed in the tags page.

as a final note i feel like it’s my duty to encourage you to branch out to comics other than the batfam, which is what people new in the fandom tend to read the most just because it’s the most popular. i still love them and i still read their comics but there’s a lot of good comics for other characters, a lot of them better than many batfam comics since, like i said, they can be a gamble as to their quality. sometimes there’s dynamics that the fandom demands for batfam comics that can actually be found in canon for other dc families.

if you want to branch out but you’re unsure about jumping straight into another family with zero knowledge, i recommend reading team comics that include batfam members and using those to get to know more characters. i actually recommend doing that even if you’re not trying to branch out yet – reading about batfam characters outside of the gotham context, which can be very isolationist, usually adds a different dimension to them and you’ll find interesting takes on these same characters. for example, some of my favourite characterization for tim happens in young justice (1999) – another very fun beginner friendly comic i recommend –, and i enjoy bruce more when he’s with the justice league or alongside superman than i do in his solo comics.

and that’s it! don’t hesitate to ask me or DM me for anything else, and just remember that recommendations are very subjective. when reading comics what usually happens, to me at least, is that you pick something up, maybe leave it for a while, check out something else, come back to the first thing, and so on. while following a list or something you might find a different character that you enjoy and want to know more about, you might see an event that catches your interest, realize you like a writer and want to check out their stuff, and in my opinion allowing yourself to follow what you like is the most effective way to make reading comics an actually enjoyable experience.

i made it into a list in case you don’t want to read through my ramblings every time, ordered a bit better:

robin: year one

batman: year three

optional before: batman year one, batman year two

secret origins (1986) #13

the new teen titans

the judas contract

nightwing: old friends, new enemies

outsiders (2003)

for context read titans/young justice: graduation day

nightwing: freefall

nightwing: the great leap

batman: long shadows

batman & robin (2009)

batman: the black mirror

gates of gotham

not dick specific

batgirl (2000) - for cass

young justice (1999) - for tim

good luck!