#helena bertinelli meta

[fiapple]

something i love about huntress (1989) is just how succintly its opening scene builds up helena as a character & the overall themes of her narrative.

the comic opens on western society’s prototypical idea of a victim, a young white woman (that fact having its own horrid political history should be acknowledged)- fashionable for her era- walking alone at night, and being followed by a man with a knife.

Immediately, the scene visually cuts between the young woman & helena, tying them together in the eyes of the audience. it then plays out as so:

Huntress (1989) #1 by Joey Cavalier & Joe Staton

Both through the very explicit paralleling of the two women, and the lamp-shading thereof on the writer's part within the scene itself, helena is framed within the eyes of the audience as someone who herself has once been a victim. the creative team presents you with the one most archetypal examples of a victim they possibly could, though, again, the problems within the history of that fact can't be ignored either- one that for all its commonplace is still powerless and meek as ever, and said "our hero has once been her."

"I knew somebody with a name like that... a long time ago..."

By allowing the audience access information so early on, the creative team is quickly able to position helena as existent within a dichotomy of the struggle between the ongoing disempowerment of trauma, and the fight to regain one's sense of power thereafter, as seen through the lens of non-linear trauma recovery. It is planting the seeds of what will grow to be a major theme in helena's arc.

Additionally, it very quickly posits helena as a character who is, in part, motivated by the phantom of her own vicitimization. She is very quickly suggested to the audience to be a character that is doing this- doing all she can to fight, stave off, prevent acts of violence- as a form of penance both to herself and to the world for the moments in her own life in which she was unable to do so. It is put into the mind of the reader that she is followed by the wraith of her own suffering, and of knowing that the weight of trauma is one that others can also be forced to bear.

This is further reinforced by the immediate narrative focus the collaborators chose to place on helena as a figure of compassion. from her first scene in main canon, her focal point is the victim, so much so that when choosing to return to the scene to comfort the young woman, she is able to notice something as innocuous as a wallet and return it. Moreover, due to its atypical nature in the context of comics, the 'alley-way victim' being named with such a sense of gravity in this scene takes on an added layer of importance besides the aforementioned. The victim is humanized, emphasizing their centering in helena's concious motives. To further compound this, the first time we ever see helena speak on-panel is when she chooses to comfort this young woman. her words, her actions, her passion are all motivated by her own needs & wounds, yes- but the victim, the person being hurt, that is what is at the centre of them. if further evidence were required, one may even point to the fact that the first face we see at all is that of the victim's.

And, emphasizing the overall themes present within the introduction to an even more extreme extent, is the nature of the visual story-telling taking place on pages 4 & 5.

Page 4 begins with helena fighting the perp, her back turned away from the audience, but ends with her walking toward us, body language confident. This draws our attention both to helena's capacity to be imposing, to inhabit the position of the unknown in order to illicate fear, and to helena's individual power as a character.

Conversely, the first time we see helena on page 5, when her face is finally revealed to the audience, she is talking to the victim. It ends with her back to the audience, standing as if fixed in her position, taking up fairly equal panel space with her fellow as she watches helena k. walk off, and falls into a memory. this places the audience's focus on the fact that helena b. is just as, if not more so, consumed by her victimhood as her counterpart.

(this also sets up the following scene, in which we are given helena's backstory, exceedingly well btw)

Moreover, the visual choice to hide her face temporarily gives helena a sense of being quite guarded as a person, which will be expanded upon later, and shows that the dedication to character building started very early-on for Stanton & Cavalieri, which i really appreciate.

From the first breath of life given to her story, helena is deliciously presented as a byronic heroine- an unusual type of female character to see at all, let alone in comics- and it is done through focus on her agency as a character & her dominating sense of compassion for others.

Truly, I adore beyond my heart’s capacity just how much Staton & Cavalieri chose to dedicate their opening to showing just how much Helena is a character who finds the power to find personal redemption, empowerment, & rebirth- as violent and bloody as that rebirth may grow to be- in the ability she has to do good unto others, to try to allow them to retain the innocence that was taken from her by force & the closure she was denied. They put such energy into making it clear that she is a character so very deeply driven by a sense of compassion, one so consuming it may as well be keeping her heart in chains, and they portray it as equally served by her violence as tender-heartedness. it’s enrapturing, it’s enchanting. like, really, heart’s honour, i live for it.

[grayson10yearslater]

YOU DON'T KNOW GRAYSON: The Construction of Dick Grayson's Identity in Grayson Act I

INTRODUCTION: WHO AM I?

Like many of us, I first heard of Spyral in Dick-centric hurt/comfort fics. In these fics, the focus is often on how lonely and miserable Dick was during his time as Agent 37. How even after he became Nightwing again, his brothers never forgive him for letting them think he was dead. How the relationship between him and Bruce has been poisoned forever because Bruce savagely beat him and forced him to play dead. Usually Jason, Tim, and/or Damian discover Batcave footage of Bruce’s beat down of Dick, find out Dick was forced against his will into going undercover, and shower Dick with the love and forgiveness he deserves (and also probably kick Bruce’s ass a little). I want to be very clear. I eat these fics up for breakfast. Part of the reason I was so eager to read Grayson myself was for the hurt/comfort fodder.

But Grayson, in tone and execution, is nothing like the fanfics I read. There’s whump fodder, yes, but there is also humor and charm and new gratifying heartfelt relationships built within. Imagine my surprise when I read Grayson for the first time and found that Bruce and Dick’s relationship is not strained and bitter, but actually very tender and nostalgic. Both during and after the infamous Nightwing #30, there is so much affection between them. What got lost in fandom telephone? If Grayson isn’t about Dick at his absolute lowest, being the most miserable and alone sadsack to ever sack, what is it about?

The promo material gives us the easy pitch: identity. “YOU THINK YOU KNOW NIGHTWING…” the ad tells us, “YOU DON’T KNOW DICK.” For my money, this might be one of the best DC house ads of all time. It so perfectly captures the theme and the tone of Grayson. It’s in your face, it’s tongue-in-check, and it is so excited to explore Dick Grayson as a character.

But then the question remains: Who is Dick Grayson? The last six pages of Nightwing #30, written by Grayson co-writers Tom King and Tim Seeley, ends with Dick himself telling us.

“Who am I? I’ve been a lot of things. I was a son. I was a performer. An acrobat. A member of Haly’s Circus. Part of a family, a legacy. Then came Tony Zucco. He murdered my parents, and I was alone. I was angry. A sad, angry boy looking for revenge. Any revenge. Then came Bruce Wayne. He found me, and I wasn’t alone anymore. I was his ward. I was a son again. He trained me. Focused me. And I was Robin. A colleague. A hero. Partner to the Batman, the Dark Knight of Gotham. I was part of a family again. Batgirl. Commissioner James Gordon. Alfred Pennyworth. I grew older. I became a hero in my own right. I was Nightwing. I was a teacher. A mentor. To Jason…Tim…Damian…and eventually, when I was needed, I was Batman. I was part of a legacy again. Then came the Crime Syndicate. They put a noose around my neck, and I was alone again. I was tortured. I was put in front of cameras. I was unmasked. I was a plaything. They strapped me to a machine, I was their weapon. A bomb. Lex Luthor stopped my heart. Killed me to save the world. I was dead. Or so it seemed. In secret, I was saved. Who am I? After all that, I wanted to go back. I wanted to be who I’d been. A son. Part of a family…a legacy. Robin. Nightwing. Batman. I wanted to go back. But I can’t. Something terrible is coming. And I have to stop it. My enemy is in front of me and I’m alone. Who am I? My name is Dick Grayson. I’m who you need me to be.”

This monologue lays out the foundation: Dick defines himself by his network of relationships, his family. From Dick’s very beginning, family is an all-encompassing word that holds both his biological family (the Flying Graysons) and his chosen family (Haly’s Circus at large) together. Dick sees the world relationally; he defines who he is by how he is connected to others. Even his time as the solo hero Nightwing is framed through the relationship oriented occupations of teacher and mentor. It’s telling that in his monologue he uses the word “legacy” almost as often as family. It’s not just about the individuals he’s connected to, it’s about having a web of connections at all. A safety net. Dick is a trapeze artist. The trapeze is not a solo act. Grayson dares to ask who Dick Grayson really is when he’s not a legacy, not a member of a team, not the ‘and’ after Batman?

STILL TWO BEST FRIENDS

Tim Seeley: One of the things Tom and I wanted to do, beyond the drama and conflict between Dick and Bruce, was not another story about the drama and conflict between Dick and Bruce. We didn't want to do another story about how the Robins are exploited and used and eventually turn against Batman. This is still about the two best friends in the DC Universe, but they fight and they have to ask each other to do things that they don't want to. But when it comes down to it, these are the two best buddies that there could be. When they have conflict, it's because it's important. It's because it means something. It's not something to falsify the drama.

To understand what Grayson is doing with the themes of identity and partnership, we have to unpack Nightwing #30. I could write a whole series of posts on Nightwing #30. It’s so densely packed and, by my money, one of the most misunderstood issues in fandom. Every time I reread it, I discover something new to munch on. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on how Dick and Bruce construct Dick’s identity.

Bruce frames their fight as a test. “I need to see if they broke you,” he says, “I need to see if you still have the heart you once had.” This is what Bruce and Dick are fighting over: after being tortured, having his identity revealed by the Crime Syndicate, and killed by Lex Luthor…is Dick Grayson still Dick Grayson?

Their fight is brutal. And why wouldn’t it be? Dick’s lost everything, even his life, and Bruce was helpless to save him. Both Dick and Bruce are at their lowest points right now. “I trained you to live,” Bruce yells as he strikes Dick in the face, “and I watched you die!” This fight is one of the most bloody, violent brawls we’ve ever seen between Bruce and Dick. It’s easy to see why this confrontation spread like wildfire in the whump-centric parts of fandom. It’s blood, guts, and tears.

The quote from Seeley at the beginning of this section is so illuminating. Despite the reputation this scene has gained in fandom, it was never intended to be “another story about how the Robins are exploited and used and eventually turn against Batman”. This scene is intended to break Bruce and Dick down in order to build them back up again. So why doesn’t that intention always come through?

I think it’s a question of genre. Both King and Seeley have gone on record as really enjoying superhero comics for their genre conventions. They are not interested in anything hyperrealistic or gritty. When Dick and Bruce beat the hell out of each other across the Batcave, it’s more equivalent to two characters in a musical breaking out into a dance number, as opposed to actual physical abuse. Compare this issue to New Teen Titans #55, where Bruce’s single punch there has more traumatic weight in the narrative than all the punches here combined. The violence in Nightwing #30 is much more a visual metaphor for Bruce and Dick’s emotional states. The emotional fight is the real concern for the plot, not the literal physical blows, a convention we see often in the superhero genre. And the emotional fight is over what Dick’s identity is now, after the events of Forever Evil. Who does Dick need to be next? Bruce needs Dick to be someone stronger, someone who can’t die, someone who can infiltrate Spyral and not be corrupted by them. Dick wants to return to comfort, to family. He wants to, as he says later on in this issue, “be who [he’s] been”. 

For Dick especially, the violence here showcases his struggle with his identity in the aftermath of Forever Evil. As Bruce begins to tell Dick about the Spyral mission, he kicks Dick into the glass case holding the Robin costume. Dick is broken and battered, on his knees on the Robin cape, surrounded by shattered glass and the looming shadow of Batman. This is a visualization of what Dick feels internally: that by agreeing to stay dead and go on this mission, he is shattering everything he once was. Batman is killing him. Bruce is killing the person he used to be.

Dick can’t accept that. He outright says no and uses the Robin cape to choke Bruce out. Again, that sounds horrifically violent. But on the page, it just feels like symbolism. Dick chokes Bruce out with the Robin cape, tying them together back-to-back. He doesn’t want to leave Bruce again. He wants to stay together. If Dick understands his identity to be Batman’s partner, what does it mean that Bruce is trying to take that away?

Bruce and Dick are at cross-purposes with regards to who Dick needs to be next. As they throw punches, Bruce rattles off intel as Dick says the names of his family like a prayer. Bruce is acting from a place of terror. He just witnessed Dick die and his coping strategy is what it always is: become the mission. Bruce needs Dick’s identity to be mission focused, and that mission is staying alive and keeping their secrets safe (pointedly, the very same things Dick just failed to do). Dick needs to feel reconnected to his old identity, he needs to return to his family and be with them. Both of them are desperately trying to make meaning out of Dick’s death. When Dick tackles Bruce into the Batmobile, saying that he’s alive, it almost looks like a hug. They are not communicating here, but that does not mean they don’t care deeply for each other. It is the same tenderness they feel towards each other that provokes them into such a no-holds-barred fight. They are desperate; both of them will stop at nothing to not lose each other. It’s just that they have different definitions of salvation. 

Nightwing #30 is an argument of ideology. After knocking Dick to the ground, Bruce plays the mentor. “Why do we fall, Dick? We fall so we can learn to get back up.” The Spyral mission is a very real, very urgent threat. But there’s also a part of Bruce that desperately needs to see Dick prove his invincibility again, for the sake of his worldview. Dick, at this moment, refuses Bruce’s lesson. He peels off the mask Bruce gave him. “No,” he says, “No, that’s not true. We fall because someone pushes us. We get up to push back.” Dick’s resolve is iron-clad. He will never just stay on the ground, not when someone pushed him. His desire for justice will always compel him back on to his feet. That desire belongs to Dick Grayson, not Nightwing, not Robin. Even as Dick argues against Bruce, he proves to them both why he is the only option for a long term undercover mission in Spyral. 

Bruce continues to preach the necessity of Dick’s Spyral mission, no matter the costs. “After this, Bruce,” Dick tells him as he blocks Bruce’s punch, “after asking this, between us – it can’t be the same again.” Bruce knows. He delivers his explanation of his self-identity: 

“I’m hurting you. My family. I’m making that sacrifice. Because I don’t give up. I don’t give in. But what about you? Are you them? Or are you me? After the Crime Syndicate captured you, tortured you, killed you – tell me Dick, my body, after all of this – will you give up? Will you give in?” 

While Nightwing #30 has been laying the foundation of the plot of Grayson this whole time, this is the foundation of Grayson’s Act I’s thematic question: Who is Dick Grayson? Bruce here pitches it as a binary question. Is Dick him? A Bat who never gives up. Or is he “them”? The “them” is ambiguous. Grammatically, it refers to the other heroes who would give up and let Spyral use them. But I think it could be argued that “them” means anyone who isn’t Bruce. The Crime Syndicate. Spyral. The dead. Anyone who isn’t relentless and alive. Dick is a pillar in Bruce’s psyche. It’s an essay on its own tracking all the moments throughout canon and elsewhere stories where Bruce loses his grip on his own identity when Dick dies. He frames this as a binary question not out of sadism, but because this is how Bruce’s worldview works. It is just fundamentally more binary and egocentric than Dick’s worldview. Bruce does not construct his identity (or his understanding of Dick’s identity) in the same way Dick does.

Dick constructs his identity through the relationships he has with people, not if they are him or not. It’s a bringing together of people and identities within himself, not a subjugation. Having those identity defining relationships is an action, not an act of possession for Dick. And Bruce is asking Dick to leave those relationships behind. Dick’s identity is in freefall. He’s losing his family. He’s losing his mantle. After all that loss, one thing remains true: he “is not [Bruce’s] boy”. With that mission statement, Dick delivers the knockout punch that has Bruce forfeiting the fight.

This spark of independence is what makes Dick a survivor. This is what allows Dick to define himself through his web of connections without being a hollow person who has no true personality, no true self. Dick is not a child, a boy, who just belongs to someone. Not Bruce. Not Spyral. He is his own man. And while Dick will struggle with not being able to behave as a Bat does anymore once he’s in Spyral, if a Bat was truly all he was, Spyral would break him. Dick’s refutation here further proves to Bruce that he can survive this mission. “I win,” says Dick, just a small figure in a sea of broken, burning childhood mementos. Goodbye, Robin. Bruce embraces him in a sidehug, literally pulling Dick under his wing. “Good,” Bruce says. Their pose mirrors the photograph of young Dick and Bruce in the panel. The visuals here communicate what Seeley spoke of in his interview: despite the destruction, despite the goodbyes, this is still two best friends. 

This is the catharsis of Nightwing #30, the resolution to this fight of ideology and grief. This moment is overlooked because it is so brief compared to the length of their fight. And it’s a messy resolution. I imagine that there are many readers who remain unconvinced of the necessity of the Spyral mission as Bruce’s posits, or the depiction of the physical violence, or many other messy things in the issue. But Dick isn’t unconvinced by the necessity of infiltrating Spyral. The next time we see him, he’s all in on the mission, ready to be “who you need me to be”. Bruce tells a horrified Alfred that he’s “fixed it”. Bruce and Dick both understand that they have to be apart for right now, just for this one problem, and then home will return to them. They both understand it as a sacrifice, not an estrangement. I think a lot of Spyral hurt/comfort fics assume that the Nightwing #30 fight was never resolved. It was. Perhaps in a way that feels unsatisfying to some readers, but Grayson does not make sense if one doesn’t accept that Dick has already made peace with Bruce before he left. 

Dick’s relationship with Bruce is solid when Helena Bertinelli offers him a job at Spyral. It is Dick’s own personal sense of self that remains in jeopardy. The last three lines of the issue are Dick’s monologue: “Who am I? My name is Dick Grayson. I’m who you need me to be.” In bold red letters, the issue tells us “TO BE CONTINUED IN GRAYSON #1!” It could not be more clear what thematic questions Grayson will seek to explore. Can Dick really be whoever he needs to be? Can Dick really become the agent Spyral needs him to be and the double agent Batman needs him to be, all while still being himself? Will being Agent 37 break Dick Grayson permanently? 

DOWNSIDE OF A SOLO ACT

“The downside of a solo act. No one around to see you do the cool stuff.”

The first four issues of Grayson are defined by identity crisis. The agents of Spyral struggle to get Dick to let go of his current identity that is rooted in Batman and become Agent 37 more fully. Dick struggles internally to adapt enough to Spyral’s culture to continue to be a double agent, while not engaging in any acts that break the morals he’s so firmly tied to his sense of self. Dick can no longer define himself by a family who isn’t there, so he has to define himself as the person his family once loved.

Grayson #1 sets the stage. We are dropped right into the action as Dick takes down an enemy on a moving train. He uses a gun, but not by shooting it. Instead, he uses it as a boomerang that hits his enemy in the head. On the last panel of the page, Dick sighs to him and says, “The downside of a solo act. No one around to see you do the cool stuff.” Readers turn the page, heightening the gag. Set-up and payoff: Midnighter watches Dick with a pair of binoculars. “Damn,” he says, “That was pretty cool.” This exchange is peak Grayson. Its snappy humor disguises the work it's doing to contribute to Grayson’s central dramatic question: Who is Dick Grayson when he isn’t Batman’s partner, a solo act? Midnighter, looking every inch like a Batman type, tells us that Dick is not as alone as he thinks. But the leather daddies in black aren’t here to rescue him from his loneliness, they are here as his enemies first. Dick defines himself through his relationships. How will his sense of self be challenged by people who don’t want to form strong bonds with him?

Even as a spy, it’s still Dick’s default to make friends. His first use of Hypnos, the mind control implant given to him by Spyral, is to make Ninel Dubov think they are close friends. He says: “I’m your friend, Ninel. You’ve been lonely and afraid for so long. I just want to help you. And you want to help me. That’s what friends do.” Yes, Dick is literally brainwashing the guy here, but his words are a solid definition of friendship. This is how Dick incorporates his friends into his identity: he’s there to help them. Even as Dick is doing the most Spyral thing in the world, using Hypnos on a target, he is still operating under his old construction of his identity. 

But this classic Dick Grayson approach soon backfires. Ninel activates a very dangerous power in order to assist Dick in his fight against Midnighter. When Dick sees that Ninel is at risk of dying, Dick has to drop the friendship act. He goads Ninel into venting his power and completes the mission. In the past, Nightwing would have been able to talk Ninel down with sincerity. Agent 37 does not have that luxury. Dick’s always been talented at manipulation, by his own admission later on in the issue (“I-I’ve always been good at reading people. [...] Never used it – like it.”), but his people reading skills have always been used for the pursuit of justice. Now Dick is using the skills for morally ambiguous Spyral’s benefit. Under Dick’s own sense of self, he should be bad at being a spy. But he’s not. So what does that say about Dick’s identity? Is he really who he thinks he is?

Dick’s struggle to remain connected to the morals that define his place with his family is exemplified in Grayson #2 by Dick’s struggle to remain connected to Batman. Undoubtedly, Dick’s relationship to Batman is crucial to how Dick self-identifies. Over and over again in this run, Dick’s defines himself as Batman’s partner, Batman’s heir. Batman is emblematic of a moral system that is important to Dick’s understanding of himself, the same system that is at odds with Spyral’s definition of Agent 37. But more than that, Batman is emblematic of a person, a history of a relationship, that is critical to Dick’s self-identity. When Dick craves comfort and support, he reaches out to Bruce about their interpersonal connections. He wants to know if Alfred and Barbara are okay after attending his funeral. In order for Dick to feel centered and stable with himself, he needs to know that the people he includes in his self-identity are okay, too. 

The downside to this way of being is that if Dick doesn’t have access to those people who are his foundation of self, he grows unsteady. But his Spyral mission, by design, keeps him cut-off from his family, for his and their safety. Bruce must rebuff Dick’s desire for comfort. “Birdwatcher,” Bruce stops and corrects himself, sensing Dick’s vulnerability, “the longer we stay on the line the more likely it’ll be intercepted.” It comes off as a chastisement, and it is, but it’s also Bruce giving to Dick the same comfort he would give to himself: focus on the mission. And Dick tries to. “Right. Yeah. Hey y’know what? I don’t need to know. Because I’m going to wrap this up before the flowers on my grave wilt. Over.” But even as he’s trying to model Bruce’s coping mechanism, his real desire bleeds through. Dick wants to return to his family. By returning to them, he’ll return to a congruent self-identity. When Helena sees Dick after this call, she notes that he looks “rattled”. Until he can return to his connections in Gotham, Dick is trapped in the identity limbo of being Agent 37. 

Dick Grayson, however, is a character inclined to change, whether he intends it or not. Batman may be the most important connection in the web of relationships Dick uses to define himself, but he is not the only one, and the web is always growing. 

Helena Bertinelli, code name Matron, is that first new connection. She is assigned to be Dick’s partner. As someone high up in Spyral’s food chain, Helena is an antagonistic force to Dick’s mission. Her personality is efficient and no nonsense. Their dynamic in Grayson #2 is reminiscent of the dynamic Dick had with Batman when he was Robin. The stoic, more knowledgeable mentor and the playful, confident student. But that dynamic is purely surface level right now. There is no foundation of trust between Dick and Helena, not at the start. Neither of them are under any delusions about their ability to truly trust each other. But for the mission, they must act as partners.

Spyral sends them to find a bioweapon enhanced stomach of Paragon in Farmington, Leicestershire. Their investigation leads them to Dr. Poppy Ashemoore, who has the stomach implanted into herself, and is now an enhanced cannibal attacking them. Dick’s got a plan to take her down. It’s a very superhero genre plan, he’s going to get her monologuing and then strike. He expects Helena, his partner, to have his back. She doesn’t. Helena orders Agent 37 not to strike. Dick’s confused; this is not how the story goes. “She’s a cannibal, Matron! She killed people and ate them! It goes like this: we knock her down, and we take her to the proper authorities!” Helena reminds him that his old ways of identification hold no value here: “She is not a supervillain. She is an asset who happens to be an incredibly self-sufficient genius.” Dick cannot accept the idea that a murderer may escape justice and be rewarded for it, so Helena uses the code word “tsuchigumo” and knocks Dick out.

After an issue of bonding, it’s a big betrayal. Back at homebase, Helena completes her lecture from the start of the issue about what a Hadrian woman is: “She is unconcerned with righteousness or virtue. She exists only for the prompt and unerring delivery of her charge.” Dick watches from the shadows, sick and defeated. Helena is training the girls, but her words apply to all those who work for Spyral, including Dick. This is the type of person he must become. A strong connection to Helena did not provide him with any relief, just more disconnection. Again, Dick must question his own self-identity. 

The issue ends with Dick making a mission report to Bruce again. He’s internalized the need to not linger, but can’t resist one last attempt at re-establishing connection. Helena was a failed partnership, but Batman and Robin never die. This time, he appeals to a value Bruce also shares: nostalgia. They share a sweet memory about Babs and Alfred. Dick may not have his relationships present in his life currently, and he’s suffering for it, but the memories of the love he has for them cannot be taken away. Those memories can stabilize his self-identity for one more day. 

But that is just duct tape on the hole in the dam. Eventually, the dam is going to burst. Dick could only juggle being half Agent 37, half his former self for so long. Grayson #3 serves as the ultimate nadir for Grayson Act I. In #3, the struggle between Dick’s relationship-centric self identity and the mission-centric identity of Spyral agents causes the death of two people.

Issue #3 opens with Dick establishing a new connection with a new character: Alia, codename Agent 8. After Helena and Dick are assigned a joint mission with Agent 1 (AKA Tiger) and Agent 8, Agent 8 meets Dick at the shooting range. She isn’t impressed with his shot: “Really? This is how the great Wing-Knight shoots? I see why Mr. Minos has Agent 1 and me bailing you out on this mission.” Dick corrects her. It is both a fact correction and an assertion of his identity. “Nightwing. And you should see me with a slingshot, Agent 8.” Even as Dick asserts his identity as Nightwing, he calls upon the distinctly Robin imagery of the slingshot. Dick’s framing his identity not just as Nightwing, but his time as a caped hero overall. Nightwing isn’t just the Nightwing suit - it’s the entire life Dick’s led up to this point. And that person, he begins with the oath Dick swore to Batman in order to become Robin. Nightwing is the legacy of Robin. And Dick is proud of that legacy. He would rather be good with a slingshot than a gun - that is what keeps him connected to Bruce. This is how he understands himself.

Still, the back and forth between Dick and Agent 8 begins to cross the line into flirtatious. Her body language is clearly sensual as she corrects his form. “But remember, don’t anticipate the explosion,” Agent 8 tells Dick, “Cause the explosion. Can you do that, Wing-Knight? Can you do that for me?” Dick again reasserts his identity. “That’s not my name. My name is…” The next page reveals Agent 8 in bed gasping Dick’s name in pleasure. It’s a cheesy homage to the brazen sexuality of spy thrillers. But even still, it’s revealing. Nightwing doesn’t make up Dick Grayson; Nightwing makes up a part of Dick Grayson. Losing Nightwing does not mean Dick has lost his identity, it just means he’s lost the easiest way to sum himself up. There is hope for Dick’s self-identity, even as we nosedive to his lowest point. He may not be “Wing-Knight” anymore, but he is still Dick Grayson.

After their tryst, Dick continues to struggle with his identity as an agent of Spyral who should be using a gun, vis-à-vis struggling to understand Christophe Tanner, their target for this issue. “I don’t understand these things,” Dick says of a gun. “Going after a guy like this, with a tool like this. He’s in pain. He should stop the pain. How does this stop anything?” Dick’s worldview is so much about soothing hurt. He’s a fixer. Guns don’t solve emotional wounds. But this worldview has no place in Spyral. Agent 8 says so: “What do you know about guns?” But she might as well be asking what does Dick know about this spy world.

Dick, Helena, Agent 8 and Tiger track Tanner down. It goes tits up pretty quickly. Dick faces Tanner down alone. He tries to talk sense into Tanner the same way he’s been talking sense into himself: by reminding Tanner of his relationships. “I know about your boys,” Dick says. “I know you tried to save them, and I know what he did. Haven’t you had enough? Haven’t the guns done enough? We don’t need these to settle this. Tell us where the eyes are, and we all walk away. Think about your boys. Some things you don’t shoot your way out of.” Tanner rejects him and chooses his guns. Tiger comes to Dick’s rescue, but not without chastising him. Dick’s method has failed on Tanner. The worldview on which he constructs his identity has failed. Is it doomed to fail for himself, too?

The consequences of this are severe. Agent 8 blows up at Dick for endangering Tiger, her partner’s, life. She calls him out on a perceived hypocrisy: “Oh, yeah, you noble superheroes. Fire laser beams at people. Arrows. Batathingies. But a gun, no, no, never. God forbid! Not a gun!” Nursing the cheek Agent 8 just slapped, Dick can only repeat what he’s desperately holding on to: guns aren’t “the way [he] fight[s]”. His identity is being challenged at all fronts. He can’t risk revealing how much he holds on to the people of his previous life, so he can only cling on to their teachings. Guns aren’t the way he fights. His explanation only makes Agent 8 angrier. “You’re all like Batman,” she says, “little boys under little masks, crying about their dead mommies.” Dick, acting as both the double agent seeking information and the Bruce Wayne defense squad he usually is, asks, “What do you know about Batman?”

Agent 8 gives an ending argument that hits harder than her slap. “I know he still wears his little mask. What I don’t know is if you’ve taken yours off! You’re not a superhero. You're a spy. With a gun. You’re not Wing-Kinght or Nightwing or whatever. You’re Agent 37.” Here she reveals a flaw at the center of Dick’s identity - if Dick defines himself through his relationships, how can he endanger a partner by not taking the shot? Are Batman’s teachings getting in the way of helping people? But if Dick isn’t Batman’s teachings, who is he? Agent 8 would answer that by saying Dick is Agent 37, a spy who uses a gun. But can Dick really be that?

No. No, of course not. When presented with the shoot or be shot dilemma, Dick does the most Dick Grayson thing he can do: he finds a third option. Dick’s puts together the missing pieces of Tanner’s backstory, tracking him down to the school that his youngest and only alive son attends. He uses the weapon at his disposal that predates even Robin; he tries to talk it out. Dick encourages Tanner to drop the guns and meet his son. “Is that how you want him to see you? With your guns in the air?” Dick reiterates Agent 8’s own defense of guns to him, Dick understands that they “make things go faster”. But, as he tells Tanner, “what’s the damn rush?” 

This time, Dick’s words reach Tanner. He confesses he stole the macguffin of the issue because he didn’t want to see his son through the gun. The Paragon eyes aren’t compatible with him, so he gives them to Dick. The two share a touching moment where Tanner is insecure about his looks scaring his son and Dick jokes about Tanner’s chest hair. This is the type of relationship building that is at the core of Dick’s self-identity. But just as Dick wins a laugh from his once enemy, Agent 8 shoots Tanner. Everything goes to shit from that moment on, right in front of Dick’s eyes. Tanner survives the shot and returns fire to Agent 8, killing her. He then falls off the roof and dies in front of his son. The parallels to both Bruce’s and Dick’s parents’ own deaths cannot be ignored; it is salt in the wound. Dick has defined his life by his mission to save people. Now, Dick is left alone on the rooftop, with nothing but blood, a gun, and Tiger’s desperate voice ringing through his coms.

As Tanner’s son finds his father’s body, still clutching his gun, Tiger speaks, “37. 1. Do you have eyes on Agent 8? Repeat. 37, do you have eyes on Agent 8? 37? 37? Agent 37!” Dick raises his head. Grayson artist Mikel Janín’s composition is spectacular here. Dick looks the reader straight in our eyes. “That’s not my name.”

This is the ultimate rejection of Dick’s Agent 37 identity. He will never be convinced of Agent 8’s and Spyral at large’s ideology. All it’s done is make two people dead and a little boy an orphan. This knowledge doesn’t change the fact that Dick’s mission isn’t over. Lives are on the line, in all directions. He has to be a spy. Agent 37 isn’t his name but still Dick must wear this disguise. How will he adapt? 

As always, Dick’s ability to adapt is helped by the relationships he forms with other people. If Grayson #3 was about the ultimate failure of Dick and Agent 8’s partnership (and I don’t just mean romantically, I mean Agent 8 as an opposing ideology Dick cannot integrate into his sense of self), then Grayson #4 is the beginning of Helena’s growth into that web. Even though Helena has been tasked by the Director of Spyral, Mr. Minos, to root out the double agent in their midst, she and Dick continue to grow closer. 

Grayson #4 starts out with their status quo sunshine-grumpy relationship. Dick is purposefully sucking a lollipop as annoyingly as possible and Helena karate chops it out of his mouth. Dick wraps up the lollipop to send it back to Bruce for DNA sampling, but plays dumb with Helena, who reacts with scorn and disgust. But even after this engineered tiff, Helena immediately tries to comfort Dick over Agent 8’s death. Dick rebuffs her, he knows that death “is part of the job”. He is playing the Agent 37 role that Agent 8 so wanted him to do. Helena isn’t convinced. She tries again to have this conversation with Dick and again is rebuffed. “Don’t worry,” Dick assures her, mistaking what I would argue is Helena’s genuine concern over him with her fixation on accomplishing the mission, “I’m focused. I’m ready. The mission is as good as accomplished.” The status quo is starting to shift between these two, but Dick hasn’t forgiven her betrayal yet.

The rest of the issue acts almost as a breather episode. The Hadrian students decide to raid Dick’s room for his panties. Dick catches them on the hunt, of course. But rather than turn them in for breaking curfew, he starts a cat and mouse game, leading them in a chase across campus. They want a game? Sure, Dick’s happy to play. This moment is silly and fun but it’s so revealing of how Dick recenters himself in his grief. He wants to be with people without having to be vulnerable with people. He wants to be in the air. He wants the chase. This is how Dick self-soothes a wound to his worldview, to his very identity. 

Helena, out at night investigating Agent 8 as the potential Spyral mole, catches the group. She sends the girls back to their dorms and Dick to Mr. Minos, where he receives his punishment. He is to become the girls’ gay French acrobatics teacher. It’s pitched as a torture for Dick, and while the Hadrian girls are thirsty af, Dick loves being a teacher. Teacher is one of the ways Dick defined himself as back in Nightwing #30 and of course acrobat is Dick’s very essence. The cover story is framed as a punishment for Dick, but truly this is an opportunity for Dick to maintain his old, true, self-identity. 

Helena has another opportunity for Dick’s self-identity too. Later that night, she sneaks into Dick’s bedroom. “I know why you came to Spyral, Dick Grayson.” Dick reacts with confusion. Helena gives an impassioned monologue. It’s a reversal, instead of Helena dragging Dick into the messy spy thriller genre, here Dick inspires Helena to dip her toes into the superhero genre, where impassioned speeches can reach another person’s heart. She says: 

“I saw you tonight. Running across those rooftops. There was a joy in your movement. In your eyes. You loved the night. You loved the chase. You loved being the fearless hero. You loved being Nightwing. When you were outed by the Crime Syndicate. Believed killed. You knew you had to remain dead. To reveal that you were alive could endangered those you loved. Set your enemies against them. You had to quit being the hero. Being Dick Grayson. Now, you fear that you might lose who you are.”

Helena reads Dick like an open book. To know Dick’s motivations so well is dangerous, but Helena does not make Dick bleed for it. She simply walks towards the window. When Dick asks where she’s going, she turns and says,  “I do not want you to forget who you are Dick Grayson. I want you to remember the rooftops. I want you to remember the night. I want you to remember Nightwing.” She smiles, which on Helena looks more like a smirk, “Chase me.” And Dick does. 

For Dick, this is the remedy for the poison from the last issue. Agent 8 wanted Dick to be someone else. In her worldview, Agent 37 can only exist at Nightwing’s death. Dick must forget everything he was before to be Agent 37. In contrast, Helena wants Dick to remember who he is, which includes (but is not limited to) Nightwing. She wants him to be successful in Spyral not at the cost of his previous selves. Dick has to hide so much of his true identity and belief systems right now. But Helena, at least, can offer herself up as the means in which Dick can still feel safely connected to his old, true identity.

Dick started in Issue #1 utterly alone. He ends #4 chasing after someone who is sour, dark, and perfect into the night, a smile on his face. This ending allows Dick to metaphorically be Robin, Nightwing, and Agent 37 all at the same time. He is able to hold that multiplicity of identity within him because of his connection to Helena. Once again, being a partner act keeps Dick’s identity whole.

I HAVE HER

“This can’t…this…you can’t do this…I know you. I see what’s coming. You…you…can’t. I have…my enhancements. I have…powers. Dick…Dick Grayson...what…what do you have?” “I have her.”

Grayson #5 is one of my favorite single issues of all time. It should be part of a mandatory DC onboarding when it comes to writing Dick Grayson. It captures the core of his character, his ultimate truth: the unflinching determination to help people in the face of impossible odds.

The issue starts in media res. Dick and Midnighter are helping a woman deliver her baby as Helena tries to pilot a failing plane to safety. The mother dies. The plane crashes in the desert. The baby is alive and crying. Helena, Midnighter, Dick and the baby are two hundred miles away from civilization. Midnighter does the math: they’re dead. There’s no way any of them can survive the trek.

Dick refuses to accept that. If they die, the baby dies, so they can’t die. It’s just that simple.

Thus far, in Grayson, Dick’s ability to care deeply about strangers has been used against him. A good spy makes people think they care, but they don’t actually care. They exist in order to survive the mission or themselves. Dick’s mission is caring about people; he defines himself through loving other people. Grayson #5 shows us that this isn’t mere naivete. This is Dick’s most dangerous skill. He doesn't have to have special enhancements or powers. As long as he has "her", a person to save, Dick can do anything. His determination arises from his relational approach to identity.

This has been true for Dick since he was a child. Later on in the issue, after Helena and Midnighter have both succumbed to the elements, Dick tells the baby about a dream he once had. The story he tells is a heartfelt and poignant reference to Batman #156, “Robin Dies at Dawn”. “On this world,” Dick says, “I was Robin. I had to save him.” The syntax and order of Dick’s sentences here reveal that he defines being Robin as saving people and he is Robin. In order to be himself, Dick must save people. And he does, even though Dick’s story ends with rocks and darkness, the moral he gives to the baby is bravery in the face of any odds.

For those of us who are familiar with Batman #156, we know that Dick is hit with rocks and dies. Batman, guilty, grief-stricken, and alone on an alien planet with a monster about to attack him, begs for death. It’s eventually revealed that Robin is alive and well, Batman was just undergoing an astronaut simulation. This meta reference highlights Dick’s superpower in this issue. When Batman doesn’t have Robin, he begs for death. When Robin doesn’t have Batman, he finds more people to save. Dick is able to survive the loneliness and isolation that Batman isn’t because Dick doesn’t define his identity by one person or purpose, but by his ability to care for many people. Today, it’s this baby. Tomorrow, it will be someone else. That’s who Dick is. Dick’s devotion to life itself gives him determination.

Devotion is not something many call a strength anymore. After all, devotion so easily becomes zealotry. Grayson #5 itself warns us of this. A Saudi couple find Dick and the baby and the wife is overjoyed. “We have prayed for so long for a child,” she says, “And here, god has brought one from the desert.” Her husband disagrees. “What is this? God has not brought this boy. This is no God. Look. This is only a man.”

Dick is not a god. He is not even an enhanced guy with a supercomputer for a brain. He is just a man. But when a man makes serving other people his identity, he can do the impossible.

HEART IS AN AWESOME POWER

“Who are you? What do you hold inside? Is it love? Is that what you believe?”

If Grayson #5 is about Dick proving who he is to the reader, then Grayson #6-7 are about him proving that core identity to Midnighter and Helena.

Grayson #6 opens with Dick and Helena investigating a prison island. After surviving an attack from a robot orca, they find that their targets have already been slaughtered by the Fist of Cain. While Helena uses her Hypnos implant to get information about the issue’s macguffin, the Paragon Brain, from a surviving Fist of Cain member, Midnighter kidnaps Dick and takes him to the God Garden. There Dick and Midnighter finally have the all out brawl they’ve been building towards. As they trade blows, Midnighter reveals exactly what he thinks of Dick. He states as fact of all the worst fears Dick has about himself during the Spyral mission.

“You traded in the supertights for a decoder ring but you think you’re still the good guy,” Midnighter says, “But you’ve changed. You’re just lying to yourself. You’re one of them.”

Dick refutes Midnighter’s analysis of himself. First, by refuting Midnighter’s claim that he’s figured out Dick’s fighting style (“You can do jazz. How are you at punk rock?”). Dick is made up of more than what Midnighter claims he is. It’s easy to read this as a rebuttal against the naysayers of Grayson itself: Dick is more than just his mantles. He can carry a solo title with no masks, just as Dick Grayson.

“Comfort. Trust. Family. I gave that up to become a spy. A spider man. A tsuchigumo. I have changed,” Dick acknowledges. “But I’ll always be Dick Grayson.”

If that’s true, then how is Dick constructing the identity of ‘Dick Grayson’, if not by those ties of family and legacy? Issue #7 will answer that for us in time. Here in Issue #6, there’s still more setting up to do. After Helena is exposed mentally to the Fist of Cain’s plans for mass murder, she awakens to see that Dick is gone. She doesn’t know he’s been kidnapped. The first thing she asks is if Dick left her. Like Midnighter, Helena is suspicious of who Dick claims to be. Is he really her partner? Or will he abandon her the second it suits his goals?  

As Issue #6 sets up the fears Helena and Midnighter have about who Dick is as a person, Issue #7 proves those fears wrong. Cue the transformation magic, Dick is about to go full magical girl.

Issue #7 is an ode to Dick’s legacy. As Robin, Dick represented spring: the joy and new life after the cold death of winter. As Nightwing, Dick represented rebirth, the great rebuilder after destruction. The mantles don’t represent those things intrinsically. They represent those ideals because Dick infused them with the essence of his own person, who lives by those ideals. Agent 37 does not carry that Dick Grayson legacy the way Robin and Nightwing do; it carries the reputation of Spyral. As Dick tries to convince the Gardener to let him and Midnighter stop the Fists of Cain, the Gardener calls him out on this. “[...] You, Dick Grayson, represent lies and treachery. The loss of ideals. The desire for power at the cost of innocence.” Here, in this world, Dick is no longer the benchmark of the superhero community, the guy everyone respects. He’s fallen. He’s been corrupted.

But he’s still Dick Grayson. He’s not going to let a fall stop him from saving people. The Fist of Cain plan to use the Paragon brain to make innocent people kill each other. Gardener believes that this bloodbath will serve as an example for all of humanity and help create a better world. Dick can’t physically fight her, so he uses his other skills: empathy and compassion. 

He tells the Gardener a story about himself.

“When my parents died, I thought that was the end for me. I was freefalling. I thought that I was going to fall and fall until I hit the ground. But someone came to my rescue. He caught me before I hit the ground. He was my net. He taught me to focus my anger. To stop myself from hating the world. From blaming everyone for the evil of a few. And then, I realized how lucky I was. I realized I had to pay it back. I owed it to other people to be their net. I had to dedicate my life to being there to catch anyone who needed it.” 

Dick’s anger is not an explosive, severed heads in a duffle bag kind of anger. After Dick’s parents die, he was never in danger of becoming a thug or a murderer, he was in danger of losing his idealism. Anger takes the form of mistrust, disconnection, and apathy in Dick. It’s “blaming everyone for the evil of a few”. It’s closing himself off from the world and all the love the world offers. 

When one is faced with the type of acute trauma young Dick survived, it’s easy for that experience to make you selfish and isolated. Becoming the Robin to Bruce’s Batman saves Dick from this worldview.  Robin gifts Dick a world of connections - from the bond he forms with Bruce and Alfred, to the people he saves every night on the streets. This is what Gardener is not understanding. There are evil people in the world. The world itself may even be cruel. But that’s not the point. The point is the friends you make along the way, the people you catch in your net. By limiting his scope to the people he can reach, Dick is able to love the whole world. 

The Gardener, moved by Dick’s and Midnighter’s pleas, allows them to teleport to Tel-Aviv and save the day. The Fist of Cain are disguised as the band Sin by Silence; they intend to unleash the power of the Paragon brain at a concert for peace. “But I want you to answer a question Tel-Avi,” lead singer Clutch asks the crowd. “Who are you? What do you hold inside? Is it love? Is that what you believe?”

So far Dick himself has not dropped the L word. He speaks around it, citing family and catching people when they fall - terms and phrases that absolutely do share the same meaning as love, but don’t sound as cheesy when said aloud. Clutch is able to speak directly to the central dramatic questions of this issue on Dick’s behalf: “Who are you? What do you hold inside? Is it love? Is that what you believe?” Notice here how the order of Clutch’s questions directly ties the construction of identity to a belief system of love. Clutch intends to subvert this by proving that the true self of all people is a murderer, but Dick Grayson answers those questions in the affirmative. It is love that he holds inside of him. That is the belief he is devoted to. That is who he is.

Helena is starting to understand that. When Dick comes to her rescue, she succumbs to the power of the Paragon brain and attacks him.“Agent 37.” She corrects for his true identity. “Dick. You—abandoned me! I hate you! Kill you!” Dick dodges her attack and Helena is able to come to her senses and realize the impact that Paragon brain is having on her. 

“I’m too angry, Dick. I have too much hate,” she says, confessing to Dick her own construction of identity. “I’ve killed. And I’ll do it again. I can’t…I’m too weak even with the Hypnos to get anywhere near the Paragon brain.” It’s only after Helena tells both Dick and herself who she is that she is able to tell Dick who he is. “But you, Dick Grayson. You have no hate. You would never take a life. Everything you do…it’s...”

She kisses him. It’s an appropriate action for her speech as this is all but a declaration of love. It’s a declaration of Dick’s nobility, the very thing both Midnighter and Helena were scrutinizing in the last issue. Helena says Dick has “no hate” but I think another way of saying that is that Dick is full of love. Kissing Dick “clear[s] [her] mind a little”, freeing Helena of the Paragon brain’s influence. Where once Helena flirted with Dick to assert her identity as the better spy, now she kisses him to center herself as someone who won’t give into hatred and mass murder. She kisses Dick as a way back to her identity, just as she lead Dick back to his identity in Grayson #4. They depart, refocused on the mission.

Dick eventually makes it on stage to destroy the Paragon brain. The brain, in Dick’s own words, offers him up the greatest temptation. “I—I can feel you. Whispering to me. Telling me it’s okay to abandon my code...to let go of my humanity. To fear. To h-hurt. To…k-kill”. And Dick is tempted to give into his hatred. As he recounts later to Bruce:

“I was about to smash the brain on the stage. I hated it. Hated what it had done, what it represented. I just wanted to see it in little tiny bits. But then I realized I’d be feeding the emotions the fist wanted to unleash here. I knew that the people who’d been influenced by its empathic attack wouldn’t stop if I fed it more violence. So I didn’t dash it to chunks on the stage like a guitar. I stopped. And I thought about everything I have. My family. My net. And I changed its mind.”

Dick’s ability to pause and reflect before he acts is crucial here. Even though smashing the Paragon brain to bits is ostensibly a good thing, Dick knows that actions of hatred will only beget more hatred. He has to feed the brain something different, show it a different path. He has to forgive it for making him hate it. He has to teach it about being grateful, about family, about helping people up when they fall. This is Dick’s Moon Healing Escalation moment. This is what has been at the core of his identity, since he pledged to never swerve from the path of justice in the wake of his parents’ murders. His ability to forgive, his ability to love, reminds the brain and everyone in its thrall to do the same.

The issue ends with Midnighter breaking ties with Gardener. “I can’t be surrounded by liars and murderers without becoming one myself,” he says, “I’m not like Grayson.” Dick Grayson is a person who can surround himself with liars and murderers and not become one himself. Midnighter, the man who not one issue ago was Dick’s biggest naysayer is now all but calling Dick incorruptible. Dick’s had to give up a lot of the embellishments that traditionally define him in order to be Agent 37. But he’s kept the core thing that makes him Dick Grayson: his ability to love. The people around him are starting to take notice.

CONCLUSION: SAME OLD DICK

Grayson #8 marks the shift from Act I to Act II. It’s a tying up of loose ends and the opening up of new doors to explore. The macguffin of Act I, collecting the Paragon organs, has been completed. Mr. Minos, the enigmatic boss of the last eight issues, makes his play. He attempts to kill Helena, succeeding only in wounding her. She collapses in Dick’s arms, warning him of Minos’ betrayal. At the same time, Minos attempts to kill Tiger with the newly reassembled Paragon. Dick saves him and they work together to defeat the creature that has the powers of the Justice League. Even the Hadrian girls get to have their hero moment in this fight. Minos’ reassembled Paragon has a flaw the original did not: its heart. The baby Dick saved in the desert still claims the organ as her own. Dick does the one thing he’s been avoiding for the last eight issues: he picks up a gun and takes the killshot. He shoots the creature right where its heart would be. Tiger is astounded. “Agent 8 said you were a horrible shot!” Dick responds as an Agent of Spyral should, “Yeah, well, that’s what spies do. We lie.” This is the triumphant defeat of the villain. In this moment, Dick is able to incorporate Agent 37 into his self-identity without completely shattering the construction of self that came before. Being Agent 37 did not break Dick Grayson; Agent 37 is now another aspect of Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson still endures. 

Meanwhile, Minos is killed off by the even more enigmatic Agent Zero. She calls Minos bait, a “cliched bat villain” meant to “attract Grayson into [our] web”. It’s clear she will be our new main antagonist. If Act I asked ‘Who is Dick Grayson?’, Act II will ask ‘Who is Spyral?’ Issue #8 ends with a tagline for Act II: “A NEW MISSION! A NEW PARTNER! SAME OLD DICK!”

Same Old Dick is the best conclusion I can think of for Grayson Act I’s thematic exploration of Dick’s identity. Grayson stripped Nightwing and Robin away from Dick, separated him from Batman and the entire Batfamily, and placed him into a situation that routinely demanded he forsake his own personal morals. And yet, somehow, Dick is still the Same Old Dick.

This is the brilliance of Grayson, its ability to synthesize such contradictions. Grayson is both a tongue-in-cheek parody of the spy genre at the same time it’s an earnest spy thriller. It’s both an interrogation and celebration of DC superheroics. It is a story about mistrust, loneliness, and isolation…but also one about friendship, the importance of the connections we form with other people. It’s a story about Dick Grayson, forced out of his element and into the shadows of espionage, still shining brightly as the heart of the DCU.

[necrotic-nephilim]

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.

and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.

so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.

beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.

because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.

and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.

and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.

and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.

people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.

it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.

[crim-bat]

Well I regret sending that anon now because I inspired a rude person to send one as well, sorry. I still disagree with the framing. The body of your post is dissonant with that “I’m a long time fan of Jason” intro. I see people saying damian shouldn’t exist because he and Tim are hitting elbows both being robin and Tim existed first, and the only rebuttal needed is “I think Damian is an interesting character and I like reading about him” and I say that because like him. (And that very wrong damian criticism is pushback against people saying Tim shouldn’t exist because he doesn’t have a place to be right now.) You not having a similar feeling about Jason just… seems like you don’t like him? Calling it cannibalism instead of just the characters being around for decades and the same ground being trodden, when there are other characters that do this as well, notably even ones you bring up as counterexamples. I’m not going to say anything else because I think I laid it all on your doorstep already, sorry again and have a good night

Hold up a moment. You dont get to call me rude after firing off first and walk away. Many people do think Tim shouldn't be robin anymore and actively complain that he's still not moving from a junior role to a graduated title. Red robin wasn't perfect but it certainly wasn't worse than him going back to robin.

I'd challenge you, dear anon, to ask yourself a question.

1. Has Jason ever had a good all caste story?

2. Has he ever had an actually good story when he went postal as an anti hero? Under the hood doesn't count as he was purely the antagonist then.

3. How about a good story where he worked with his brothers and him constantly having a chip on his shoulder was endearing like Damian?

4. How about a run where he was batman for a bit and then the real deal showed up to beat the snot out of him?

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any bleed into what other characters do but there's nothing creative with what they've done with Jason because it all relies on him fundamentally never having a defined niche, outside of crime boss, to call his own.

And because Jason is placed where other characters that are more established and would otherwise be a better match for a story and because Jason has fundamentally nothing going on that wasn't cribbed from someone else, including the first iteration of the outlaws which was just a worse version of the outsiders which were also dicks friends (that's a 5th and 6th thing he took from another character, dear anon), he lacks the foundation to tell his own stories properly.

Dear anon, Jason, as he is treated right now, is a middle child copy cat who deserves better than both the writers who created that situation and the fans who enable it. Including you, dear anon

[zahri-melitor]

Was just reading some fic and realised with a start that I hadn’t consciously noticed how divergent the “I’ve just heard about this moment” version of Dick beating up Joker in the Last Laugh is to the comics.

I mean, I knew that the “Croc tries to drown Tim, Joker is blamed for killing Tim due to arranging the situation at Arkham” bit doesn’t get communicated properly and gets boiled down to “Dick thought Joker killed Tim”. But HOW and WHY Dick stops is also missed. 

Fandom telephone says “Bruce revived Joker” and I really don’t think it was anywhere near that simple (and also the simple version is more likely “Tim revived Joker”).

Like, we don’t GET details of the resuscitation, but there were five heroes present. Bruce, Helena and Steph arrived together. You’ve got Dick having a guilt breakdown and Tim who had to HANG OFF DICK’S ARM to get him to stop.

Panel staging suggests that the most likely situation was that it was Tim and Bruce who revived Joker (and probably Tim initially), but the idea that Helena and Dick were also taking turns is so goddamn tasty.

Because Helena, who was thinking she’d seen the remains of Tim being EATEN BY KILLER CROC, walking in to see Tim desperately trying to revive the Joker? That Helena, seeing the hero she considers a little brother, performing CPR? Helena, who’s standing closer to Joker than any of the others when he wakes up? Who says “we should have let him die”? She 100% could have felt that it was a wasted effort and still stepped up to help her little brother Tim, because he’s just a teen like the students she misses. She could have helped while still disagreeing with the outcome. She’s played by the rules while disagreeing with them plenty of times.

And did Dick? Does he just have his breakdown while Tim’s trying to revive the Joker, or does he step in to help out of guilt and because a team effort is more effective? Does Bruce order him to help as a way to try and get Dick out of his head? How does it feel to have the hands that punched Joker in the chest to the point that his heart stopped be the same hands that performed compressions to try and restart it?

(I largely suspect Steph did NOT participate and may have been sent to scout the rest of the Cathedral, due to her mask being in place, probably being the least CPR-qualified of the group AND she hadn’t had a chance to go “Tim you’re alive!” yet. Helena would have current first aid via teaching, and Bruce would be religious about it for himself, Tim and Dick. And Bruce IS training Steph at this exact point in canon, so would be across what he’s taught her and what he hasn’t)

Anyway, I’m having a lot of feels about Joker: Last Laugh today, because the character dynamics are so tasty. 

[armed-with-a-waffle-iron]

Bat Family Ages (with Sources & Panels)

Notes: I'm NOT using a "year zero"; the calendar year before "Batman: Year One" is "1 Year Before Batman".

TLDR

Ages at the end of Preboot (Batman: Year Twenty)- Bruce (45), Renee (37-38), Kate (33), Babs (27-28), Helena (26-27), Dick (26), Cass (21), Jason (20-21), Steph (19), Tim (17 18), Damian (10-11).

D.O.B.-

Bruce Wayne- 26 Years Before Batman

Renee Montoya- 7th September, 19 Years Before Batman

Kate Kane- 14 Years Before Batman

Barbara Gordon- 8-9 Years Before Batman

Helena Bertinelli- 8 Years Before Batman

Dick Grayson- 1st Day of Spring™, 7 Years Before Batman

Cassandra Cain-Wayne- 26th January, 2 Years Before Batman

Jason Todd- 16th August, 2 Years Before Batman

Stephanie Brown- 1 Year Before Batman

Tim Drake-Wayne- Batman: Year One

Damian Wayne- Batman: Year Nine

Long Version

Bruce Wayne- 26 Years Before Batman

On the 4th of January, Year One, a 25 year-old Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham after 12 years abroad on 4th January, months before his first outing as Batman (Batman: Year One #1). Unless his birthday is between Jan 1-4, Bruce turns 26 the year Batman is born.

Dick Grayson- 1st Day of Spring, 7 Years Before Batman

Dick Grayson's origin story is appears in the tail end of Batman: Dark Victory, which takes place in the 4th and 5th years of Batman's career.

In its sequel, Robin: Year One, Dick begins attending Bristol Middle School. And in Batman & Robin (2009) #13, Dick, as Batman, tells the Joker he had already figured him out at 12 but The Joker doesn't appear in Robin: Year One. So, Dick is probably 11 when he becomes Robin, in Year Five (Dark Victory). Dick is 19 years younger than Bruce.

Important for later, Dick becomes Nightwing, aged 19 (Nightwing: Year One and Batman #116) in Year Thirteen.

Jason Todd- August 16th, 2 Years Before Batman

According to his death certificate, Jason Todd was 15 years and 8 months old when he died on the 27th of April (Batman Files). His birthday is August 16th (Detective Comics #790). At this time, Dick Grayson was 21, having left the Robin mantle 2 years earlier; at 19 (Batman #436). Jason is around 5 years younger than Dick. He was hence Robin for less than 2 years, from when he was 13 going on 14 in Year Thirteen up to 27th April, Year Fifteen.

Stephanie Brown- 2 Years Before Batman

Steph is 15 when she debuts as Spoiler (Secret Origin 80-Page Giant). At the same time as her debut comic, Deathstroke (1991) Annual 1 has Dick saying he, one of the oldest Titans, is no older than 21 (the age he was when Jason died). Dick is 6 years older than Steph. So Steph debuts in Year Fifteen; the same year Jason dies and Tim becomes Robin.

Steph becomes Batgirl right before her freshman year of university, aged 18, going on 19 (Batgirl 2009 #1). This is in Year Nineteen. Which means that Preboot ends in Batman: Year Twenty as Steph has not yet entered sophomore year. Convergence takes place after of course.

Barbara Gordon- 8-9 Years Before Batman

Batgirl (2000) #45 shows that Babs was already Batgirl at 18. As an adult, Babs is 5'11" and yet she did not meet the minimum height requirements for the GCPD or FBI during Batgirl: Year One. She must have become Batgirl before she stopped growing, and so was at most 16 during Batgirl: Year One. She also says that she is older than Dick in Batgirl: Year One but they must be close enough in age for them to go to prom together (Detective Comics #871). My theory is that Babs didn't go to her own prom because she skipped grades and was or felt too young so her high school prom was actually when she went with Dick to his. Babs is somewhere between 1-2 years older than Dick.

There's more evidence for this. Dick is already a Teen Titan during Batgirl: Year One and in New Titans #89 said that he knew Donna Troy since they were both 13. So Babs likely became Batgirl between Year Seven and Year Eight, when she was 15-16 and Dick was 13-14. Also, Dick and Babs have a picnic as friends 12 years before The Black Mirror, in Year Twenty, so these ages are pretty perfect.

Important for later, Babs is shot by the Joker just before Jason is killed and becomes Oracle before Tim becomes Robin. This is in Year Fifteen; she is roughly 22 here given that Dick is 20-21 at the time. No panels just math :P

Cassandra Cain-Wayne- January 26th, 2 Years Before Batman

Cassandra Cain debuts in No Man's Land aged 17 (Batgirl 2000 #1) and turns 18 on the 26th of January the following year, though she only learns this after it has passed (Batgirl 2000 #33). Later that year, Bruce brings her to Jason's grave on the 16th of August, the day he would have turned 18 (Detective Comics #790). She is 7 months older than Jason.

Helena Bertinelli- 8 Years Before Batman

Helena Bertinelli was 8 when her family was murdered and the events of Huntress: Cry for Blood takes place 15 years after, following directly after No-Man's Land. Huntress is hence 23 following No-Man's Land. Cass turns 18 soon after No-Man's land, so Helena is around 5 years older than Cass.

But, Cass is born in January and Helena could be born later in the year. Helena Bertinelli is 21 years-old during Huntress: Year One; when she becomes the Huntress. She soon moves back to Gotham after Carvinal in Venice (late Jan-early Feb), and encounters Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. Babs is at most 22 here so Babs is close to 1 year older than Helena and Helena is slightly older than Dick. Huntress debuts at the tail end of Year Fourteen.

Damian Wayne- Batman: Year Nine

Dick and Stephanie call Damian a 10 year old in Batman and Robin #2 and Batgirl #17. One takes place before Steph starts uni (since Damian appears in Batgirl 2009 #1) and the other takes place during Steph's second semester of freshman year (Batgirl #13). So Damian is 9 years younger than Stephanie. He first appears aged 9 at the start of Year Nineteen and becomes Robin later that year, aged 10.

Renee Montoya- 7th September, 19 Years Before Batman

In 52 #14, published in 2006, we see Renee's passport and date of birth: 9/7/1970. It is the 14th week of the year so she would be 35 going on 36. 52 takes place in Year Eighteen, the calendar year Damian turns 9, so Renee is 27 years older than Damian.

She debuts as the second Question in 52 #48 the same year, aged 36.

Kate Kane- 14 Years Before Batman

Kate Kane is 32 at the time of Batwoman: Elegy, in Year Nineteen, since she was in the same class at West Point as the real-life activist Dan Choi, which means that she was part of the US Military Academy Class of 2003. Damian is 10 at the time so Kate is 22 years older than Damian.

Tim Drake-Wayne- Batman: Year One

Tim's age is THE weird one because DC are hellbent on keeping him at 17. It's too much for my brain, like how is he still 17 in Red Robin?? Let's say he seems to be only a year younger than Stephanie Brown a la Secret Origins 80-Page Giant or that he was bitten by a strange vampire bat during the One Year Later time skip. Your pick.

Fun fact: Dick permanently becomes Batman at 25 (in Year Nineteen), which is possibly the same age Bruce was when he became Batman.

[trackingthehuntress]

I don’t think I could ever really pick a favorite thing about Helena, but something I think I’ve loved since the beginning of my love for her, - starting with cry for blood and going on to reading her other stuff - something I love is that she’s not really ever a character who gets fixed. Basically all of her connections in the heroism community (except for like. Dinah and Renee) have at one point or another viewed her as a problem, as someone who needs their solution, as someone who needs to be managed or manipulated. So many other characters look at her and see something that needs to be controlled, and at times the individual comics’ narratives agree with this and uphold it. But when you look at the whole of her character history, you see someone who never has the exact answer, who is never sure if she is actually a hero or still that scared little girl whose family was murdered. She’s always throwing away her costume only to pick it up again a few days later. She isn’t static, but her problems run deeper than ones that can be given a simple fix.

where was I? Oh right - she’s not a character who gets fixed. Because every person who thinks they can fix her, or control her, or agrees with people who try, or anything like that? It fails, in any way that matters. Think about max lord, think about batman, think about nightwing, think about oracle. Even if their plans succeeded in the short term, did they have any lasting effect on her or who she is? No - they all ended badly for someone, and only someone who recognized the harm of treating someone like this and apologized was able to get anywhere close to a healthy, meaningful relationship with Helena (that would be Barbara, by the way). So the thing that i love is that even when the people around her are all trying to shove her into a box and then fix the person they’ve imagined her to be, she is allowed to exist as this multifaceted person who has failures and flaws and struggles yes, but ones outside of the two dimensional person the people around her see her as.

[sassylittlecanary]

How the Arrowverse Failed Helena Bertinelli

Generally I’m a big fan of the Arrowverse, but I wouldn’t be the first to point out Arrow’s bad track record when it comes to adapting female comic characters.

Huntress was a perfect character to feature on Arrow — an edgy hero with a penchant for violence and vengeance, much like Oliver himself.

The issue is that Arrow decided to turn Helena into a villain who takes innocent people as hostages and kills relentlessly. Her motivation is that her father killed her fiancé, and for that, she single-mindedly hunts him down in every episode she appears in. When someone else kills him, she’s devastated because she wanted to be the one to do it. Moreover, she’s mentored and trained by Oliver, who views himself as responsible for “failing” Helena because he couldn’t get her to stop killing. (He even came up with the idea for her to use a crossbow!) Essentially, her entire identity and origin story revolve around men — her father, her dead fiancé, and Oliver. (Also — she slept with Oliver. As in, the lover/fiancé/husband of one of her best friends in the comics. I literally said “ewww” when they kissed. Show Dinah and Helena some respect, I am begging you.)

This is a huge disservice to such a wonderful character. In contrast, comics!Helena was trained by the mafia, and she fights them not because they killed her lover, but because she takes it on as a personal crusade to prevent them from hurting more people. She fights human trafficking and protects children. She does kill, and this sometimes puts her in a complicated relationship with other heroes like Batman and Oracle. Yet at many points, she actively chooses not to kill, not to become the darkest version of herself. Vengeance is important to her, but compassion and justice are also core parts of her character. She’s witty, she’s intelligent, she’s kind. She’s a well-rounded character who’s so much more than just a vigilante with a crossbow. Additionally, she’s most associated with the Birds of Prey, which provides an ideal setting to show her humanity and the evolution of her own heroism. Her close relationships with other women, Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance specifically, make it even more striking that Arrow defines her based on her relationships to men. (Also, they position Huntress and Black Canary as enemies, which hammers another nail in the coffin of the representation of close female friendships.)

Considering how important female representation in sci-fi is, it’s frustrating to see a character who’s long been fleshed out in her friendships with other women turned into a bitter femme fatale whose actions have all been spurred by her relationships with men.

The Arrowverse has done a seriously good job with a lot of DC characters. Sadly, Helena isn’t one of them.

Also, she has one of the coolest costumes in DC Comics, and Arrow characteristically turns it into just another dark leather outfit with a domino mask. Boo.

[docgold13]

Heroes & Villains The DC Animated Universe - Paper Cut-Out Portraits and Profiles

The Huntress

Helena Bertinelli was the daughter of an organized crime overboss named Franco Bertinelli. As a child, she saw her parents murdered by Steven Mandragora, a lieutenant who killed his boss so to take over the Bertinelli empire.  Helena only managed to escape by hiding in a closet; yet she witnessed the whole ordeal and it scarred her for life.  

Sublimating her desire for revenge into crimefighting, Helena went on to become the Huntress.  She trained rigorously and became a world class gymnast and martial artist, capable of disarming and defeating multiple armed opponents.  Her weapons of choice were a self-reloading mini-crossbow and retractable bow-staff.

The Huntress was recruited into the Justice League when the team expanded its roster following the Thanagarian invasion.  Through the League’s resources, Huntress was finally able to track down Steven Mandragora who had recently resurfaced and was turning state’s witness as part of a plea deal.  

With the aid of The Question, The Huntress was able to take Mandragora down.  She had planning on killing him yet ultimately chose not when she saw that Mandragora was with his young son (a child roughly the same age Helena was when she saw her parents murdered).  Although she did not go through with her deadly act, Huntress' recklessness nonetheless resulted in her being expelled from the Justice League.

Undaunted, she continued to fight crime on her own, frequently teaming up with The Question (whom Helena had become romantically involved with).  When The Question was abducted by Project Cadmus, The Huntress alerted Superman and together they broke the Question free from his incarceration.  The Huntress was invited to rejoin the team but declined the offer.   

Some time later, The Huntress investigated strange behaviors on the part of Black Canary.  She discovered that Canary and other female member of the League were being mind controlled and forced to fight in Roulette’s Meta-Brawl.  Huntress and Black Canary worked together to free the others and Roulette’s operation was brought down.  

Actress Amy Acker voiced The Huntress with the headstrong heroine first appearing in the debut episode of the first season of Justice League Unlimited, ‘Initiation.’   

[punkeropercyjackson]

Superhero fans for years have been saying that Dick Grayson 'has a thing for redheads' because his two main canon love interests are redhead women and his most popular mlm ship is from one of the worst DC adaptions ever with a guy who also happens to be ginger but Princess Koriand'r is a black woman,Babara Gordon has multiple black adaptions and his other gfs have been Bea Bennett who is black too and Helena Bertinelli specifically when she got rebooted to be black/white mixed and Tim Drake is said to canonically have a type in blondes because he's canon bi now thanks to Bernard Dowd but in his second solo he was dating a black girl named Tam Fox and way back in his first run his first crush Ariana Dzerchenko dyed her hair blonde because she thought that's why he liked Stephanie Brown and Tim straight up made a very strained fake smile while thinking 'I hate it' and the fandom made a whole meme fanart trend of Kon-El Kent being upset and wishing he was blonde so Tim would've chosen him instead since he was previously considered Tim's canon boyfriend by fans.But when black people headcanon Hobie Brown as stritcly black4black or perfers to date black women over anyone else and make jokes about how he'd never date a white person because of how black punkish he is and there's nothing to disprove either since his only love interest is his Prowler variant's Mindy Mcpherson who's a black woman and him and Gwen Stacy were left ambigious in the finale version of Atsv,we're being 'uninclusive' and 'too mean'.Lol.Lmao even.What's y'all's opinion on the Percy Jackson show deciding to let Leah Jeffries keep her natural hair instead of the blonde afro wig they considered which was a good call in a meta sense since book!Annabeth Chase hates being blonde because she wants to be seen as more than her hair color btw

[violent138]

ask game #5 if you could go back and change the outcome of the poll that killed Jason Todd, would you?

Oooh went for the tough one immediately. See this one is weird, because Jason's always been the Robin That Died and Returned to me (spoiled for me early, and I watched the Under the Red Hood animated film when I was still very little). I also think that really intriguing consequences and darkness arose from his death and subsequent return (depressing as it is that such a cute little guy got voted out). I'd be lying if he wasn't an easy character to use, along with Helena Bertinelli, for some complex storylines and ethical quandries. As well as just explorations of guilt, regret, losses of innocence (all around), and some really wicked meta analyses of what it means that the audience wanted that.

Eerie and Roman-like as it is that his death was voted for, I think I'd leave the outcome of the poll as is.

Thanks for the ask!

[fiapple]

Helena's relationship with identity, & legacy, & self esteem just... they have me foaming at the fucking mouth. like, there's just so much going on there & she's so, so self-aware of so much of it and it's just- look, i'm not great at articulating myself but it is fascinating to me.

I'm doing a re-read/completion of read-through for her at the moment, and having gotten around to issue #2 again, it truly is amazing to me how much character work is consistently present in the writing, and from how early on. I know i already sorta talked about it in my post about the opening scene of issue #1, but truly the work put in on part of the author to establish helena as immensley psychologically nuanced, and from the jump, is something that goes so underaprecciated. like, there is so much there to analyze & to dig your teeth into. she's such, such, such a deeply internally rich character. And I'm going to use a particularly compelling scene from issue #2 as an example.

The Huntress (1989) #2

In the first chunk of this scene, Helena expresses a sense of determination that is deep to the point of becoming self-sacrificial. She's shown to view this as almost a form of resilence, if not a crusade, and on she feels an unyielding compulsion towards. She has to be "bigger" than them, becase that is what is required to fulfill her own personal mission, damn the cost.

However, this compulsion is also about survival. This is where we see one of many ongoing effects of helena's mafia-intwined upbringing. Having grown up in a powerful crime family, respect- or fear- is what she would have been taught gurantees one's ability to continue to live. It is the way of making certain that you will see tomorrow. even the violence she experienced as a child is put on to this, on to the assumption that a pervert with no respect was using her to get to guido.

This feeling is then expounded as helena begins to expand upon the cruciality of the huntress as a facet of her identity. She distinguishes "Helena Bertinelli" as someone who is weak, frightened, yielding, constantly at fear for her own safety. Someone who, in Helena's eyes, would never be able to garner the level of respect nor fear it would require to keep alive- a feeling that she is somewhat justified in considering the aforementioned mafia ties. She's shown to despises her own human capacity for cowardice, be that fear justified or otherwise, and just how much it has been pushed to a point of unlivability. it's the very foundation for her view of herself as someone who is weak.

And, not only that, but constant, corrosive, trauma-induced terror itself pushed her to an interal breaking point, to a point were her options were either to become someone else, or become nothing at all.

We see the learned behaviour of fear/respect as a shield collide with helena's low self-worth, along with her disempowered feelings as a result of trauma, and it is made explicit that this is why she created the Huntress.

She creates this ideal of strength, and fearsomeness, and respect, and empowerment that she can attempt to embody as a means of trying to survive. A not-her to fill her skin, someone who can choose to stand and fight, who's brave enough. In a way, doing this is the only means she has to face the world again at all!

The Huntress (1989) #2

The scene then continues, and the audience is given further insight into both the Huntress' role in Helena's psychology, and the level of self-awareness she has towards it.

Helena is shown to be cognizant of the fact that taking on the persona of the Huntress is a coping mechanism, and one that isn't neccesarily prudent at that. However, in spite of this, she still chooses to see the Huntress as being a seperate entity from herself, as a role that she steps into. It's as if, because she still feels the fear she so reviles, with it being 'part of "helena", she must refuse herself the ability to view it as also being part of the Huntress due to a need to find a sense of control somewhere. It's an approach to her coping mechanism that is self-depriciating by default, but a requirment to maintain her sense of security. additionally, she is conscious of much of the psychology at play behind her behaviour, but still chooses to feed into it's more questionable aspects because she doesn't know what else to do to survive. She's seen behind the curtains, yet chooses to buy into the narrative anyway.

Her overall self-awaredness is further punctuated by the complicated & conflicting morality existent within the role of the Huntress, and Helena's advertance thereof. In commenting that she is consumed by a need to avenge the bertinelli family, "right or wrong," helena is not only shown to have a complex relationship with the nature of her family's legacy- with the "justness" of their deaths- but also to be cognizant of how that complexity impacts the ethics of both her compulsions, and her acts as the Huntress... How sometimes it leads to her finding herself in a positon of ammorality to serve her own deserata, because this is what she was taught, and she does not know of another option that also allows her to feel as if she can take it. She was neither taught nor provided with another way of coping. And she knows it, she knows it and can discuss it quite articulatley, but she doesn't know what to do with it, or how to live without it, or where to put it down! It makes the next bit about the nature of denial within her family history all the more interesting.

See, in acknowledging her family's streak of denial in relation to the Huntress, Helena is showing awareness of both a generational cycle of learned behaviour, and how that learned behaviour influences her own pathology.

In this, she is positioning the persona of the Huntress as a justification. She is choosing to frame the role she takes on as the Huntress as that of one who does what must be done. Who "has to be" bigger than them. And, therein, she is using that assigned neccessity to negate the weight she feels as a result of the aforementioned ammorality.

This connection between the role of the Huntress & the generational passing of a tied denial & violence is further explored as Helena goes on to examine this behavioural-symbiote through the lens of her father's legacy, and the ongoing impact thereof. There are associations made with murder, ruination- tied to the hands of those once associated with her own father- and it is done-up in a bow made of it's celebration thereafter. In relishing that dual indulgence.

For Helena, we can then subsume, her indulgence is neither wealth, nor greed, nor power, nor sheer brutality unlike many a Bertinelli before her, but retribution. and she very well knows it.

Just... she is fucking wild to me. She's so fucking intelligent, and self-aware, and analytical, and considerate and it is making me fucking insane.

[grayson10yearslater]

Prepare to (re-)read the comics with us over the next year! Dick has probably appeared in more stories as Agent 37 than you think! We’ll check out most of them, starting with Grayson itself.

Main Grayson titles are in red, Agent 37's appearances in Bat comics blue, and in the wider DCU pink.

Nightwing (May 2014) #30: “Setting Son”

Secret Origins (December 2014) #8: "The Candidate"

Detective Comics Vol. 2 #36 (January 2015): "Terminal, Part 2"

Grayson #1 (September 2014): "Grayson"

Grayson #2 (October 2014): "Gut Feelings"

Grayson #3 (December 2014): "The Gun Goes Off"

Grayson #4 (January 2015): "The Raid"

Grayson #5 (February 2015): "We All Die At Dawn"

Grayson #6 (March 2015): "The Brains of the Operation"

Grayson #7 (April 2015): "Sin by Silence"

Grayson #8 (May 2015): "Cross My Heart & Hope to Die"

Batman and Robin Vol. 2 #34 (October 2014): "Robin Rises, Part 3: Ties That Bind"

Batman Vol. 2 #38 (March 2015): "Endgame, Part 4"

Batman Vol. 2 #40 (June 2015): "Endgame, Part 6"

Grayson Sneek Peak (July 2015): "Divergence: Grayson"

Batgirl Vol. 4 Annual #3 (July 2015): “The Gladius Objective”

Midnighter Vol. 2 #3 (October 2015): "Midnighter."

Midnighter Vol. 2 #4 (November 2015): "Midnighter"

Grayson #9 (August 2015): "Nemesis"

Grayson #10 (September 2015): "Nemesis, Part 2"

Grayson #11 (October 2015): "Nemesis, Part 3"

Starfire Vol. 2 #6 (January 2016): "Protection All Around"

Midnighter Vol. 2 #5 (December 2015): "Полуночник"

Grayson #12 (November 2015): "A Fine Performance"

Batman/Superman #25 (December 2015): "Savage Hunt, Part 1"

Batman/Superman #26 (January 2016): [Savage Hunt, Part 2:] "Teamwork"

Batman/Superman #27 (February 2016): [Savage Hunt, Part 3:] "Trust"

Starfire Vol. 2 #7 (February 2016): "Surrender"

Starfire Vol. 2 #8 (March 2016): "Lovers & Other Dangers"

Batgirl Vol. 4 #45 (December 2015): "Dearly Beloved"

Batman and Robin Eternal #1 (December 2015): "Batman and Robin Eternal"

Batman and Robin Eternal #2 (December 2015): "Ducks In A Row"

Batman and Robin Eternal #3 (December 2015): "Seeing Red"

Batman and Robin Eternal #4 (December 2015): "Death in the Pot"

Batman and Robin Eternal #5 (January 2016): "Arms of the Thunderer"

Batman and Robin Eternal #6 (January 2016): "Never Enough"

Batman and Robin Eternal #7 (January 2016): "A Night Out"

Batman and Robin Eternal #8 (January 2016): "The Curtain Falls"

Batman and Robin Eternal #9 (February 2016): "The Last to Die"

Batman and Robin Eternal #10 (February 2016): "He Whom God Helps"

Batman and Robin Eternal #11 (February 2016): "Mind Fields"

Batman and Robin Eternal #12 (February 2016): "Head Trip"

Batman and Robin Eternal #13 (February 2016): "Home is Where the Heart Is"

Batman and Robin Eternal #14 (March 2016): "Scare Tactics"

Batman and Robin Eternal #17 (March 2016): "Let's All Go to the Lobby"

Batman and Robin Eternal #18 (April 2016): "Past Projections"

Batman and Robin Eternal #19 (April 2016): "Spyraling Down"

Batman and Robin Eternal #20 (April 2016): "Death Spyral"

Batman and Robin Eternal #22 (May 2016): "Raise Your Glass"

Batman and Robin Eternal #23 (May 2016): "Zero Hour"

Batman and Robin Eternal #24 (May 2016): "All Out"

Batman and Robin Eternal #25 (May 2016): "Orphans"

Grayson #13 (December 2015): "A Ghost From The Tomb, Part 1"

Grayson #14 (January 2016): "A Ghost from the Tomb, Part 2"

Robin War #1 (February 2016): "Robin War, Part One: With The Greatest Of Ease"

Grayson #15 (February 2016): "Robin War, Part 2: The Originals"

Detective Comics Vol. 2 #47 (February 2016): "Robin War, Part 3: Getting Dirty"

We Are Robin #7 (February 2016): "Robin War, Part 4: Jail Birds"

Robin: Son of Batman #7 (February 2016): "Robin War, Part 5: Fight the Nightmare"

Robin War #2 (March 2016): "Robin War, Part Six: The Daring Young Man"

Batman and Robin Eternal #26 (May 2016): "New World"

Titans Hunt #1 (December 2015): "Titans Hunt, Chapter One: The Brave and the Bold"

Titans Hunt #2 (January 2016): "Titans Hunt, Chapter Two: Trouble Always Finds Me"

Titans Hunt #3 (February 2016): "Titans Hunt, Chapter Three: Friends Like These"

Titans Hunt #4 (March 2016): "Titans Hunt, Chapter Four: Masks"

Nightwing: Rebirth #1 (July 2016): "Nightwing: Rebirth"

Robin 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 (May 2020): "The Lesson Plan" Robins #5 (February 2022): "Being Robin Part Five" Nightwing 2024 Annual #1 (June 2024): "The Secret Origin of Bea Bennett, Pirate Queen"

Grayson 10 Years Later: Meta Posts | Investigation Challenge | Mission Challenge

[necrotic-nephilim]

about me

hi, i'm luciferos. i'm 22, disabled, Deaf, queer, and a general menace. my pronouns are they/them. this is an 18+ batcest blog. i'm pro-fandom and pro-kink. I avidly support SALS, YKINMKATO, and DLDR. most of what i write is of the darkfic, dead dove variety. i'm a fan of the comics, mainly the pre-Flashpoint era of the Batfam. some of my favorite comics are: Red Robin (2009), Batman/Huntress: Cry For Blood, Birds of Prey (2010), Young Justice (1998), Huntress (1989), Sword of Azrael (2022), Grayson (2014), Robin War, and the Question (1986). i can be a comics purist, but i just tend to leave alone fandom content i dislike and i think everyone should have fun with their blorbos, whether they've read the comics or not.

my DMs are open for anyone who wants to chat, make friends, or just yell about your favorite character/ships. asks are also open if you wanna send a headcanon, question, or just, you know. yell. please feel free to come talk to me, i thrive on being asked my opinion on things! my (mostly unused) main blog is @devilbonesofmetal, so that's where follows and likes come from. i don't do DNIs, your internet experience is your job to curate, so feel free to block me if you're uncomfortable with what i post.

if you ever want to create a translation/podfic/fanart/etc or write something inspired by one of my fics or posts, you have *complete* permission to do so! just tag me because i'd love to see it too!

some of my favorite ships are: Tim/Jason, Tim/Dick, Tim/Damian, Dick/Bruce, Jason/Bruce, Ra's/Tim, Slade/Tim, Slade/Dick, Tim/Bruce, Jean-Paul/Tim, Cass/Tim, and Robin Pile.

and some of my favorite characters are: Tim Drake, Dick Grayson, Cass Cain, Helena Bertinelli, Luke Fox, Jean-Paul Valley, Bette Kane, Kara Zor-L, Zinda Blake, and Slade Wilson.

i write fanfiction, but i write anonymously on ao3 (for reasons explained here) so if you'd like to see all my stuff, here's a link to my tumblr masterlist and here's a link to my ao3 series, both of which contain all the fics i've written. aside from the typical ship and character tags, my vague tagging system on this blog is:

necrotic festerings - any ship/fandom metas i've written

necrotic answerings - answering any asks

necrotic writings - my fics

necrotic works in progress - rambling about fics i'm working on

divine and necrotic - tag for my partner @divine-dominion and i being gay on main

necrotic apcryopha - tag for my other partner @eebuckley and i also being gay on main

necrotic nuisance - my shitposting/low effort/non-serious tag

and, just for fun, some of the more interesting metas i've written:

why DC x DP crossovers are so popular

why the Batfamily fandom doesn't interact with canon & related thoughts

JayTim in the New-52 Deep Dive

"why aren't ships involving the women in the Batfam considered Batcest?"

advice for getting into pre-Flashpoint comics

[zahri-melitor]

The more I read about Duke the more I realise the fandom knows literally nothing about Duke except:

"he's a Robin!" (not really, by any real standards of 'Robin'. He was a leader in We Are Robin, but he's never worked with any Batman under that title)

He's one of Batman's kids! (he was fostered for MAYBE 18 months our time and his parents were also living at the Manor at the same time. He's been with relatives since early 2018: first his cousin Jay and now I believe his mum Elaine since 2022 or so?)

He is a meta with light-based powers (which he does not discover until Dark Nights: Metal and rarely uses on page instead of hitting things with batons)

The other Batkids consider him a sibling! (Uhhh well he has a relationship with Cass, and appeared in several family group scenes while he was fostered, which mostly noted that none of the others knew him as more than 'the new kid'; since he moved out of the Manor he has not done so)

Look, at this point he's an outer Bat family member, on a similar level to Harper Row, Helena Bertinelli, Julia Pennyworth, Luke Fox or maybe at best Stephanie Brown.

Unless you're talking about WFA he's not an inner circle character who is a 'Wayne'.

[itsraining-honey]

alright homos. a couple days ago i had a dream and i’m gonna write out the entire thing (from memory) as best as i can.

it starts at a lake house, a bunch of dc characters are there on vacation. batfamily, titans, shit like that.

everyone’s having a good time and someone comes out complaining of all the floaties and beach stuff left in the water. it was night time and they wanted the stuff to not be whisked away by animals or thieves or whatever.

dick and tim go out and retrieve the floaties and stuff and as that happens, someone explodes a dam at the end of the lake (which wasnt that far from where they were.)

alarmed, everyone goes into panic mode, trying to get out of the water. misfit, who was still in the water with some others, was being idk pulled or something down the lake and she was screaming n shit.

helena (bertinelli) jumps into the water and swims towards her, grabbing her and pulling her to the surface while donna troy flew over and grabbed misfit, taking her to the lake house.

helena was still stuck in the water and being pulled by the force of the dam exploding (?) and is now drowning.

gwenpool is here for some fucking reason and is like “i’ll help you!” and helps helena from not being sucked in entirely but like a shark swam in from the other side jaws 3-D style and came at her, attacking and killing her.

now apparently, i must’ve had some meta conscious lucid moment in my dream because then i was at the lake house with the others after watching helena die by the shark, complaining about how this was some scheme by DC to not write solos for helena bertinelli anymore 😭😭😭

then i woke up from frustration.

the end.

@birds-of-x