#look so tim forced his way into the robin/sidekick role

[batfamhyperfixation]

New Robin Tim: *Just sitting there happily watching the Incredibles with Dick and Bruce*

Dick and Bruce: *secretly watching Tim and glancing at each other every time Syndrome comes on screen*

[wesavegotham]

if you were a dc writer and had complete freedom to do whatever you wanted with Damian would you make damian leave robin's cloak but without destroying development so he becomes an independent hero without being a red hood 2.0?

The thing is, I know sooner or later DC will give Bruce another Robin even though it keeps getting harder and harder to find a character archetype that isn't yet part of the batfamily and they also already have enough problems explaining how Bruce raised all these sidekicks without being too old to be Batman. But before that day comes I want to see DC just letting Damian be Robin. Like Dick, Jason (at least for a few years) and Tim got to be. With Damian it feels like his role is never secure.

It started with him being Robin to Dick's Batman and of course that didn't last long. After one year DC demanded that they bring back Bruce and the only reason Damian got to stay on as Robin was probably because Grant Morrison had always planned to kill him off anyway. There were also a bunch of comics in which characters told Tim he's better and their Robin, despite Damian being the official Robin.

Then Grant Morrison killed Damian off and it looked like Snyder would replace Damian with Duke or Harper as Robin. DC did decide to bring Damian back in the end, but Snyder gave Bruce amnesia and Tomasi's Batman and Robin book had to end. They gave Damian the Robin: Son of Batman solo book, which is an excellent book, but it was shortlived because of DC Rebirth. DC Rebirth seemed pretty determined to keep Damian away from Batman by putting him in two awful Teen Titans teams while they put Tim back in the Robin suit, only slapping a second R on it. Tynion made it pretty clear that it was his goal to make Tim Robin again.

Teen Titans by Adam Glass had the explicit goal to kick Damian out of the mantle in the most dishonorable way and Bendis made Tim call himself just Robin again. Since then they gave Damian a Robin solo, but after only 17 issues they cancelled it (according to Williamson not because of sales) and gave Tim a Robin solo instead. Damian has also been excluded from batfamily events for ages.

Like...can we just get Damian being Robin without anyone trying to take it from him for a few years? Letting him actually build relationships with the batfamily? He barely has one with Bruce, his own father, and most of his interactions with Dick are "remember when I was Batman and you were my Robin" nostalgia bait. His relationships with the others were either erased by the New 52 reboot (Steph), barely developed (Tim, Jason) or were never fleshed out in the first place (Cass, Kate, Barbara, Duke).

So to answer your question, if I had complete freedom I wouldn't force Damian to take a new mantle yet. I would tell the writers to stop sabotaging him because of their nostalgia or desire to make money by being the creator of the next Robin.

Damian is still too young, DC has barely used his story potential and his relationships with the other bats (and the wider DC universe) are underdeveloped. If they kicked him out of the prestigious Robin mantle for good right now I fear that DC will never fix their mistakes. DC will put out a Batman and Robin ongoing, they won't put out a Batman and "insert Damian's new mantle here" comic. We also aren't in the 90s anymore when even a new character like Azrael could hold a solo title for over a 100 issues. I genuinly believe that kicking Damian out of the mantle would just end with him getting sidelined even more.

[thevindicativevordan]

Why isn't Nightwing a bigger deal? He has all of Batman's skills and Superman's faith in humanity and is arguably the most beloved hero in the DCU, but most people seem to know him either as the leader of the N̶o̶t̶ ̶J̶L̶ Teen Ttians or just Robin.

Thank you for asking me about Nightwing, I've been wanting to write a piece about him for a while now. The short version is that everyone who claims Dick becoming Nightwing was him "moving out of Batman's shadow and becoming his own man" is completely wrong.

Dick Grayson is a fantastic character, someone who saved Bruce Wayne in-universe both by forcing Batman to grow up a bit, and the countless times he saved Batman's life as his partner whether as Robin or Nightwing. Dick saved Batman in the real world as well, hard to believe but Batman was actually in danger of being cancelled due to poor sales early on. Enter Robin, a young daredevil audience stand in the creators hoped would get kids interested in reading Batman. And it worked! Sales on Batman doubled once Robin showed up which is crazy to think about, but Dick Grayson has always been a popular character. Cartoons like Teen Titans, Batman: The Animated Series, and The Batman only helped grow his audience.

Character-wise, Dick Grayson really does fill a number of crucial roles in the DCU. For Batman, Dick is proof that Batman is a positive force. Meeting Batman helped change Dick for the better, helped him heal after his parents died. With Dick, Batman can take comfort in knowing that yes, he has made a difference in the world for at least one orphan boy, which is all he wanted when he lost his parents himself. To the wider DCU, Dick is a friendly face who convinces others that Batman is competent and not a complete asshole. He took this kid in, trained him to be one of the best heroes the DCU has seen, and did it all out of the kindness of his heart. That someone like Dick can confront the evils of Gotham and not break means there's still hope for that city. As Robin, Dick has led the Titans and is an icon in his own right as The Sidekick, the original, the one every other Robin is built around copying or contrasting. The one all other superhero sidekicks are drawing on as a basis. As Robin Dick Grayson is very much on Batman's level.

Just not as Nightwing. As Nightwing, Dick has been a second rate Daredevil which means he's a third rate Batman (fully prepared to get hate for this but I've read and enjoyed the Miller and Bendis DD runs so I feel entitled to my opinion). A typical Nightwing run tends to go like this: Moving to Bludhaven (which is Gotham... but WORSE!), Dick Grayson usually enrolls in a pointless job we don't care about in order to provide some meaningless soap opera drama that doesn't go anywhere. Patrolling the city as Nightwing, he fights a variety of bad guys who are usually rather lame and unthreatening, with his big bad being a Kingpin knockoff called Blockbuster. Villains are fought, long running plotlines are set up, then everything is abandoned because it's Batfamily event time, and Dick has to run back to Gotham in order to play sidekick again. Usually his involvement is completely superfluous and it would've been better if the writer had gotten to opt out. By the time we finally get back to Nightwing's solo plotlines, the audience has usually ceased to care and the run gets cut short.

That's how Nightwing has been since the New 52 at least. Anyone who thinks that's "becoming their own man" is out of their mind. Dick is so thoroughly in Batman's shadow that he got shot in the head and spent a longer time as "Ric" which everyone fucking hated and sold like shit, than he did as Agent Grayson which was extremely well-received. Reiterating: Ric went on longer than Grayson because of a fucking Batman plotpoint Tom King wanted where Bruce was sad and cut off from the Batfamily because of Dick getting shot. Not just calling out King either, how many times was Kyle Higgins Nightwing run derailed because of Scott Snyder's crossovers? Or how about that entire run getting dumped to the side because Johns wanted to out Dick during Forever Evil, a Justice League/Lex Luthor story? DC has repeatedly made their contempt for Nightwing clear, he's Batman's sidekick still in their eyes, and he serves whatever story role the Batman writer wants.

Hell his best stories tend to have been the ones where he's not Nightwing. He was Robin in a good chunk of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans run. Morrison really showcased his depth as a character when they wrote him as Batman, their time with Dick under the cowl was actually one of the first Batman runs I ever read, and no Nightwing run has ever matched it in terms of quality in my humble opinion. Scott Snyder's work with DickBats also was a high point for the character, showing Dick as competent and examining his relationship with Gotham and the Gordons. King and Seeley gave him one of the best comic runs with Grayson, a series where he wasn't even a "superhero" technically! When it comes to actual pre-New 52 Nightwing runs that are highly recommended where he *is* Nightwing, there's Chuck Dixon and uhhhhhhh... Tomasi's brief run before Dick became Batman? It's not exactly an overwhelming list.

Look there has been good work done with Nightwing, I'm not claiming there hasn't been. Tim Seeley wrote a great run with Nightwing Rebirth. Seeley fleshed out Dick's Rogues Gallery with cool new ones like Raptor, he brought back old foes like Dr. Hurt (why oh why couldn't you have brought back Flamingo too?), he gave Dick's world some character it solely needed. Bludhaven under Seeley is pretty much the only time I've really felt like it lived up to being Dick's city.

The problem with fictional cities is you have to put in the work to give them the character of real cities. You have to make the cities feel like characters in their own right. Gotham is the best example of this, it's a character all it's own, one that tells you a lot about Batman and his cast. In contrast Bludhaven is usually one of the worst. Any place that wants to claim to be worse than the city that is built over the gate to hell and gets wrecked every other month by the Arkham freaks has to really put in the work to compete. Simply put, Bludhaven typically fails utterly. There's nothing about it that makes you really buy it's worse than Gotham, I mean does anyone really think Nightwing's Rogues wouldn't get their lunches eaten by Batman's? No, no one genuinely buys that. When Bludhaven claims to be worse, it just comes across as tryhard, an attribute that does end up telling you about Nightwing in unintentional ways.

So Seeley didn't do that. Instead he created a city built for a hero like Dick Grayson. Someone who is bright and flashy, but does have an element of darkness to him. Someone who loves the spotlight, but often uses it to obscure. Seeley turned Bludhaven into Las Vegas, and that was the fucking best concept for Bludhaven I have ever seen, it makes so much sense. Las Vegas is the "Entertainment Capital of the World" and isn't that the perfect city for a hero who got their start working in the circus? Isn't the aesthetics of the gleaming casinos, the glamorous sex appeal of the performers, and the spectacle of the shows, all being used to cover up the seediness of mob bosses meeting backstage perfect for Nightwing? It's so utterly unlike New York City, yet Las Vegas is still dangerous, it's got a crime culture all it's own. Seeley used it to great effect, as did Humphries during his brief run, and I will always be pissed that DC didn't continue to use it. That should have stuck around and been the definitive look for Bludhaven.

How Seeley's take on Bludhaven was treated feels like a small scale version of how Nightwing in general gets treated. Whenever creators pitched ideas for him, if editorial thought there was potential to break big, they asked for those ideas to be repurposed for Batman instead. Anything big or good gets repurposed for Batman or tossed to the side so Nightwing can go back to his default: having irrelevant adventures in a city that is supposedly worse than Gotham but can't live up to it. Just like how Nightwing is supposedly better than Batman but never gets to show it. Goddamn it's so frustrating seeing his potential get wasted like that.

The Nightwing book should be one of DC's most ambitious books in terms of storytelling. You can go from traditional superhero stories, to romantic soap opera, to spy stories, to crime noir, to horror, to cosmic adventures, and ALL of them would fit because Nightwing is someone who has a foot in both Gotham and Metropolis. He's got friends everywhere on every team, and has been a hero longer than most Leaguers have at this point. No reason DC should still be afraid to let him loose and insisting on hewing close to what Dixon established almost over 30 years ago is only holding him back. At the very least get him some better Rogues, why the hell didn't he get to keep Professor Pyg? That's Dick's villain not Bruce's! Bullshit that they didn't let Dick keep him. Hopefully Flamingo comes back, with a slight revamp I think he'd make a great reoccurring Nightwing Rogue.

Luckily it does look somewhat like Nightwing fans have reason to be optimistic. While Taylor isn't to my taste, DC clearly views him as a "big" writer, and that they put him on Nightwing says a lot. Taylor has been selling well so far, so hopefully he gets to tell his story, hilarious that even he lampshaded having to write Dick running over to Gotham for another tie-in after Taylor's big opening arc was all about Dick committing himself and his money to Bludhaven. Scott Snyder is apparently working on a Black Label Nightwing book which will explore how he's a different detective than Bruce. The Gotham Knights video game has him as one of the main stars, and while Titans is... controversial, it's one of the most popular streaming shows and Dick is the main character. There's a lot of content coming that features him in the starring role, and that will only help his star rise further.

For the first time in, well, ever it feels like DC may be serious about elevating him. Time will tell if it pays off, but I for one choose to be optimistic that the 2020s will be a turning point for Dick Grayson where Nightwing becomes hugely popular in his own right. Not just as Batman's sidekick.

[aspiring-wildfire]

I appreciate your post, but I think that, by avoiding one cliché, Jason being the angry Robin, you're falling into the trap of another one: Dick being the angry Robin. He wasn't more angry than the other ones. They all had their moments of great anger and of great controll over their emotions. Truth is, none of them fall into a neat little box and we should, imo, stop trying to do that. Let them be multifaceted. Tim was a jock at first, for instance and Dick was pretty nerdy.

hi! i totally get what you’re saying, and honestly the whole point i was trying to get at with that post was that they’re all more complicated than they often get treated (and that the roles they get slotted into often aren’t the right ones even if they were that simple) so i definitely don’t think any of them fall in a neat box. that said, this also gives me a chance to talk about my Absolute Best Boy dick grayson so buckle up y'all!! i love my boy and i am always thinking about him!!!

okay so first of all: i do think that, of the four of them, Dick has the worst temper. he canonically had a huge problem with his temper when he was younger, and i really think it does him a disservice to dismiss how fucking hard he works to keep that under control. that's not at all to say that the "happy sunshine boy with vague theater kid energy big brother figure" characterization of dick is wrong, though! he's both! dick feels everything so strongly and just fucking cares so much about the world and the people in his life, and that makes him incredibly kind and wonderful and potentially really fucking angry.

There's a reason he often gets referenced as kind of the gold-standard of the superhero world; in a lot of ways, dick is the embodiment of what a hero should be. he does what he does because he really cannot bear the idea of being able to help people and not doing it (ric grayson arc dni). there's a reason he makes lifelong friends everywhere he goes, and that's that dick is a paragon hero who draws people into his orbit by the sheer force of his compassion and charisma. that magnetism, the way he supports and inspires the people around him to do good, is so important because it's... kind of one of the backbones of the whole superhero community? depending on the timeline you're using, robin either already exists when the JL starts or gets established very early on, usually before identities get revealed, meaning that from whichever perspective you're looking at things dick was there very early in the creation of a superhero community, and on top of that had really strong personal relationships with all of the big 3 heroes. considering how close batman and robin were then (robin was really the only one of the younger heroes who had more of a partnership than a sidekick relationship with their mentor, bc he and bruce really needed each other in a way that wasn't necessarily true with the other heroes) and how fucking extraverted and adorable a baby dick grayson was, it's fair to say dick was one of the best-known and probably most loved heroes in the entire community basically from minute one, and as things expanded and other kid heroes started popping up- most of whom were directly inspired by robin- that circle only expanded. batman was the hero that kind of started the idea of heroes, but dick was the one who created the idea of younger superheroes and the vision of a superhero community that could grow and evolve.

bruce is a good man and a great hero, and he's the fucking batman, there basically isn't anyone more competent, but he's also haunted by his trauma in a way that prevents him from really being a symbol of hope the way dick makes himself right away, and bruce knows that. he's so fucking proud of dick (bad parent bruce arcs dni) bc he sees all the best parts of what he wanted to build without the pain and with all the best parts of dick grayson added in, and that's kind of the dream of batman? batman was created to make sure that no one will ever have to suffer the way bruce did ever again, but bruce is also way too fucking smart and frankly too emo not to realize that the "criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot" and therefore could be easily terrified, and that that role is something he's just a lot more able to fill, especially super angsty young adult bruce who was kind of tearing himself apart before dick came along. robin though? robin was that light in the dark, because dick was that light in the dark. that's who he is and who he's always been, even as a kid desperately and furious and grieving. at the end of the day he's just a good person who does good things because he wants the world to be better.

obviously though, that's not to say he doesn't have flaws, and i personally tend to think that the biggest of them is easily his temper. dick has in a lot of ways had a brutal and very painful life, and the massive eldest daughter syndrome he's got kicking around plus his main emotional role models growing up being bruce and alfred means he's... kind of the worst at dealing with his emotions in a healthy way. 9 times out of 10, that manifests in self-destructive or self-sacrificing actions, but it also sometimes bleeds out as (sometimes justified, sometimes not so much) anger. he and bruce's partnership split up because it was basically immovable object meets unstoppable force- in other words, bruce's unparalleled stubborness and control issues didn't mix well with a late-teens dick grayson's irrepressible need for freedom and very touchy temper. dick has a lot of anger, but over time he works really fucking hard to get it under control, and he mostly does! even when he slips up, he almost always realizes and regrets it pretty quickly thereafter (the most notable time being when he literally beat the joker to death with his bare hands). i mean fuck, the fact that he and damian have the kind of relationship they do is a testament to how fucking hard dick's worked over the years to get his temper under control and keep himself in check, bc i fucking love damian but the patience you would need with that kid is UNMATCHED.

even setting aside his temper, though, he's still very much a flawed character, and when that doesn't manifest in a hot temper it can often show up looking a lot like bruce?? especially as he gets older and takes on more responsibility and becomes a leader for a lot of teams, dick grapples a lot with the ways he's similar to bruce and how that isn't always something he likes about himself- at the end of the day, dick is a genius level intellect with an incredible mind for strategy and hard choices and is as hypercompetent and skilled as he can be impulsive, but that strategic knack? the ability to make the tough calls?? yeah he doesn't love that! he can do it, and he's really fucking good at it, but he also hates that he can- he doesn't want to be able to look at people as pieces, he doesn't want to be able to set aside his love for his teammates and take a coldly strategic approach that could mean sending them into danger, but he knows he can, and he knows sometimes someone needs to, and there's no chance his hero complex would put that weight on anyone else's shoulders, especially considering the fact that, simply put, the best candidate for the job is always gonna be a bat. he won't make any of his younger siblings make those calls bc he knows how hard they are to live with, even as he hates the fact that he can live with them or make them at all. dick is absurdly good at what he does- he's better trained than nearly anyone, he's a natural leader who can always see the big picture, his gut instinct is unparalleled, and imo he's probably one of the best/most talented superheroes there is overall bc he's literally been doing this nearly his whole life.

tl;dr dick grayson is stubborn and kind and loving and brilliant and angry and patient and passionate and hopeful and tough and skilled and so deeply, genuinely good and i would die for him

[sohotthateveryonedied]

Hiii!! I really love your tumblr posts and I'm pretty new to the Batfam (meaning I have only read fics and textposts about them, no comics) and I wanted to ask about the year Bruce/Batman gets "lost in time". I know general things of what the kids have been doing–Dick became batman and fired Tim from robin, giving it to Damian, everyone thinking Tim was crazy for believing Bruce was alive, (don't really know what Jason was up to though, was he still murderous towards Tim? Does the pit still affect him? Also I have no idea about Cass and Duke, were they introduced at this point??) Anyways, my real question was why was Bruce lost in time, what villain put him there? And how did he get out? And how long was he "dead"? Was Bruce in another reality or like just asleep the whole time? Oh! And how soon did this happen after Damian got introduced to the family–a couple months?

I'm so sorry this is so long, but I hope you answer and thank you!!

(I’m going to try and cover all my bases here by going into how exactly Bruce “died,” what went down during the Battle For the Cowl, what the Batkids did while Bruce was gone, and how Bruce came back. Hopefully it all makes sense?? We’ll see how it goes lmao.)

Part 1 - What Happened to Bruce:

So there was this event called Final Crisis (which I won’t go completely into since it would make this post a million times longer than it already is), but the bottom line is that Darkseid wants to overthrow reality and release his Anti-Life Equation, which would overthrow the whole planet and turn everyone into slaves. (If you’re interested in knowing more about the storyline, here’s a Reddit thread that explains it WAY better than I could.) 

What I CAN tell you is that during his final confrontation with Darkseid, Bruce is hit by an Omega Beam and turned into a burnt chicken nugget killed. Poor guy.

Final Crisis #6

Clark and Diana bring the body back to the Batcave and break the news to the Batfamily. Batman #687 covers a good portion of the aftermath such as Bruce’s funeral, the Batfamily grieving, and Dick coming to terms with his new responsibility of becoming Batman.

Batman #687

Part 2 - Battle For the Cowl: 

Musical chairs time, fellas! After word gets out that Batman is gone, Gotham erupts into chaos. Dick doesn’t want to take over the mantle, Tim needs Dick to take over the mantle, and Jason says “fuck it” and takes over the mantle himself because somebody around here has to. He becomes this murderous psychopathic Batman and starts taking out criminals with deadly force because someone’s gotta do the job, so it might as well be him.

Batman: Battle For the Cowl #1

(Okay honestly, this series had some pretty bad characterization overall, which sucks since it’s such an important storyline. Jason is portrayed as this violent psychopath, which...okay, he was kind of insane after the Pit and all, but not to this degree. Personally, I choose to owe the bad characterization to Bruce’s death because as much as Jason resents Bruce for all he’s done, he does still love him and losing him would be devastating, which would exacerbate his already fragile mental health. As for Damian, this happens roughly three years after his first appearance, so we can assume it’s been a few months since he first joined the family. He’s still relatively new at this point, so nobody knows how to write him yet. He ends up being depicted as if his main two personality traits are Bratty and Assassin-Child and that’s it. It’s all just a mess.)

Anyway, Tim tells Dick to become Batman and stop Jason’s reign of terror. Dick says no, so Tim follows Jason’s lead by saying “fuck it” and putting on the cowl himself. He goes to confront Jason, which ends in Jason beating the crap out of him (again) and leaving him for dead after Tim declines his offer to become Jason’s Robin. Dick goes to save Tim and ends up fighting Jason. 

Battle For the Cowl #3

Dick wins, Jason disappears, Tim is fine, and Dick finally gets his head out of his ass and becomes Batman. 

Part 3 - What Happens to Each Batkid While Bruce is “Dead”?:

Dick: 

As I said, Dick becomes the new Batman a month after Bruce’s death. He’s got big shoes to fill, and it takes some time for him to get used to his new role. He and Damian end up flipping around the classic Batman and Robin dynamic, with Batman now as the fun counterpart to Robin’s edginess. Dick, Damian, and Alfred relocate to the penthouse above the Wayne Foundation building, operating out of a secret Bat-Bunker in the basement.

Batman #688

Jason: 

After Battle For the Cowl, Jason is still batshit insane and determined to make Dick’s already stressful life even harder by becoming a supervillain with an ugly costume and an even uglier hairstyle. (I know it’s just because the artist sucked, but still. Jason is horrifying to look at during this time.) He mostly just gets on Dick’s nerves by running around Gotham with his new sidekick Scarlet and killing criminals as Batman and Robin wannabes. Eventually, Dick has Jason committed to Arkham Asylum and he hangs out there until Bruce returns.

Batman and Robin (2009) #5

Tim: 

Tim...doesn’t do great after Bruce’s death, mentally. Dick makes Damian Robin, his reasoning being that Robin is more of a sidekick and he sees Tim as his equal. By making Damian Robin, Dick hopes that it will give him the stability he needs to keep him from straying back toward the “bad” side. (It’s the right move ultimately, although his execution was pretty messed up since he didn’t discuss it with Tim beforehand, but he’s allowed to make mistakes. Dick’s father just died and now he’s in charge of picking up the pieces of their broken family. It’s a lot to handle.) 

Long story short, Tim has a breakdown, realizes that Bruce is alive, dons the Red Robin identity, and cuts ties with his family to travel the world in search of proof. It’s a rough time. 

Red Robin #1

Damian: 

Our little guy becomes Robin! So proud of him! As I explained earlier, Dick makes Damian his Robin with the assumption that it will keep him out of trouble, and he’s right on that account. He mentors Damian, teaching him how to channel his violent instincts into something productive, and it works! Slowly but surely, Damian makes the transition from bratty assassin to actual hero!

Batman and Robin (2009) #22

Cass:

Duke sadly was not introduced at this point in time, so he missed out on all the pandemonium. Cass, however, has been Batgirl for years by now, but she got kind of pushed aside by the writers after Bruce’s death. Bruce disappears shortly after adopting Cass, but once he was “dead,” the writers sort of moved Cass around for a while, not quite knowing what to do with her. First she was with the Outsiders. Then they got disbanded and Cass tried forming a new network of heroes to take over for Batman if needed. Then she helped out in said network during Battle for the Cowl, taking care of a newly ravaged Gotham. Then Cass gave the Batgirl mantle to Stephanie Brown after she became disillusioned with the role, thanks to the loss of her father and mentor. Then Cass picked up and moved to Hong Kong to “follow Bruce’s plans” by continuing whatever work he had set up for her there. It was all very vague and confusing, and Cass more or less got swept under the rug during this time. Thanks, writers.

Batgirl (2009) #1

Part 4 - How Bruce Came Back: 

When the Blackest Night storyline happens, the Justice League realizes that the corpse buried under Bruce’s grave is apparently not the real one and that he’s actually alive out there somewhere! How wild is that! This is further proven by Dick after he places Bruce’s body in a Lazarus Pit to revive, which has the same result because it’s very clearly Not Bruce and they should have listened to Tim from the start.

Batman and Robin (2009) #9

Anyway, what actually happened is that the Omega Beams that Darkseid shot at Bruce didn’t kill him, but rather blasted him back through time to the prehistoric era with his memories wiped. The Omega Energy inside of Bruce ends up catapulting him through various time periods, which is all part of Darkseid’s plan. With each time-hop, Bruce builds up more Omega Energy in his body which, when he gets back to his original time period, will be unleashed and destroy everything.

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5

It’s been a little under two years since Final Crisis, though in-universe it’s uncertain exactly how long Bruce has been “dead.” We can assume it’s been a year, give or take. The way he comes back is too scientific and complicated for me to understand, so uhhhh the bottom line is that Tim and a few Leaguers save Bruce at the Vanishing Point and the day is saved! Hooray! 

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6

(If you want to read about how it actually goes down, then I seriously recommend reading Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. It’s only six issues, so it’s a quick read and it explains the situation far better than I ever could.)

Bruce eventually reunites with his family after spying on them for a period of time as Insider to see what has changed in his absence:

Bruce Wayne: The Road Home

After that, things quickly settle back into their new normal. Dick and Damian stay on as Batman and Robin. Bruce goes back to being Batman as well, with him handling Batman Incorporated business and Dick continuing as Gotham’s defender. Tim keeps the Red Robin outfit, Steph stays on as Batgirl, and Cass becomes Black Bat. Jason stays in Arkham for a while before filing an appeal to be moved to a regular prison. He kills 82 inmates in less than a week and gets transferred back to Arkham, which he promptly escapes from. It’s a ride, I tell ya.

Aaaaand that’s about it! I hope this answered all of your questions!

[rchardgrayson]

Hi would you mind posting some of the other Nightwing snippets from the DC Eaglemoss collection please? The one with Donna you posted was so wonderful T__T

Here is the one from Dick's magazine about Donna and Vic

Here is the one from Donna's magazine about Dick

Okay so the ones I already posted (especially the dick & donna ones) are the best - the rest are kind of lacking in any feeling and read like someone was only half paying attention to dick's wikipedia page but here they are!☺️:

Babs:

[id: "She began her career as Batgirl, and then net Dick Grayson for the first time. Though Batman's two sidekicks were initially rivals for his attention, Barbara Gordon (the daughter of police commissioner Jim Gordon) and Dick became lifelong friends. When the Joker shot and paralyzed Barbara, she became the wheelchair-bound Oracle. From her perch in the Gotham Clock Tower, Oracle guides Batman, Nightwing, and many other heroes with the aid of her advanced technology. She can help them find the bad guys, or eavesdrop on almost any conversation in Gotham City. She and Dick once fell in love and were even engaged to be married, though Oracle broke it off because she was unsure of their readiness. Dick and Barbara have remained good friends, though. They continue to work together and support each other through it all." End id]

Tim:

[id: Dick Grayson set the standard for all sidekicks. His time as Robin was the model for all other teenaged superheroes to follow and was an intimidating precedent. Fortunately the current Robin, Tim Drake, was up to the challenge. As Dick's current successor in the red vest, Tim looks up to Nightwing. Although Tim has been Robin for a long time, it wasn't until Batman's back was broken at the hands of Bane that Dick and Tim became friends. Since then, Dick has been a mentor to the heir of his heroic mantle. Dick and Tim have worked together on numerous cases. They often team up to help Batman, but even more they have grown close through their work as leaders of super hero teams like the Outsiders and Teen Titans." End id]

Bruce:

[id: "Ever since Bruce Wayne learned that young circus acrobat Dick Grayson's parents were murdered, the two have been close. Their relationship began as Bruce took Dick in as his ward. Dick doubled as sidekick to Bruce's alter-ego, Batman. As the Dynamic Duo, the two fought crime and were inseparable as well as world famous. Batman taught his young friend everything he knew, hoping that Dick would grow up to be a strong hero and defender of justice himself. As Dick grew and became Nightwing, Batman recognised his young partner was his own man, and let him go his own way. The two still care deeply for each other like a father and son. They will still occasionally partner up to tackle tough challenges - they even give each other relationship advice at times. Bruce once wanted Dick to take over for him as Batman but has come to realise that Dick's role as Nightwing is more important." End id]

Wally:

[id: "Wally West and Dick Grayson have a lot in common. Both grew up being sidekicks to iconic super heroes. Both became powerful defenders of justice as independent adults and both have trained their successors in their sidekick roles. Robin and Kid Flash were both original Teen Titans, giving Dick and Wally a chance to grow close as friends. As Dick became Nightwing and Wally took on the mantle of the Flash, they stayed in contact with each other, remembering with great fondness their time as Titans. Both Wally and Dick looked like proud parents as their successors under the Robin and Kid Flash masks, Tim Drake and Bart Allen respectively, joined forces to create a new team of Teen Titans. Dick and Wally remember their time as Titans together with great affection and still enjoy a close friendship." End id]

Kory:

[id: "The fiery alien princess Starfire has long been a friend's and lover to Dick Grayson. The couple first met when Dick was still Robin and acting as leader of the first band of Teen Titans. The Titans helped Starfire acclimatise to Earth and its culture, eventually inviting her to join them. Over the years, as they worked side by side as Titans, Dick and Starfire fell in love and were engaged to be married. Shortly before they planned to wed, an evil version of their fellow Titan, Raven, interfered and broke up the couple. Dick and Starfire were able to heal their relationship, and remain very close friends and confidantes to this day. When Titans from an apparent future visited the present, they told Dick and Starfire that the two would have a wonderful relationship in the years ahead. Whether or not that will happen remains unclear but it is plausible given how close they still are." End id]

Like I said, the rest don't feel as like deep or heartfelt as the Dick&Donna ones but🤷

[nightwingmyboi]

Hello! I was just wondering if you had knew the proper order to read Dick as Bats but with Damian as his robin? Thanks!

Sure! I couldn’t tell if you were asking for all the comics that have Dick as Batman or comics specifically where Dick and Damian are both present, so I just did a list for both. The ones in bold have both Dick and Damian present. This list is in my best attempt at an in-universe chronological order...it was hard but I tried (cries). Here we go: 

BATMAN DICK GRAYSON COMIC LIST

Nightwing (1996) #138: Dick and Damian first meet. This is part two of seven in “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul” arc. You can read the whole thing for context, but this one is the only one with significant interaction between Dick and Damian. 

Nightwing (1996) #152-153: Dick tries to reconcile with the fact that Bruce is gone, and that he will have to continue his legacy. These comics have Dick going head to head with Ra’s al Ghul, and also show him moving back to Gotham. 

Battle for the Cowl #1-3: Gotham City is in trouble, and Dick is forced to take on the mantle of Batman. 

Batman (1940) #687-688: A lot of this is about Dick learning to be Batman, but you also see a lot of him talking about how he is planning to approach Damian. You also see some of the beginning of Dick training Damian as well. Technically an epilogue to Battle for the Cowl.

Batman (1940) #689-692: Dick continues to adjust to his role as Batman. Two-Face manages to sneak into the Batcave, and tests Dick’s conviction. 

Batman and Robin (2009) #1-3: Dick and Damian’s first time working together as Batman and Robin. 

Batman (1940) #693-696: While Batman takes to the streets, Damian is mostly delegated to training, in order to improve his detective work. Unfortunately, Damian doesn’t take the work seriously, leaving Dick vulnerable to Black Mask’s and Penguin’s plots…

Batman (1940) #697-699: Batman finishes dealing with Black Mask, and goes on to face the Riddler. 

Batman: Streets of Gotham #1-16: A collection of stories showing how Robin and Batman are adjusting to their new roles; the duo doesn’t have a lot of trust yet. Interestingly, these comics show more of how Hush was handled. They are also where Damian’s friend Colin is introduced for the first time. 

Batman and Robin (2009) #4-6: Batman and Robin versus a (somewhat out of character) Red Hood. 

Batman and Robin (2009) #7-9: Dick tries to resurrect Batman. Warning: this arc is extremely out of character for Dick and I hate everything about it. But this isn’t a comic rec list so I’ll include it, ugh. Here’s where you’d read this monstrosity. If you want to skip it, here’s all you’d need to know: 1) Damian went to his mother to heal his spine after Red Hood shot him, and 2) Dick and Damian now have reason to believe Bruce is alive. Bam, now you don’t even have to read it. 

Batman and Robin (2009) #10-12: Damian and Dick uncover clues that reveal that Bruce is alive. Meanwhile, Talia attempts to kill Dick...using her own son to do it. 

Batman (1940) #700: A special event that has sections where Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and a future Damian Wayne are Batman. A weird comic overall, but the parts with Damian and Dick are really pretty good. 

Batman (1940) #703: Dick and Damian have developed a solid partnership, though Damian is continuing to learn more about being Robin and about his father. The comic acts as a prelude to Bruce Wayne: The Road Home. 

Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: Bruce evaluates how things have been going in his absence, and gives his thoughts on the new dynamic duo. 

Batman and Robin (2009) #13-16: Dick and Damian struggle to deal with Professor Pyg, Joker, and Dr. Hurt. Bruce returns! 

Batman (1940) #704-712: Batman leaves Gotham to Dick while he puts Batman Incorporated into place. Damian, Tim, Azrael, and Selina all make appearances in this stretch of comics. 

Batman and Robin (2009) #17-22: Dick and Damian work together as Batman and Robin to stop Una Nemo, and then White Knight in the following arc. 

Batman and Robin (2009) #23-25: Dick and Damian team up with Jason to save his former sidekick, Scarlet. (Jason’s still acting a bit more extreme than you’d typically expect.) 

Batman: Black Mirror: This is a collection of Detective Comics #871-881. I’d say these are my favorite Dick!Batman stories ever. All the cases are very good (really chilling), and the characterizations are top notch stuff. Lots of Gordon, Barbara, and some Tim also. 

Batman (1940) #713: Damian tells the story of Batman and Robin. Very heartwarming. 

Batman: Gates of Gotham #1-5: A good story, it’s interesting to see how Dick interacts with his siblings (ie Cass, Tim, and Damian) as Batman. 

There’s definitely a bit of hopping back and forth required if you’re going to read it this way lmao. Also, here are some more comics with Dick as Batman that I was too lazy to try to put into the timeline here: 

Superman/Batman #76: Superman’s reaction to Dick taking up the Batman mantle following Bruce’s death. Happens towards the beginning of Dick’s time as Batman. 

Blackest Night: Batman #1-3: Dick, Tim, and Damian deal with an army of Black Lanterns, composed of once-dead friends and enemies. Bruce’s body is stolen, and Dick and Tim have to face their parents’ reanimated corpses. 

Red Robin (2009): Mostly focused on Tim Drake. Dick and Damian appear in minor cameos throughout as well though. It’s interesting to look at Dick and Damian as they are in issue #1, with Damian being really rude and not listening to Dick at all, and then jumping to issue #12 and seeing just how much Damian now follows Dick’s lead and has changed while Tim was away. Idk, it’s just kind of cool. Issues #13-14 also have Tim working with the new dynamic duo as well. 

Batgirl (2009): This one is mostly focused on Stephanie Brown taking up the Batgirl mantle in the wake of Bruce’s death. Dick and Damian first meet Stephanie in issue #5...and they get off to a very rough start with her lmao. The team features heavily in #6-7 also. 

Titans (2008): This series starts off with Dick as Nightwing, but then he leaves the team to become Batman at the end of #10. He appears as Batman in: #15 with Garth, #21 with Starfire (really thought this one was interesting), #23 with Wally and Donna, and #28-30 with Slade. 

Justice League of America (2006) #41-60: Dick’s time on the Justice League with Donna. Likely takes place towards the middle and end of Dick’s time as Batman. 

Hope this is helpful to you! 

[writingblock101]

Growing Pains (Damian x Reader)

This is the first time I’ve written Damian! I hope y’all like it. In this fic, he’s 17. I found the picture on Google so I’m not sure who the original artists it (it was reposted from Pinterest and the artist wasn’t listed), but know that the art is not mine! 

Request for @idkmanicantenglish​ (thanks for your patience!):  Reader and Damian got in a fight while they were out in patrol, and when they go back to the Bat Cave, Damian ignores her and she goes to sleep in the guests room and later into the night Damian decides to go apologize because she was just trying to help him and he got mad for no reason

Words: 1,800

“I had it handled,” Robin growls, resheathing his katana. 

“Yeah, that looked handled,” You remark sarcastically, putting your knives away.  

“I was fine, I didn’t need a savior,” He storms past you. 

You roll your eyes but follow Robin. 

“It’s not that deep. I was just helping.” 

He whips around to glare at you. 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t need help.” 

“You know a thank you wouldn’t kill you!” 

“I can handle myself! I didn’t need your help!” Then Robin grapples to the next rooftop. 

“Trouble in paradise?” Nightwing asks in your ear. 

You groan. 

“You have no idea.” 

“Penny for your thoughts?” He offers. 

“Where are you?” 

“On top of Gotham City Bank. Come tell me about your boy problems,” Nightwing snickers. 

You roll your eyes, but shoot your grappling hook and head to Gotham City Bank to rant to Nightwing. 

“Hey, Falcon,” He greets as you land gracefully on the roof. “What’s troubling you?”

“Your stupid brother,” You grumble, sitting down next to Nightwing. 

He chuckles. 

“Yeah, you’re not the first person.”

“He’s been so pissy on patrol lately. It’s annoying.” 

“What happened?” 

Your shoulders slump.

“Robin crashed one of Dent’s meetups, but there were more guns than he anticipated so I helped him out but of course, he’s all pissed because he thinks that I think he can’t handle himself or something!” You cross your arms. “I know he’s capable, but geez, even Batman has back up!” 

Nightwing hums along, nodding his head. You continue ranting. 

“He’s been so touchy lately! Like any time I back him up or join him in a fight, he gets pissed! And I’m fed up with it! I don’t get pissy when he helps me out! I don’t get it! This had never been an issue until a few weeks ago and I’m over it!” 

“Have you tried talking to him about it?” Nightwing suggests but you scoft. 

“Come on, Wing. You know Robin. He’s more emotionally constipated than Batman. Talking it out isn’t exactly his strong suit.” 

“You’re right,” Nightwing agrees. “He’s stubborn with that kind of thing but you’re just going to have to corner him.” 

Your shoulders slump. 

“I know but I don’t want to.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because it’s just going to end in a fight! Something is up and he won’t tell me… But I don't know why! I want to help him and be there for him but…” Your voice lowers as you slump in further on yourself. “He doesn’t trust me.” 

“Seriously, Falcon? Robin not trust you? You’re the first person he’s ever truly let in!” Nightwing insists. “Talk to him, it sounds like he needs someone to be there for him.” 

“Well, that’s not going to happen tonight,” You snap. “I’m still pissed. No matter what’s going on, taking out on me isn’t cool.” 

“That’s fair,” He shrugs. “Robin is stubborn like that. I don’t know anyone else like that,” He sighs dramatically. 

“Shut up, Wing!” You hear Red Hood’s distant voice yell, getting you to crack a smile. 

“And we’ve got a smile,” Nightwing grins. “Don’t let Robin ruin the rest of your patrol. Go beat up a mugger or something.” 

“Thanks for the advice, Wing,” You smile then dive off the roof, letting the wind catch your cap and allow you to glide onto the next roof. 

. . . 

Your night improved after talking to Dick, but as you get closer to the Cave, you begin dreading to see Damian. He’s been so snappy lately and you’re tired of it. Whatever his issue is, he needs to handle it like an adult and stop taking it out on you. 

As your feet touch the ground, you decide you’re not talking to him tonight. Any necessary conversation can happen in the morning. Once you finish your debrief of the night with Bruce, you’re about to head upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms when Damian catches your arm. 

“Can we talk?” He asks. 

You pull your arm away from him, wishing he’d never hit that growth spirit that made him taller than Jason. You feel tiny in comparison despite spending your free nights beating up criminals much bigger than you. 

“What?” You snap. 

He sighs. 

“Are you mad at me?” 

You raise your eyebrows. What an amazing detective. 

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that since you flipped your shit at me in the warehouse?” 

“I had the situation under control,” He growls. “I was angry that you didn’t seem to trust me enough to handle it.” 

“I trust you, I was just helping.” 

“It was unnecessary, I had it handled.” 

“Well, it certainly made it go faster.” 

“You didn’t pop in to help with speed,” Damian snaps. “I’m not some helpless child. I can handle myself!” 

“I never said you couldn’t. I was just being backup.”

“I didn’t need a savior.” 

“Stop trying to put words in my mouth,” You snap. “I was just helping.” 

“I didn’t need your help!” 

“You were getting overwhelmed!” 

“I had it handled!” 

“No, you didn’t!” You yell. “I don’t give a shit who you were trained by Damian! You’re not bulletproof! And if I hadn’t stepped in tonight, you would’ve gotten shot!” 

“I’ve had worse,” Damian sneers. 

“That’s not the fucking point!” You snap. “If you’re going to stand here and be pissed at me for having your back then fine! I’d rather you be mad at me than be dead. And if that makes me an idiot, so be it!”

“If I had gotten shot, it would’ve been my own damn fault and I would have dealt with it! I don’t need you to be watching my every move!” 

“Your arrogance is going to get you killed if you can’t even accept help from someone who’s supposed to watch your back,” You growl. “That’s what all of us do, we look out for each other.” 

“Yeah, look out for each other, not babysit,” Damian snaps. 

“Fuck this, I’m going to bed. I don’t know what your deal has been lately but I’m tired of being your punching bag! So, when you’re ready to own up to your shit, you know where to find me,” Then you storm off. 

You cannot believe Damian has the audacity to accuse you of being a babysitter! For a long time, he felt he had to prove himself which he hid under a thick layer of arrogance, but you thought he was passed that! Apparently, he’s back to needing to prove himself to God knows who and has decided he’s going to take out any frustration about his shortcomings on you. 

Not anymore. You’re tired of this. If Damian thinks he can continue speaking to you that way, he’s got another thing coming. 

After showering, you go to bed in a guest room, still fuming. Usually, you sleep in Damian’s room, but after your argument tonight, you don’t want to be near him. You spend thirty minutes tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable or take your mind off your boyfriend. 

Seriously, what is his deal? Damian’s never spoken to you like that! You two always had mutual respect for each other since you were always the two youngest in the room. The pressure of living up to your predecessors could fade when it was you two because you both understood each other, so why Damian decided you were now babysitting him--

The door opens. You flip over, your back to the door, knowing exactly who just walked into the room. 

“Y/N,” He says quietly.

“What do you want, Damian?” You snap, refusing to face him. 

“I want to apologize.” 

You sit up in bed and face him with a clenched jaw. 

“For what?” You demand. 

“For tonight,” Damian admits, looking at you for a moment then looking away. 

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” You growl. 

He sighs. 

“I’m sorry for snapping at you and accusing you of not trusting me. You were just helping and you were right-- I was taking on too many men by myself.” 

You soften and pull back the covers, inviting Damian into bed. He crawls in bed, wrapping his arms around you. 

“What’s up with you, Dames?” You ask, leaning back against his chest. 

“What are you talking about?” 

You roll your eyes. 

“You know what I’m talking about. Why have you been so snappy on patrol lately?” 

He sighs, twirling a piece of your hair instead of answering for a moment. You wait, knowing he’ll answer you. Whatever is bothering him, Damian doesn’t want to admit. He’s ashamed, but he’ll get over his pride.  

“Grandfather called me.” 

You wince, unsure of the last time Damian spoke to his grandfather. You’re pretty sure it didn’t end well then either

“What did he say?” 

“He told me I’m wasting my time as a sidekick and that I could be a great ruler right now if I was not wasting my time with trivial matters.” 

You turn to face Damian, forcing him to look at you. 

“Damian, what you do is not trivial. You help people every night. You save lives. What you’re doing in Gotham is so much greater than anything you could be doing in the League of Assassins.”

“Doesn’t feel like that sometimes,” He mutters. “I get treated like a criminal here. At least there, I was respected.” 

“You were also murdering people,” You remind him.

“I know,” He goes silent, but you can tell something is still bothering him.

“Maybe you’ve outgrown Robin,” You suggest, resettling on his chest. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, everyone that has been Robin, after a certain point eventually became someone else of their own creation. Dick became Nightwing, Jason became Red Hood, Tim became Red Robin.” 

“Are you suggesting I quit as Robin?” 

You shrug. 

“I think you are starting to outgrow the role and need a new role to fill.” 

Damian is silent for a moment, mulling over your words. 

“Perhaps…” He agrees, resting his head on top of yours. “I don’t know what I would call myself.” 

“You don’t have to decide now, you have time. Talk to Bruce about it, maybe he has some suggestions, but for now, stop being rude on patrol.” 

He chuckles, hugging you tighter for a moment and kissing the top of your head. 

“Yes, Beloved.” 

“I love you, Damian. I don’t want anything to happen to you so it worries me when you brush stuff off by saying you’ve had worse.” 

“I know. I’m sorry, I just…” He trails off. 

You turn to look up at him, reaching up to stroke his face for a moment. 

“I know.” 

You get it. You and Damian have always understood each other in a way neither of you had ever experienced before meeting each other. It’s why you two worked as well as you did, even with both of your stubbornness and tough exteriors. 

He smiles fondly at you and kisses you. 

“I love you too,” Damian whispers back. 

This is the first time I’ve written for Damian so hopefully, I did okay! I’m not sure if Damian ever becomes someone else other than Batman, but it’s fanfiction. Keep an eye out for some future fics I’ve been working on! 

[eternallyyoungjustice]

Wherever the Winds Take You: Chapter 13

A/N: Okay, not gonna lie, didn’t really edit this one much. It’s super duper short, sticks pretty close to the episode, and it’s just been a week. So I apologize for any spelling errors or awkward phrasing. But otherwise, I hope you all like it! Thank you so much for your continued support of my shameless guilty pleasure.

Santa Prisca July 22 21:10

The tunnel remained dark and cold for a few minutes, the only sounds being the ragged breaths of six young heroes and the shuffle of feet against stone. All members collectively could hear their own heartbeat in their ears, and felt the adrenaline pumping through their veins.

Finally, a loud crack broke the silence and an eerie red glow emitted from the glowstick that Aqualad held and promptly tossed to the ground. Every member of the team stood there; Kid Flash and Zephyr showing the most wear, as the non-humans held good composure and Robin stood silently, staring at the barricade of rock and debris that separated the team from the way they came.

After a moment, however, Robin finally broke the silence.

“How could my first mission as leader go so wrong?”

“You do have the most experience, but perhaps that is exactly what has left you unprepared.” Aqualad spoke. “Fighting alongside Batman, your roles are defined. You two do not need to talk. But this team is new, and a leader must be clear, explicit. He cannot vanish and expect others to play parts in an unknown plan.”

Robin whirled around, snarled and poison-tongued. “Oh, so I’m supposed to hold everyone’s hands?!” The boy let out a growl of frustration and glared down at the ground. But then, after a moment, the tension in his shoulders released and his form slumped slightly. “Oh, who am I kidding? You should lead us, Kaldur. You’re the only one who can.”

“Please! I can run circles-” Kid Flash’s outburst was cut off by Robin’s now much calmer tone. “Wally, come on. You know he’s the one.” The young boy’s eyes lifted to meet his elder’s. “We all do.”

“Hello, Megan! It’s so obvious!” M’gann chirped.

“Could’a told you.” Superboy shrugged.

Kaldur’s eyes met Lina’s knowing gaze. “You know you have my vote.”

Everyone turned to Wally, who stood awkwardly for a moment before sighing in resignation. “Okay!”

“Then I accept the burden,” Kaldur nodded, stepping towards Robin and placing a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder, “until you are ready to lift it from my shoulders. You were born to lead this team, maybe not now, but soon.” Robin nodded, his normal smile returning to his face.

Kaldur turned back to speak to the team as a whole. “Alright, our first priority is preventing that shipment from leaving this island.”

“Funny,” Robin smirked, “I had the same thought.”

As the group began to dash down the tunnel’s length, they began to compare notes.

“Robin and I discovered data about the new shipments on a computer in the warehouse.” Kid Flash spoke up. “It looks like Kobra has combined Venom and the Blockbuster formula from Cadmus, making Venom three times as strong and permanent.”  

“So obviously Kobra attacked Bane’s Satna Prisca to have an unlimited supply of the Venom formula, making it able to create the new superformula.” Robin explained. “Which explains how normal supply chains have been cut off if--it’s for a whole new product. But it doesn’t explain how Kobra got his hands on Dr. Desmond’s formula.”

“We discovered that the supplier arriving today was the villain, Sportsmaster.” Aqualad nodded.

Robin pulled up his holo-computer. “Okay, so that must mean Sportsmaster is the supplier and buyer...but it still doesn’t track. He’s a gun for hire, he doesn’t have the power to acquire the blockbuster formula or to get Kobra to do his dirty work.”

“And neither of them have the chops to bond blockbuster with venom. That took some major nerdage.” Kid Flash chimed in.

“I believe the expression is…” As the team arrived at the mouth of the entrance, they were met with the sight of Bane standing there, finishing pumping himself with his normal venom serum which connected from a tube from his arm to the base of his skull, and seemed to enhance his muscle to an inhuman amount. With a sigh of relief, the masked villain dropped the vial formerly containing venom and gazed down at the team of young heroes with a crazed look in his eyes. “‘tip of the iceberg’.”

“Halt, ninos.” Bane growled and revealed a handheld trigger in his grasp. “I’m feeling...explosive.” Simultaneous beeping alerted the team to gaze up, revealing a large number of charged explosives around the mouth of the tunnel.

“You betrayed us, why?” Aqualad spoke, in a tone that-to anyone that knew him-sounded very fake. Bane, however, didn’t seem to notice the falseness. While Bane was distracted, the Atlantean reached out via the telepathic link. “Kid, you’ll need a running start.”

“I want my factory back!” Bane began to monologue. “So I forced you into a situation where you would either take down my enemies for me, or die trying. If the latter, the Justice League would certainly have come to avenge their sidekicks. And when the smoke cleared, Santa Prisca would be mine once more...blowing the tunnel with you inside, should have the same effects.”

Caught in his own monologue, Bane didn’t see the dark blue that flew by him.

“With what?” Kid Flash suddenly asked, now suddenly behind the hulking man and holding the hand-held trigger that had just been in Bane’s grasp. “This trigger thingy?”

Bane let out a loud growl and pulled back to land a strong punch to the speedster, but promptly found himself being lifted off his feet by an invisible force. Being slowly turned around, Bane saw a smiling Miss Martain standing under him, lifting him telekinetically with a raised hand.

“Finally,” Superboy smirked as he stepped forward, and cracked his knuckles. “Drop him.”

Santa Prisca July 22 21:31

Back outside the warehouse, at its helipad, we watched patiently until Sportsmaster and Kobra bid goodbye to one another. Sportsmaster was a tall, hulking man that was essentially all muscle, who wore a signature goalie mask over his face, but otherwise had no notable physical traits. Kobra, on the other hand, has an almost just as tall figure with an equally as strong build, although his muscles were not nearly as hulking as his compatriots’ and hid his figure under a dark crimson cloak. His pale skin was almost anemic and seemed to glow under the light of the moon, but somehow didn’t make him look sickly. Overall, the aura around him made Zephyr’s spine tingle uncomfortably.

“This Kobra man…” Zephyr whispered from her spot in the shadows next to Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad. “I do not like his vibe.”

Robin snickered quietly. “Have you liked any villains’ ‘vibe’ before?”

The young girl thought for a moment. “Poison Ivy.” She whispered, thinking deeply. “She is, uh, qu'est-ce que...fine as hell, tres tres bonne. Robin, why are most of your famous villains so good-looking, hm? Seems very unfair.”

This made both Robin and Kid Flash snort with laughter to the point where they had to muffle themselves.

“Do you want to trade cities Zeph’?” Robin asked, eyebrows cocked in amusement.

The young women paled, recalling the patrol she and Aqualad had done the other night. “Fair enough! No thank you!”

This made Robin chuckle a little more.

Sportsmaster began to make his way towards the helicopter, causing Aqualad to give Kid Flash his signal, and the young ginger ran off at lightning speed, knocking down cultists and pulling gunfire in his wake.

“Protect the shipment!” A cult member exclaimed. Just in time for Superboy to jump and land in front of Mammoth, who stood next to Kobra.

“Go again?” The clone yelled at the hulking beast, causing it to roar and attack. However, it was promptly forced off-course by a sudden continuous force of water, controlled by Aqualad, sending him right into nearby trees. “Sorry, not the plan.”

As Mammoth roared fiercely and began to fight back against being sprayed, Zephyr flew over him, moving her arms and collecting as many of the coldest Winds she could find. The girl reached high up into the atmosphere to find the ones to complete her task and sent them crashing down onto the blast of water and onto Mammoth, freezing the water around him until slowly but eventually, he was encased in thick, frigid, ice.

At being controlled so forcefully, the Winds carrying Zephyr faltered and the girl landed on the ground in a crouching stance. “I am going to be honest with you,” She called to her new team leader as she dodged a cultist’s fire. “I did not know if that would work!” She managed to grab hold of the cultist’s gun and bashed him in the head with it, before chucking it at another cultist’s head, successfully rendering both unconscious.

“Be thankful it did then!” Aqualad yelled back as he fought his own share of cultists.

Not a moment later, the helicopter filled with products began to take off with Sportsmaster inside. Zephyr turned and prepared her Winds to go after it, just in case, but was relieved when it exploded into flames mid-air, causing it to plummet down towards the factory. Off in the distance, the figure of Sportsmaster leaping out and deploying a parachute could be seen.

As the burning helicopter dropped into the factory, it only took a moment before a deep, rumbling ‘boom’ seemed to shake the island as a whole, and flames erected from the giant metal structures. As the fire began to swallow up the entirety of the warehouses, the cultists-those who remained conscious enough to stand-began to flee from the helipad and into the forest, causing the team to turn its attention to Kobra, who stood (no longer wearing his cloak) over Robin, with a single foot pinning the boy to the ground. The cult leader seemed to scan the six teenagers carefully as if weighing his chances of success, but ultimately began to move away, removing his foot from Robin’s chest and slinking away into the shadows of the trees with a low, grumbling “another time then…”

Robin stood, and immediately darted into where Kobra had disappeared, but alas, he was gone without a trace. Slowly walking back to his team, Robin gazed up at the sizzling remains of the factory and watched the flames like at the metal for a moment, before looking back down at his comrades.

“We picked the right guy to lead.” Robin nodded with a smile at Aqualad. “...automatically making you the right guy to explain this mess to Batman!” Robin walked away, laughing, and Kaldur’s face seemed to immediately drain of any blood as fear entered his eyes.

“Don’t worry Aqualad.” M’gann piped up, floating close to her leader. “We won’t let Batman chew you out too much! Besides, I was technically the one who made the helicopter explode.”

“Yeah, don’t sweat it too much.” Wally smiled. “We’re a team now, which means we’re all gonna be killed by Bats equally!” This earned him looks from all the remaining members.

“Your bedside manner definitely could use some improvements, my friend.” Lina shook her head, but she quickly offered a supportive smile to her best friend-now leader.

Mount Justice July 23 10:01

“A simple recon mission! Observe and report!” Batman growled loudly, his tone so uniquely terrifying that it could possibly strike fear into every living creature on the planet. Or at least that’s what it felt like. “You will each receive a written evaluation detailing your many mistakes. But until then…”

The main open room of the cave seemed to ring with anticipated breath as the co-leader of the Justice League paused.

“Good job.”

This shocked every member of the team with surprise, causing them to all whirl their heads to look at Batman with bewildered looks.

“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. How you adjust to the unforeseen is what determines success. And how you choose who leads determines character.” Batman turned and began walking away. “You’re all dismissed.”

“Did…” Wally spoke, a small smile itching at his lips. “Did we just get verbally patted on the back by the Batman? For blowing up a factory?”

“I...I think we did!” Robin chuckled, running a stunned hand through his spiky black hair.

“We just finished our first actual mission together, right?” M’gann perked up. “I believe that’s cause for celebration! What do you guys think?” All the members of the team looked to one another, and then looked to Kaldur.

“Well...leader gives the orders.” Robin smirked.

Kaldur smiled and nodded. “Celebration is well-deserved, I think.”

The team all cheered, or in Superboy’s case silently smiled, and began making their way towards the exit to the cave.

“I’m thinking...pizza, Chinese food, snacks and a movie marathon...with possibly dessert provided by the lovely M’gann?” Wally asked, shooting finger guns at the martian herself.

“You...want me to make dessert? After my batch of cookies went so wrong?” M’gann asked, seemingly delighted and flattered.

“I will give you some help in the kitchen M’gann, don’t worry,” Lina said, locking her arm with the younger girl’s. “We’re going to need two sets of hands in the kitchen if we need to feed Kid Mouth and everyone else anyway.”

“Oh, this is going to be sweet!!” Wally exclaimed.

As the gang began to loudly plan their big party, Lina leaned away from the conversation slightly, pulling her phone out of the pocket of her jean jacket. Unlocking the device, she quickly found her and Roy’s texting conversation. Smiling to herself, she quickly types out her message.

Call me when you get home from patrol tonight! You’re going to want to hear about our first mission! Guess who our new leader is…. :D -L

[powerosewaterpuff]

yo ,i remember a post about sort of reverse batfam , between jason and dick , can you do the headcanons about under the red hood please

yes yes yes yes yes and another yes to top it all off. i really really love the idea, and i love under the red hood in general so thank u so much for suggesting this :) like i spent all day brainstorming (probs shoulda been studying but shhhhh) diff headcanons so i’m pretty excited to write it out. also so the timeline with this is a little tight ig?? i really wanted to include tim as bruce’s new sidekick with dick in the middle of his fallout with bruce but again a lil too tight so we’re just gonna have rebellious dick for now and i also haven’t watched death in the family so i’m basing this purely off of under the red hood :) (oh and fuck dick’s hair in the movie oh my god i’m ignoring that it even exists i’m so sorry)

dick is 17 on the cusp of hitting 18 and he’s so fucking sick of batman. every conversation of theirs was leading to a screaming match where each one tries to push their opinion as fact. it was getting messy and soul crushing at this point, and dick hated it. the rising action of it all was dick getting fired from robin, a role he hadn’t even been formally granted by batman yet he felt it in his power to strip him of it. he felt like a pawn in a chess game that gambled his identity and being off of the mind numbing mantra of be better. do better. faster. punch harder. follow orders. be better be better better. and dick was sick of it, so he shed the robin uniform. swallowing it like a bitter pill because he was forced to do so. but nightwing was giving him clarity as of late. the sheer rush, brilliance and exuberance of it all reminded him of when flying was a much simpler task.

however, dick had an annoyingly unwavering loyalty to protecting bruce’s (less batman then bruce. bruce was his father. batman was not. yet nowadays the man himself was forgetting who exactly was the secret identity and who the real person was.) safety and well-being, even if it meant risking another shouting round. so, once dick catches wind of batman’s whereabouts for the night, he decides to help him with Amazo etc., and dick cant help but realize how well they still mesh together when it comes to fighting. the talking part however, did not come naturally anymore. (it used to. it used to be so much easier)

now bruce, is attempting his best to keep dick out of the loop. he knows dick will furious. and dick’s temper is something not many can tame, but bruce would take the risk. he’d rather dick spit on his memory then be dead in his arms (just like jason was, blown to bits when he should’ve been in his room. safe. sleeping after studying for some test not fighting crime with him in the underbelly of Gotham city, or getting dragged along bruce’s self induced fight with the world.)

dick, of course, does not appreciate this and can very easily tell the bruce is trying to get him off the case. dick doesn’t appreciate that in the slightest, and it only makes him want to push more. to fight bruce on every detail and demand he be apart of this because that’s the only way he can get anywhere with him. it was fair to say, that the interrogation with the joker he had to force bruce into taking him too, wasn’t exactly pleasant. he watches, leaning back against the wall as batman has joker by the neck. some part of him hates himself for not being upset about this, like he’s failing his moral code in some way. but he ignores that half, and tries not to feel angry as bruce doesn’t choke joker out like the rat he is. dick wished, in the darkest parts of his mind, that he could burn joker alive, just to watch in vengeful satisfaction that the man who stole his brothers breath wither in pain. ( and watch that fucking laugh die out)

now, the confrontation goes quite similar. except dick is noticing these little things that resemble jason too much it be a coincidence. too much. he knows how jason fights, he’s sparred with him for years and used to spend countless nights in his room trying to emulate his older brothers swift and hard hitting movements in front of his mirror. he always wished he could hit as hard as jason, as dicks strength at the time was his inhuman flexiblity and professional acrobatic skills. now, when he and batman are against the red hood, fuck it doesn’t feel right to dick. it’s all too similar. it wasn’t even the bigger moves that caught his attention but the little moves in stance that screamed at him that it was his brother. he kept shutting the idea down, because if it was possible dick would have made it happen. he would’ve.

dick gets hurt in the aftermath, but bruce must be a fucking comedian if he thinks it’s going to stop him. they get into another argument, bruce talking him down to nothing and dick frustrated that bruce couldn’t see that he’s been doing this for too long to be lectured on it, and that bruce wasn’t atlas. he wasn’t responsible for the world being held up between his two hands. it simmers down to loud silence, like it always does and dick hobbles out. leaning slightly on alfred.

bruce’s hunch is eating him alive. devouring his soul and heart with a satisfying crunch, not sparing crumb. with the revelation that his son could be alive, and the Red Hood of all people, one of the first thoughts that run through his mind is that he could not tell dick. dick could never know, and will never know. it was a hushed promise, one kept inside his chest, locked like all of his unspoken words. it would crush dick, just like it was crushing bruce now. (or maybe it was because if bruce was on the fence about breaking his moral agenda, he knows that dick would hurdle over that fence. he hates that he knows this but he does. dick wears a bleeding heart on his sleeve for his family, especially for jason. this is the same boy that was set on killing zucco all those years ago before jason and him had stopped it.)

(jason’s tasting bitter green as he mulls over why the fuck dick was there. that little idiot was supposed to be at home. safe. not carrying out bruce’s destructive agenda of self proclaimed justice. he didn’t know whether to be mad at bruce or dick. because of course bruce encouraged this shit, eager to force another child soldier into the suit and send him out to die. but God, did it hurt that dick had taken bruce’s side over his even if he didn’t know it was jason. and that stung like a motherfucker. his little brother, whose fond memories were becoming hazed in a cloud of viridecent smoke, had picked bruce’s side. a little part of himself though, shy and hesitant, whispered that he had hurt dick. he had hurt his little brother and he couldn’t justify it no matter how vengeful he was. but he shoved that part aside, trying to ignore its desperate murmurs as they told him that every time he looked at nightwing or whatever the fuck his new name was, he saw his eight year old little brother smiling up at him).

dick knows that bruce thinks he’s covering his tracks well. he is but dick knows bruce, better then bruce thinks he does. so dick is slowly beginning to formulate a hunch of his own, as he spends countless nights rubbing his formerly injured leg and wondering if he really did everything he could’ve to save jason. if there was something he missed. it’s starting to gnaw away at him, until realization settles into his chest after snooping through bruce’s files. then, he’s dashing to get into uniform, giving a breathless and hasty apology to alfred. itsjasonitsjasonitsjasongogogorunrunrun

batman. red hood. bruce. jason. father. son. bruce cannot stomach the vigor in jason’s words and jason’s heart is giving out at the fact that his father won’t do this for him. to end that pathetic excuse of a fucking life, one that’s stolen from so many people, but it still wasn’t up to his moral standards limit. was jason not enough to warrant a sacrifice for the greater good. (was jason’s desperate need to feel safe of that walking nightmare not worthy to overtake any mission)

it happens in a rush. dick is swinging up to the building, the blood pumping through his ears drowning out the screams of his chest. the joker tackles batman as the timer tick tick tick’s away numbingly. suddenly, dick has kicked the joker off and has one hand over his neck while the other smothers itself over his mouth and nose. why didn’t he do this before? why didn’t he kill the thing before? it didn’t even deserve to be called human, so why would any moral standards apply to a human based code. if batman wanted to be the whole representer of pure justice, fine. he could do that. dick wasn’t though. he was going this kill piece of shit then never let go of jason as long as he lived.

suddenly, there’s a pull at the back of dick’s uniform and at the corner of his eye he catches sight of jason being pulled by bruce as well and he’s just about to call out for him when the next thing he knows a blast rockets through his ears and the world goes black.

jason was no where to be found. and bruce ends up having to shove dick into the batmobile before he lunged after the joker, after realizing jason was missing and that the joker was still alive and kicking. the argument that insues? isn’t pretty. in fact it’s their worst. dick had spun around and asked bruce, ‘who are you? batman or bruce? because im not talking to batman, i want to hear why bruce couldn’t do the one thing his son needed! i want to know why bruce thought it was going to be beneficial not to fucking tell me that my brother-Bruce, he’s my brother! that he was alive, because you thought I was gonna pull shit like this? look at that! the exact thing you tried to avoid happened, you know why? because you cannot trust me, and it blew up in your face!’

it goes on. and on. and on. there’s no resolution, or admittance to what happened. bruce simply shuts himself down, stating this wasn’t changing anything. there was a then and a now, one in which bruce harbours enough guilt to crush his shoulders.

there’s a stony resolution in dick’s voice after bruce tells him to get out with more finality to it then he’s ever said it before, when he says, “fine. batman.”

(jason replays it over and over again in his head. the batarang. bruce turning his back to him. the jokers screechy laugh eating at his mind. eruptions of pain from the crowbar. again. again. again. and dick. smothering the joker. a steely resolve in his brothers eyes he never wanted to see but was secretly glad for. it replays like a broken film in his head, cutting and chopping but creaking out the same tune.)

AHHH OK SO i def wanted to do so much more with this ugh but i really wanted it done td so excuse just how unpolished it is, i might go back with some new ideas in it, but i like where i ended it off. this is more or less the ‘detachment’ phase in dick’s relationship with bruce, as hes nearing the end of high school and cannot do this with bruce anymore (oh college is a whooole other ordeal hehe) but i think dick would be better to tim then what he canonically was to jason. (also because dick is totally not on a mission to get his brother back at all costs and fix this family, nope. not at all.), and i think dick just has a lot more anger in this too? and bitterness here ig? just because he had lost his parents, then his brother essentially, and had to deal with being the emotional support to bruce who was falling apart. it’s a heavy load, and dick is absolutely still himself, just when it comes to jason and the joker as well as his family in general, i think he has a lot more anger as well as less control yk? (oh also i have him less in blüdhaven in this lil thing just bc like he’s still in highschool and is in this weird phase with bruce that hes fired etc., but is now yk fully going into the, ‘i’m not speaking to you anymore’ part. SOO THATS IT FOR THAT THANK YALL SO SOOOO MUCH FOR READING UR KINDA ALL THE BEST TBH AND TYSM FOR THE SUGGESTION AGAIN THIS WAS HELLA FUN :)!!

[scandalsavagefanfic]

DC Kink Meme Prompts List

Since the kink meme is getting a lot of attention and growing daily, I thought I’d post a convenient place where I can keep track of the prompts that I’d like to see filled again. I figure you’re all here because we share similar interests and this way, if you’re a writer with looking for a prompt, you don’t have to scroll through the almost 400 prompts that are currently posted. 

So here we go. Beware, this is a kink meme. These are nsfw and some may be triggering. 

JayDick Watersports -  Filled HERE

sub!Jason & Dom!Dick are in a consensual D/s relationship that has a heavy Master/slave dynamic (whether 24/7 or primarily during sex is up to you!). They're on a stakeout one night, and it's really cold, and, aw, fuck, Dick needs to piss, but he doesn't want his dick to freeze. Good thing he's got his bitch there with him, right? Dick pissing in Jay's ass preferred just to show the level of not caring about Jay's comfort [it's still cold!], but totally not gonna complain about piss drinking, either, if Dick's feeling a little more charitable. Is Jay surprised because it's the first time Dick has done this? Is this a normal, expected duty that he performs regularly? That's up to you!

Tim/Jason A/B/O - Filled

In an A/B/O world where omegas are in charge and alphas are treated like animals, or kept as pets, CEO Tim decides to treat himself to a new toy and buys Jason. Feel free to go as wild as you like with the kinks, I'm pretty unsquickable

Tim/Jason Stalker!Tim - Filled on the Meme by anon and HERE (by me)

Older Tim, younger Jason, where Tim's stalking gets a little obsessive once Jason takes over as Robin, and he starts stalking Jason out of costume as well as at night. A little judicious hacking later and he's able to keep an eye on Jason's internet activity too. Once he finds Jason looking at gay porn he knows he's got an in. And he starts blackmailing Jason, online at first, but escalating every time he gets Jason to go a little further, until he gets him to submit in person.

Slade/Dick/Jason - Filled amazingly HERE

Dick's been with Slade for a while, and now that he's stopped fighting and given into his training, Slade thinks he deserves a reward. Every good boy deserves a puppy, and Batman's new Robin looks like he could fit the role perfectly.

Jason Todd - Object Insertion - Filled on the meme (art)

Honestly, that's all I've got for you. I just want someone making Jason take things up his ass that have no business being there. Consensual or not are both fine! Any ship, though definitely a strong preference for Roy, Slade, Tim, Kyle, Dick, Roman or Ra's. Preferably not underage, but I'm not entirely opposed.

Ra's/Jason - Filled HERE

Ra's test drives an undunked Jason. The boy must be useful for something, after all, and he looks so pretty in chains. ABO welcome. 

Prompt- Pegging (Jason) - Filled HERE

Jason gets pegged by one (or more ;)) of the lovely ladies of the DC universe. And enjoys it thoroughly Pairing is dealer's choice. <3

Bruce/Jason 

Bruce takes in Jason off the streets, but more for use as a personal whore than to be Robin. Bonuses for Bruce still adopting Jason and getting off on fucking his son. EXTRA bonus points for Alfred's unfazed acceptance/support of it and perhaps even his participation.

Jason Todd Intercrural Sex - Filled on meme

This man deserves more thigh fucking and so do we! All ships welcome!

No Title - Bruce/Jason, Dick finds out Bruce has been sexually abusing Jason

One of the other prompts made me realize that while there are a lot of fics where Jason discovers Bruce has been abusing Dick, there are none the other way around and suddenly I have a craving. So I would like for Dick to find out (maybe right after Jason returns, Dick catches them and overhears Bruce say something to indicate it used to happen regularly) that Bruce had been sexually abusing Jason since the moment he found him and try to save him. And like, because of his background as a child prostitute, Jason kind of thinks it's normal or that it's the only way he could earn love? Maybe Bruce implies that Jason is useless otherwise and he'd end up back on the streets if he's not useful. Maybe Bruce is even happy to point out that the reason he never even considered touching the others is because they were too good for it, pure and wholesome, while Jason was ruined goods.

Dick/Jason fuck-or-die bottom!Jay 

I would absolutely kill to see a fic where Dick is forced to fuck Jason (for whatever reason but preferably not due to sex pollen/aphrodisiacs/drugs - I would prefer if they were both in their right minds please) Preferably they wouldn't be in a relationship or have secret feelings for each other and this would be mutual noncon/rape with a focus on how horrified they are that they're having to do this to each other. I would really, really like if it was bottom!Jason for this, but that there is acknowledgement that Dick is being raped here too!

Skeezy Ric Grayson

One specific fic I read has completely coloured my perception of Ric, and now I'm just desperate to see him being a total creep. Perving on his siblings and former friends. Would love to see him not take no for an answer, especially with someone who doesn't want to fight back because "it's still Dick in there somewhere, I can't hurt him" or something like that. Preference for Wally (HiC who?) or Jason, but Tim, Roy, Babs or Donna would be okay, too! A/B/O with Alpha!Ric would be a bonus but isn't necessary.

Cassie/Rose bondage spanking and D/s, semi-dubious consent

Cassie has had enough of Rose mouthing off and causing trouble, so she ties her up with her lasso and lectures her. Rose mockingly asks her if she’s going to spank her for being a bad girl, and much to her surprise, Cassie does. They both enjoy it much more than expected

Nyssa/Talia

Nyssa/Talia, set post-Death and the Maidens, Talia restrained while Nyssa gets her off, begging to be allowed to reciprocate. Bonus points for twisty fucked up Nyssa POV with all kinds of big global megalomaniacal justifications for what she's doing and how important it is to the greater good. (Reposted from old DC kinkmeme)

Jason Todd/Dick Grayson/Roy Harper/Koriand’r

Kori loves watching her subs play with each other and rewards them well for good behavior

JayTim hatesex

Jason and Tim having incestuous-sibling-rivalry-hate-sex against the memorial

Any Bats/???, Alfred has to clean up

Poor Alfred often gets stuck cleaning up the mess when any of the family bring partners over. The crackier the circumstances the better!

Slade/Jason identity porn

Slade and Jason fuck while in costume as and pretending to be Batman and Nightwing respectively

Kyle Rayner/any

Kyle winds up working as a stripper somehow. Some other heroes find out and pay him a visit

Batfam/Jason; non con or resigned-to-his-fate cumdumpster!Jason

Could also be Earth-3 Owlfam/Jason. A/B/O welcome but it doesn't have to be. Would appreciate any one or combination of the following: dehumanization/objectification, humiliation, public sex, breeding kink, restraints, fucking machines, cum enemas, lots of cum in general, size kink... I just want something unapologetically filthy. I'm pretty much good with everything but scat.

Dick/Tim non/dub-con, universe hopping

Dark Dick from a dark universe ends up in the main universe, where he is delighted to find a brand new Timmy to play with, who unconditionally trusts his brother and doesn't know he's been replaced. Cue Dick slowly luring him in so he can have his fun. Tim doesn't realize until it's too late, or doesn't realize at all and has no idea how his beloved older brother could do this to him. Main universe has fully platonic, familial relationships within in the batfam. Feel free to imply/state anything you like about the dark universe. Grooming/slowly warming Tim up to more and more touches, crying, overstimulation, bondage, or any combination thereof are all bonuses

Young Justice S3 Dick/Jason omegaverse

Alpha!Dick Grayson is stuck on a mission and somehow has to help the mysterious Red-Hooded omega through his heat. But they have to stay quiet in order to not wake the pup Damian sleeping right next to them. Preferably there's an identity reveal in there where Dick finds out the omega is Jason Todd under the mask.

Addict!Roy Harper Noncon

Noncon (or possibly dubcon, if the manipulation is clear enough to readers) with Snowbirds Don't Fly era!Roy Harper as the victim. Could be an OC, another Titan, a Leaguer, a canon villain... Dealer's choice! Looking for something that really focuses on how he's being taken advantage of, rather than just "can't technically consent because he's high, but is totally into it."

Woder Woman/Batman, Rough Sex

Bruce loves it when Diana is rough with him

Bane/Bruce, violent noncon

Something set during Knightfall, where Bane decides to take “breaking the Bat” even further by raping Bruce and possibly also his precious little Robin

Jay/Tim bdsm AU, sub Jay

What it says on the tin. Was thinking maybe also an arranged marriage of sub Jason to dom Tim Drake, to cement a business union but also because subs aren’t full citizens.

Robin!Jason/Bruce Somnophilia

Bruce drugs his new little Robin and slips into his room. He takes his time with him, enjoying Jason before carefully opening and fucking him. Would be great if Jason wakes up towards the end but can't do anything but take it- maybe because of the drugs, maybe because of the way Bruce is holding him down, or even because he likes it.

Sidekicks/Villains noncon glory wall

Any sidekicks you want—Speedy, the Robins and Batgirls, Kid Flash and Impulse, the Wonder girls, etc.—being displayed in a glory wall, leaving their holes open for fucking. Interested villains can pay to fuck any hole they desire, and they enjoy wrecking the sidekicks and filling them with come

Robin!Jason/Villains & Henchmen?

Robin Jason gets captured and tied up by the villain of the week, who decides to take advantage of the situation. Robin is blindfolded and groped/fucked by the villain and maybe some henchmen while waiting for Batman to rescue him. Batman finding a bound and blind Jay too tempting to resist is a bonus.

Dickjay daddy kink

Older! Dick and bottom! Jason. Jason came back years later and Dick is around 40.

OmegaJason/Batfam first heat, lactation

It's Jason's first heat and the alphas of the pack know that his milk is on its way soon. All it needs is a little encouragement. A few knots and some nipple play should do it. His milk tastes perfect as it starts to flow.

Jason/Dick, Jason/RomanSionis, Hooker!Jason & Officer Grayson

So this is based off a discussion from AGES ago in the jayroman discord server that I still think about to this day XD A no capes au in which Jason never gets picked up by Bruce and ends up a crime alley prostitute who somehow along the way caught the eye of Black Mask and winds up working for him. And Black Mask has basically the whole city in his pocket, including the police force, which is why it’s so annoying when this little upstart, Officer Dick Grayson, starts to try to challenge his hold on the city, the little goody two-shoes denying any and all bribes and refusing to back down in the face of threats. And it should be easy to squash one annoying little bug, but somehow all attempts have failed and he can’t openly go after him without risking his reputation as a clean, law-abiding businessman, a reputation that’s slowly starting to unravel thanks to the dogged efforts of Officer Grayson, because the little shit is annoyingly not as stupid as his attempts to go after Roman would make him seem and despite all of Roman’s power and having basically the entire police force and the various other government officials Roman has in his pocket against him, he has made far too much headway in his endeavors So Roman gives Jason the job of seducing Dick, because if bribery and threats don’t work, video evidence of an officer fucking an underage hooker makes excellent blackmail material, and should be enough to take him down for good if he ever steps a toe out of line again Except no matter how Jason tries to seduce him, Dick is just too decent a guy to take advantage (Ex: Jason: *shows up wearing even more revealing clothes than the night before.* Dick: “You must be cold, here, take my jacket.” etc.) And before he knows it, Jason finds himself growing weirdly fond of the infuriating idiot with his stupid puns and painful sincerity

Roman Sionis/Jason Todd, AOB noncon impregnation gang rape

Intersex AOB verse. Roman wants to punish and claim the upstart omega, so he plugs Jason’s cunt and lets his men anally rape Jason until the omega begs Roman to breed his pussy

TimKon, a/b/o, alpha!Tim, bottom Conner

Humans have a/b/o. Kryptonians do not. Alpha!Tim thinks that he shouldn't bother Kon about Tim's rut. Kon thinks otherwise. Whether Kon can keep up with Tim (superpowers got to be good for something, right?) or is overwhelmed is up to anon :) I am absolutely unsquickable so whatever extra kinks are fine with me. Just please top!Tim only. Please, my crops are dying.

past romanjay now mobJay, gangbang

After getting tired with his new toy, Roman decided to just give his subordinates a chance to have fun with it. But mostly he just want to see the red hood to get more humiliated after destroying his empire.

Damian Wayne/Jason Todd, bestiality

It's time for Damian to introduce his new acquired pet to the pack, Titus and Ace.

Tim gags and spanks Damian

Red Robin has to take Robin out on patrol because Batman is away, Damian is reckless and keeps disobeying orders so Tim punishes him while having him gagged for being mouthy. can progress to something more sexual but doesn't have to be. Damian secretly enjoying it is a bonus.

Deathstroke/All the Robins

Slade really has a thing for fighting and chasing after Batbrats…

Rose/Jason mommy kink edging and pegging

Jason wants to be a good boy for mommy, Rose rewards his good behavior

Jason Todd/Kyle Rayner hatesex - Filled

I’d love some rough, angry, violent hatesex between these two. Bonus points for snarky asshole bottom!jason and kyle using his ring to make restraints/other kinky constructs ;)

Flashpoint!Father Todd/Incubus!Dick

Incubus!Dick seduces Father Todd. Jason holds out longer than most but Dick prides himself on being irresistible. He’s never failed before and he doesn’t plan to start now. But maybe, instead of his usual dine-and-ditch MO, Dick think’s he might like to savor this meal for long. Jason falls so beautifully. (bottom Jason please) Catholic aesthetics, blasphemy as kink, church sex (altar, confessional, pews, etc)

Flashpoint Thomas Wayne/Father Todd

Thomas Wayne as Batman bends Father Todd over the altar. In uniform. (At least for Thomas. It would be super hot if he strips Father Todd out of his robes first. Maybe everything except his rosary?)

Jason/Tim rape

Tim ties down Jason and rides(rapes) him. Pls let Tim use Jason as nothing but a mere meat dildo.

Titans/Dick, Titans/Jason, Titans/Tim consensual gangbang - Filled

The not-so-secret tradition of team bonding by fucking the current Bat on the Teen Titans is well-adhered to, especially given the enthusiastic consent of all participants Feel free to include any or all: garden sex, pool sex, power use, DP, riding, pegging, toy use, CBT, nipple play, cockwarming, CFNM/CMNM, and consensual somno All other kinks welcome excluding scat, watersports, emeto, ageplay, vore, and anything else bloody

Thomas Elliot/Bruce Wayne (Rape/Non-con)

Bruce doesn't realise how obsessed Thomas really is with him. Leads to Hush raping Bruce. Can be when Bruce knows who Hush is or when he still doesn't know.

Evil!Dick and Jason, noncon or dubcon

Jason comes back to his safehouse and is surprised to find Dick already there. After the initial surprise, Jason is quick to find out that there's something... off, about this Dick. He's not acting like his usual self. It turns out this isn't the usual Dick that Jason is familiar with, instead, he is a darker version of him (drugged? Talon from Earth-3 that somehow ends up in the main universe? other possibilities? all welcome options!), and this Dark!Dick is obsessed with Jason and wants to fuck him... and he doesn't take no for an answer. So there's a setup for a non-con or dub-con(in case Jason also has a crush on main Dick) for you. Restraints (gags, ropes, tapes etc.) are also welcome but doesn't have to be present.

Kon-El/Lex Luthor Daddy Kink DubCon

Lex genetically programmed Kon to need his daddy to fill him up when he created him. Lex made Kon to check all his boxes (ie Superman, something he made, a gifted teenager). Kon can’t actually consent because of programming, and he doesn’t want it until he’s getting it. Can be simple daddy kink or full of abdl. Bonus points for trans!Kon

Guy Gardner/Bunch of Aliens possible Dubcon/Noncon

Macho, hotheaded, shit-talking Guy is the embodiment of hyper-masculinity, and that arrogance of his gets him into a lot more than just a bar fight. All of Guy's enemies seem to be of the huge, muscular variety, so let's see the most stocky lantern get put in his place. Does he secretly love it? Does he outright hate it? Maybe all that shit-talking was just a ploy to finally get someone to "punish" him right. The choice is up to you. Maybe it's a bunch of random aliens Guy's ticked off in a bar. Maybe all that showboating's pissed off Kilowog or Arkillo. Maybe Lobo's still put out after being tricked one too many times by Guy. Perhaps, Atrocitus's still kinda harboring a grudge for Guy kicking him out of the Red Lanterns. Then there's always the way too touchy Dementor with his Vuldarian kin. I'm all for any other kinks or situations, I just would prefer no bathroom stuff. Go absolutely wild.

Black Mask/anyone, bathroom control, omorashi - Filled on meme

I'm a simple person with simple needs: Roman controlling whether or not someone's allowed to piss. can be consensual or noncon torture, the victim can end up pissing themselves or make it to the bathroom safely. just as long as Roman's in total control of the situation, and smug about it. bonus points: tears, begging, banter, degradation, embarrassment, additional torture, anything else along those lines. watersports only, please, no scat!

Roy Clones/Dick gangbang omegaverse

YJ season 3 episode 4 has excellent gangbang material just so you know Add omegaverse to it and its perfect Noncon/dubcon is accepted also

Titans/Jason Gangbang

Prefer comics based more than the show but either is fine. Dick and his friends welcome the new Robin the Titans way, by breaking in that hole. New kid is always the team toy, and it's even more fun now that it's Nightwing's bratty kid brother. Consensual or non con, dealer's choice. Double (or triple) penetration, dirty talk, and powers used for sex are favorite kinks but I'm good with pretty much anything.

Willis Todd/Jason Todd, Mob/Jason; Incest and forced underage prostitution

Willis pimps out his kid for cash and drugs. Catherine either pretends she doesn't know or knows and helps/doesn't care. And like any good salesman, he makes sure to test out his product to make sure it's up to snuff. 

Make it cruel and awful and hopeless. Dehumanizing and degrading. Jason is just a hole to sell and use. belting in sensitive areas, beatings, violent sex, cum play, blood play... I just want something dark and nasty. 

____________________________________________________

Woo! Ok. I’ll try to keep this up the best I can. I’ll link/mark when prompts are filled so that you guys can check it out if you want (all filled prompts can be reached by the link in the title, but some have ao3 links that I put on the “Filled” note). 

I’ll also reblog this with any new prompts that come up or if I find I’ve forgotten one. 

[multiverseforger]

Robin the Boy WonderEdit



Characters from an illustration by N. C. Wyeth for "Robin Hood" (1917) by Paul Creswick. The look inspired Jerry Robinson's design for Robin.[6]:83



Dick Grayson as Robin in his first appearance, on the cover of Detective Comics #38 (April 1940), along with Batman. Art by Bob Kane.

The character was first introduced in Detective Comics #38 (1940) by Batman creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane. Robin's debut was an effort to get younger readers to enjoy Batman. The name "Robin, The Boy Wonder" and the medieval look of the original costume are inspired by the legendary hero Robin Hood. The costume was designed by Jerry Robinson who drew it from memory based on Robin Hood illustrations by N. C. Wyeth.[6]:83

In his first appearance, Dick Grayson is a circus acrobat, and, with his parents, one of the "Flying Graysons". Robin was born on the first day of spring, son of John Grayson and Mary Grayson, a young aerialist couple. While preparing for a performance, Dick overhears two gangsters attempting to extort protection money from the circus owner. The owner refuses, so the gangsters sabotage the trapeze wires with acid. During the next performance, the trapeze from which Dick's parents are swinging snaps, sending them to their deaths. Before he can go to the police, Batman appears to him and warns him that the two gangsters work for Tony Zucco, a very powerful crime boss, and that revealing his knowledge could lead to his death. When Batman recounts the murder of his own parents, Dick asks to become his aide. After extensive training, Dick becomes Robin. They start by disrupting Zucco's gambling and extortion rackets. They then successfully bait the riled Zucco into visiting a construction site, where they capture him.

Robin's origin has a thematic connection to Batman's in that both see their parents killed by criminals, creating an urge to battle the criminal element. Bruce sees a chance to direct the anger and rage that Dick feels in a way that he himself cannot, thus creating a father/son bond and understanding between the two. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, DC Comics portrayed Batman and Robin as a team, deeming them the "Dynamic Duo", rarely publishing a Batman story without his sidekick; stories entirely devoted to Robin appeared in Star-Spangled Comics from 1947 through 1952.

The character history of the Earth-Two Robin accordingly adopts all of the earliest stories featuring the character from the 1940s and 1950s, while the adventures of the mainstream Robin (who lived on "Earth-One") begin later in time and with certain elements of his origin retold. Both were depicted as separate, though parallel, individuals living in their respective universes, with the "older" Earth-Two character eventually reaching death in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Teen TitansEdit

1964's The Brave and the Bold #54 introduces a junior version of the Justice League of America. This team is led by the modern-day Robin, residing on Earth-One, and was joined by two other teenage sidekicks, Aqualad (sidekick of Aquaman) and Kid Flash (sidekick of the Flash), to stop the menace of Mr. Twister.

Later, the three sidekicks join forces with Speedy and Wonder Girl in order to free their mentors in the JLA from mind-controlled thrall. They decide to become a real team: the Teen Titans. By virtue of the tactical skills gleaned from Batman, Robin is swiftly recognized as leader before the Titans disband some years later.

In 1969, still in the Pre-Crisis continuity, writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Neal Adams return Batman to his darker roots. One part of this effort is writing Robin out of the series by sending Dick Grayson to Hudson University and into a separate strip in the back of Detective Comics. The by-now Teen Wonder appears only sporadically in Batman stories of the 1970s as well as in a short-lived revival of The Teen Titans.

In 1980, Grayson once again takes up the role of leader of the Teen Titans, now featured in the monthly series The New Teen Titans, which became one of DC Comics's most beloved series of the era. During his leadership of the Titans, however, he had a falling out with Batman, leading to an estrangement that would last for many years.

NightwingEdit

In the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, the maturing Dick Grayson grows weary of his role as Batman's young sidekick. He renames himself Nightwing, recalling his adventure in the Kryptonian city of Kandor, where he and Batman meet the local hero of the same name. In post-Crisis continuity he is fired by Batman after being shot by the Joker and becomes Nightwing. He maintains this identity during his role in the Teen Titans, and occasionally returns to assist Batman and his successors as Robin in the form of Jason Todd and Tim Drake, Tim in particular becoming a younger brother figure to him.

When Bruce's back is broken by Bane during the Knightfall story arc, Bruce selects Jean-Paul Valley as his replacement as Batman as he does not want to burden Dick with the role and fears that Dick may go after Bane in revenge. However, when Valley proves to be too unstable to be Batman, Bruce undergoes a rigorous recovery and training program with the aid of Doctor Shondra Kinsolving and Lady Shiva to restore him to full health, defeating Valley with Dick and Tim's aid. However, feeling that he needs to re-evaluate Batman and his mission after Valley's defeat, Bruce leaves Gotham once again, after appointing Dick as his successor during the "Prodigal" story arc. While acting as Batman, Dick is left with a clearer idea of the psychological stresses Bruce must endure in the role, as well as facing some of Bruce's newer enemies — such as Killer Croc, the Ventriloquist and the Ratcatcher — while settling his own long-standing issues with Two-Face.

Miniseries and afterwardEdit

In Nightwing: Alfred's Return #1 (1995), Dick Grayson travels to England to find Alfred Pennyworth who had resigned from Bruce Wayne's service following the events of the KnightSaga. Before returning to Gotham City together, they prevent an attempted coup d'état against the British government that involves destroying the Channel Tunnel under the English Channel.

Later on, with the Nightwing miniseries (September to December 1995, written by Dennis O'Neil with Greg Land as artist), Dick briefly considers retiring from being Nightwing forever before family papers uncovered by Alfred reveal a possible link between the murder of the Flying Graysons and the Crown Prince of Kravia. Journeying to Kravia, Nightwing helps to topple the murderous Kravian leader and prevent an ethnic cleansing, while learning his parents' true connection to the Prince; they witnessed the original Prince being killed and replaced with an impostor who became as bad as his predecessor (although Zucco killed the Graysons before the conspirators could do anything about it). In the aftermath, Dick returns to his role as Nightwing, recognizing that, for all his problems with Bruce, Bruce never made him become Robin or join his crusade, accepting that he imitated Bruce's example because Bruce was worthy of imitation.

In 1996, following the success of the miniseries, DC Comics launched a monthly solo series featuring Nightwing (written by Chuck Dixon, with art by Scott McDaniel), in which he patrols Gotham City's neighboring municipality of Blüdhaven, relocating there to investigate a series of murders and remaining as he recognized that the city needed protection. He remains the city's guardian for some time, facing foes such as Blockbuster and new villains such as Torque, and even becomes a police officer so that he can make an impact on the city's criminal activity in both parts of his life. Later, Grayson divides his duties between Bludhaven and Gotham after a devastating earthquake and the subsequent decision to declare Gotham a No Man's Land, Grayson occasionally assisting his mentor and other members of Bat-Family in maintaining and restoring order in Gotham until it is fully rebuilt. When the Justice League vanished into the past fighting ancient sorceress Gamemnae, Nightwing was selected as the leader of the reserve League created by an emergency program Batman had established in the event of his League being defeated, Batman describing Nightwing as the only person he could have picked to lead the new team.

Eventually, the original League are restored, and Nightwing departs along with some of his League-although others remain as some of the original team take a leave of absence-although Batman notes that his leadership of the League proves that he is ready for more responsibilities. However, the death of Blockbuster prompts Nightwing to leave Bludhaven due to his crisis of conscience; Blockbuster was killed by vigilante Tarantula and Nightwing did not stop it even when he had the chance to do so. While Nightwing returns to Gotham to heal after assisting Batman in dealing with a series of gang wars, Blüdhaven is destroyed by the Secret Society of Super-Villains when they drop Chemo on it.

During the battle of Metropolis, Grayson suffers a near-fatal injury from Alexander Luthor, Jr. when he shields Wayne from Luthor's attack.[7] Originally, the editors at DC intended to have Grayson killed in Infinite Crisis as Newsarama revealed from the DC Panel at WizardWorld Philadelphia:[8]

It was again explained that Nightwing was originally intended to die in Infinite Crisis, and that you can see the arc that was supposed to end with his death in the series. After long discussions, the death edict was finally reversed, but the decision was made that, if they were going to be keeping him, he would have to be changed. The next arc of the ongoing series will further explain the changes, it was said.

After spending some time away with Bruce and Tim to heal and rebuild after their harsh times prior to the Crisis, Dick relocates to New York, but has trouble finding work as both Dick Grayson and Nightwing. During the Batman R.I.P. storyline, Nightwing is ambushed by the International Club of Villains. He is later seen being held in Arkham Asylum, where one of the surgeons, in reality also the civilian identity of ICoV member Le Bossu, arranged for Nightwing to be admitted under the name of Pierrot Lunaire (another ICoV member) and be kept both heavily drugged and regularly beaten by staff to subdue him. Scheduled for an experimental lobotomy by Le Bossu himself, he manages to free himself and come to Batman's aid for the finale of the story arc.

Batman: RebornEdit

Following the events of Batman's apparent death during the Final Crisis, Nightwing has closed down shop in New York so as to return to Gotham, where after the events of "Battle for the Cowl", he assumes the identity of Batman, with Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne's biological son, as the new Robin.[9]

The new team of Batman and Robin is the focus of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's Batman and Robin series.[10] Their dynamic reverses the classic dynamic of Bruce and Dick, by having a lighter and friendlier Batman paired with a more intense and dark Robin. Over time, Dick's experience as the Dark Knight would harden his personality as his mentor.

During this period, Dick Grayson as Batman also features as a member of the Justice League in a short-lived run by writer James Robinson. After an intense confrontation with the Club of Villains and the mysterious Doctor Simon Hurt (who has established fake evidence that he is actually Bruce's father Thomas Wayne), Hurt is defeated when Bruce returns to the present. However, Bruce leaves Dick to continue to act as Batman in Gotham with Damian as his partner while he sets up the new 'Batman Incorporated' program, Bruce publicly identifying himself as Batman's financial backer to justify a global Batman-themed operation where he funds multiple other vigilantes.

The New 52 (2011–2016)Edit

See also: The New 52

Dick Grayson is re-established as Nightwing following DC's Flashpoint crossover event, after which the publisher relaunched all of its titles and made alterations to its continuity as part of an initiative called The New 52. In the new status quo, Bruce Wayne is once again the only Batman, and Dick, like the other members of the adoptive family, is a few years younger. Dick, despite being 19 is drawn a bit shorter than in his pre-relaunch frame. This is likely due to adding believability to his acrobat past.[11] According to various interviews it is stated that Dick was adopted at 16, as opposed to 12. This is due to the DCNU's timeline existing for five years.[12] Dick Grayson is shown in flashbacks as Robin with a revamped version of the Robin costume in Nightwing (vol. 3) #0 (November 2012) and Batman and Robin Annual (vol. 2) #2 (March 2014).



Dick Grayson in his New 52 Robin costume from Batman and Robin Annual, vol. 2 #2 (March 2014). Art by Doug Mahnke and Patrick Gleason

In his civilian identity he is attacked by an assassin named Saiko who insists that he is the fiercest killer in Gotham.[13] The series Batman Incorporated relaunches with a second volume, continuing its story while taking into account the New 52's continuity changes; Dick is now depicted as Nightwing, and not as Batman, but the change is not addressed in the comic itself. In Nightwing, Dick inherits the deed to the circus from a dying C. C. Haly and begins a relationship with his childhood friend acrobat Raya Vestri. Saiko tortures Haly for information on Nightwing's secret identity, and the old man dies in Dick's arms after telling him the circus holds a terrible secret.[14] Investigating leads, he tracks down a supervillain named Feedback, who used to be a childhood friend, but does not learn anything.[15] Following Haly's clues, he finds a mysterious Book of Names in the circus that has his name on the last page.[16] Later the circus announces they will be doing a memorial show on the anniversary of the night Dick's parents were murdered, and Saiko attacks by detonating a massive explosion.[17]

It is then revealed that the circus has been training assassins for years, and Saiko was a childhood friend using Raya as an accomplice. Grayson had been selected to become a new Talon for the Court of Owls, but when Batman adopted him, Saiko took his place. The killer plummets to his death and Raya turns herself in. Returning to the Batcave, Bruce reveals to Dick that the current Talon is his great-grandfather William Cobb.[18] During the Night of the Owls event Dick faces Cobb, who was revived while protecting Mayor Hady.[19] Following the event, Dick decided to keep Haly's Circus in Gotham and plans to invest in turning an abandoned amusement park into their new location without Bruce's money.[20] He works with Sonia Branch, the daughter of Tony Zucco, the crime boss who murdered Dick's parents, into getting a loan for this plan by investing his entire trust fund despite being a high-risk due to Saiko's recent attack. The problems arise because of the guilt Sonia feels towards her father's actions [21] and many members of the circus are afraid for their lives because of the previous disasters and accuse Dick Grayson of being a flake, making it hard for those who choose to stay.[22]

The "Death of the Family" crossover event across the Batman-related comic books led to a major shift in Nightwing's status quo. During the storyline, one of Dick's friends Jimmy Clark, who worked as a circus clown, was murdered by the Joker because Joker felt like Jimmy was a knockoff of him. Nightwing later discovers Joker broke Raya out of prison, infected her with his Joker venom and has forced her to fight him while wearing a makeshift Nightwing costume. The toxin eventually killed Raya, though Nightwing tried in vain with an anti-toxin to save her. Nightwing then discovered that Joker left a message on Raya's abdomen that he was targeting Haly's Circus next.[23] However upon arriving there, Joker unveils his plan to burn the circus to the ground and then infects Nightwing with his gas that not only causes him to experience hallucinations of Jimmy and Raya, but he is soon attacked by the other members of Haly's Circus that were also affected by the toxin allowing Joker to capture him.[24]

In the aftermath, Haly's Circus is gone, with Dick broke as a result for having lost his investment. While the other circus members survived since Joker used a different Joker venom on them, they blame Dick and decide to leave after Raya and Jimmy's funeral, though deep down they know it is not his fault. Dick becomes bitter from his loss. After he used excessive force to bring down some criminals that tried to plunder valuables from the remains of the circus, Damian, having been monitoring him, is able to talk some sense into Nightwing, which helps him recover.[25]

Nightwing is later deeply affected by the death of Damian following his murder at the hands of Damian's clone, the Heretic, in Batman Incorporated. With Damian's death and potential resurrection becoming an obsession of Batman's, Dick is shunned by Bruce when he tries to tell him to move on, in Batman and Nightwing (a retitled Batman & Robin #23).

Later, the Nightwing series changes its setting to Chicago, Illinois. Sonia Branch reveals to Dick an e-mail that indicates that her father Zucco is still alive. After giving the address to Red Robin to try and track down who sent it, Robin uncovers that Zucco is residing in Chicago. Nightwing moves to Chicago in order to find and arrest Zucco, who is now living under the assumed identity of Billy Lester, an assistant to the mayor. Soon after arriving in Chicago, Dick meets his new roommates, a photojournalist named Michael and a computer specialist named Joey. After leaving the apartment to meet with Johnny Spade, a borderline criminal who steals and sells information, their meeting is interrupted by the police. A short chase results in the accidental destruction of a newly rebuilt subway. Meanwhile, a criminal hacker called the Prankster tortures, maims and kills criminal con men who are untouchable by the police.

The Chicago story is later abruptly ended by Nightwing's role in a larger company-wide crossover event. After the Crime Syndicate invade Earth Prime at the conclusion of the "Trinity War" Justice League storyline and defeat the Justice League, the DC crossover story Forever Evil depicts Nightwing's capture by the Crime Syndicate, who expose his secret identity to the world. Following their escape from the Syndicate, Batman and Catwoman decide to rescue him. He then is invited by Owlman to help defeat the Crime Syndicate, which he accepts. Nightwing is severely beaten by Ultraman and is attached to a device from a parallel world known as the Murder Machine, which is controlled by his heart rate and is reportedly impossible to escape from alive. When Batman and Lex Luthor arrive to free him, Lex stops his heart in order to fool the system so he can disarm it. However, Batman, enraged over what Lex has done, attacks him. Luthor explains it is not too late to save Grayson.[26] In an uncharacteristically heroic moment, Luthor injects Grayson's heart with adrenaline, which successfully revives Grayson. Cyborg enters, having defeated Grid, and Grayson joins Batman, Cyborg and Catwoman in freeing the Justice League from the Firestorm Matrix. After the defeat of the Syndicate, Grayson is seen with Batman in the Batcave. Batman tells him that he has to send him on the most dangerous mission he could possibly undertake.

GraysonEdit

The Nightwing title concluded in April 2014 at issue #30, and was replaced with a new title, Grayson, which depicts Dick having given up his life as Nightwing at age 22 and going undercover as an agent of the Spyral organization where the former Batwoman Kathy Kane works.[27] Written by Tim Seeley and former CIA counter-terrorism officer Tom King, the career change for Dick Grayson comes from the urging of Batman himself, who convinces him to remain dead to the world. Seeley stated that the series will be "leaning into" Grayson's sex symbol status. The character's look also is redesigned with no mask, but a blue-and-black outfit calling back to his pre-New 52 Nightwing counterpart with an addition of a "G" on his chest, said to be reminiscent of the Robin "R".[28][29]

In the "Agent of Spyral" storyline, Dick (known as Agent 37) is enlisted by Mister Minos, the director of Spyral, after having been chosen by Helena Bertinelli to serve as a new candidate. However, Dick serves as a mole under Batman due to their agenda of unmasking heroes by collecting the Paragon organs, organs in which contains the DNA of the Justice League and bestows meta-bioweapons the ability to use their powers. He assists Spyral's agenda to know more about Minos and his endgame, resulting in Spyral attaining most of the scattered organs. In a later story arc, Minos betrays Spyral and attempts to leak its secrets. To his surprise he finds the new Agent Zero, who reveals that she, along with the upper echelon of Spyral, had used Minos to attract Dick into Spyral and kills Minos as he has outlived his life full of humor.[30][31]

During Batman and Robin Eternal, Grayson finds himself working with various other members of the Bat-Family-during the time when Bruce Wayne is amnesiac after his resurrection against the ruthless villain known only as "Mother", who, it is revealed, briefly met with Batman early in Grayson's career as Robin, believing that he shared her views on using trauma to make people stronger. Mother intends to trigger a global collapse with the reasoning that the survivors will rebuild a stronger world after being broken by tragedy and without the hindrance of parents to force their ideals on them, but Grayson and the rest of the Family are able to defeat her, Dick affirming that Batman helps the Robins become their own people who can avoid the mistakes he made in dealing with his own trauma rather than Mother's belief that she and Batman each teach people to use their trauma to define themselves. At the conclusion of the storyline, Dick meets with the restored Batman, assuring Bruce that, unlike Mother, he never forced his ideals on them, but simply gave them all an example that they chose to emulate while avoiding following it so exactly that they became like him.

When the Court of Owls plant a bomb inside Damian Wayne, they are able to blackmail Dick into officially joining their organization, although all sides are aware that Grayson intends to try and use his new position against them.[32] The Grayson series ended at issue #20, where in the final issue, it was revealed that all knowledge of Dick's identity was erased from most of the world with one of Spyral's satellites, allowing Dick to resume his superhero activities as Nightwing once again.[3]

DC RebirthEdit

Starting with the DC Rebirth relaunch in 2016, Dick returned to being Nightwing with his black and blue costume, his Spyral contacts having wiped all global evidence of his dual identity and the bomb removed from Damian. He uses his new skills and expertise in espionage moving forward.[33] Nightwing is prominently featured in two Rebirth books: the fourth volume of Nightwing, his own solo book, and Titans, where Dick teams up with the other original Teen Titans after Wally West returns to the universe; through Wally, Dick remembers events of his life prior to Flashpoint and The New 52.[34] After the Titans are forcibly disbanded by the Justice League, Dick creates a new Titans team after the rupture of the Source Wall consisting of Donna Troy, Raven, Steel (Natasha Irons), Beast Boy, and Miss Martian.[35]

In his solo book, Dick is paired with a vigilante named Raptor and the two plan to bring down the Court of Owls from the inside. Barbara criticizes Dick's willingness to trust him and does not agree with his methods. Though Raptor seemed willing to play by Dick's rules of not killing, he tricks Dick into agreeing to a plan that results in the deaths of all of the Parliament of Owls in Sydney. After knocking Dick out, Raptor goes to Gotham and kidnaps Bruce during a conference. Nightwing confronts him alone in the ruins of a circus in Paris. Raptor reveals that he grew up in the circus as a child and fell in love with Dick's mother, Mary, as they stole from the rich and powerful in Paris. Raptor watched over Dick in the shadows as he grew up, and developed a hatred for Bruce Wayne as he represented everything he and Mary were against and felt it was dishonoring her memory to have Dick raised by him. Dick defeats Raptor and rescues Bruce in time.[36]

After joining forces with the pre-Flashpoint Superman to defeat the latest attack of Doctor Destiny, Dick contemplates checking out Bludhaven, based on Superman's reference to how the pre-Flashpoint Grayson acted as the city's guardian for a time,[37] and ultimately decides to go there.[38] While there he meets a supervillain rehabilitation group called the Run-Offs, all of which were villains he and Batman defeated in the past. He finds that most of them are being framed for crimes around the area and works with them to find the true culprits.[39] After solving the case and clearing their names, Dick begins dating their leader Shawn Tsang, known as the former criminal the Defacer.[40] Shawn is kidnapped by Professor Pyg after Dick discovers she might be pregnant with his child, and he teams up with Damian to track Pyg down and rescue her.[41] After Shawn is revealed not to be pregnant, she ultimately breaks up with Dick, who focuses his efforts on taking down criminals such as Blockbuster, the returning Raptor, the Judge, and Wyrm.[42]

During one of his nightly patrols with Batman, Nightwing is shot by KGBeast and nearly killed.[43] As a result, he suffered from severe memory loss and attempted to build a new life in Bludhaven. He changed his name to Ric, gave up being Nightwing, and became a taxi driver that frequently went to bars. With Bludhaven suffering from an increase in crime from the vigilante's absence, a detective named Sapienza comes across Dick's abandoned hideout in the subway and decides to become the new Nightwing.[44] Sapienza recruits a team of his friends in law enforcement to help him, and together they make a team of Nightwings using Dick Grayson's old uniforms. In addition to Sapienza, the team consists of Malcolm Hutch, the deputy chief in the Bludhaven fire department, Zak Edwards, vice of the 10th precinct, and Colleen Edwards, detective of the 14th precinct.[45]

During Year of the Villain, Ric is captured by William Cobb, his grandfather who is a Talon. A brain surgeon that Bruce hired to take care of Dick after he was shot named Dr. Haas was secretly a member of the Court, who was using a mystical memory crystal to alter Dick's memories and eventually shape him into becoming a Talon himself. William Cobb forces Ric to wear goggles and puts Dick under his spell. As a Talon, Grayson fights off other Nightwing heroes. A Nightwing hero name Connor Red shoots at Grayson's mask, making his eye visible. Connor Red pleads for mercy saying he has a family, and as the sun comes up Dick Grayson suddenly breaks out of his grandfather's control. Dick Grayson starts to remember his adventures as Nightwing. Ric defeats Talon, and saves his girlfriend Bea.[46] Afterwards, he journeys to Switzerland to learn more answers about his past from Dr. Haas, who attempts to use the crystal to alter his memories once more. However, an explosion seemingly sends her down a river to her death while Ric is able to retrieve the memory crystal she used on him. During the "Joker War" storyline, the Joker steals the memory crystal and uses it to brainwash Grayson into believing he is the Joker's adopted son, "Dicky Boy" and turns him against the Bat Family in his latest war against Batman. After Barbara gets the crystal back, Bea uses it to allow him to fully regain his memories as Dick Grayson.[47

[eastonia-blog]

Let's Chat about these Reversed Aged!Robins AUs

So recently I replied to @gentlemenpaws generalask!post which said…

And I thought I would go a little into my reply to him. Because and hear me out.

I can never take reversed ages Robin headcanons and stories seriously. Without turning off my brain a little. And please, please, please just hear me out.

There is a reason why.

(TLDR at the bottom of this long post)

1) This is the most important reason. Say it with me. THERE IS NO ROBIN WITHOUT DICK GRAYSON.

Think about all other ‘sidekick’ or 'junior partner’ characters. With the exception of maybe Speedy, what are their names and costumes? Aqualad, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Super Girl, Super Boy, Bat Girl, Miss Martian... You know, the famous ones? The ones that all based their costumes in echo of their mentors (and yes, I’m including Roy Harper here, Speedy’s costume is a mirror of Green Arrow’s - in red).

So why doesn’t Batman’s apprentice call himself Batboy? Why is his design so divergent from Batman’s? (Okay I understand there’s other reasons but I’m trying to stay in universe/lore here). Depending on the continuity, when Barbara Gordon/Betty Kane became Batgirl she followed the trend. Robin’s identity although associated with the Bat, can stand alone without context.

Why Robin? Why the traffic lights? Something that has been shown time and time again (despite continuity differences and all) is that Robin was Dick’s pet name, from Mary Grayson, his mum. Again depending on the continuity, Mary Grayson called Dick Robin because:-

1)  He was “...always bobbin’ along.” (Pre-Flashpoint Robin: Year One)

Interesting because it could either refer to his skill in acrobatics or a tendency to get underfoot because of his curiousity.

2) Born on the first day of Spring. 

Or...

 3) Just as a tease because he just really, really loved the stories of Robin Hood.

The traffic light colouration he chose for his costume, even the design of his costume? Well if you take a look at most of the Dick Grayson origin stories (Pre-Flashpoint: Robin Year One, Batman Year Three. Post-Rebirth: Batman #54 just to name a couple examples) the Grayson aerialist costume is... Red, Green and Yellow. The proportions of the colours and presence of a cape vary but traffic lights are Grayson colours.

Robin was Dick Grayson’s tribute to his dead family.*

*Part of the reason why Dick got so hurt that Bruce gave Robin away to Jason was because Bruce forgot that Robin was not his to give. This is why the other Pre-Flashpoint comics had Dick give Tim his blessing to become Robin. And then outright have Dick give the R to Damian. Jason eventually got Dick’s blessings but by that point, the relationship was never going to start from the best place.

2) Damian as the first 'apprentice’ would not work. Why? BRUCE WOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED LONG ENOUGH. (I can hear all the cries of ’But he’s Batman!’ ring out).

Dick and Bruce met super early into Bruce’s career as Batman.

Remember how pre-Batman Bruce went about as a generic vigilante without a moniker or anything? And got his butt kicked so hard by the Gotham streets that it took a bat crashing through a window to convince him to try again?

Pre-Robin Batman was characterised by one thing:- Recklessness. He knew sooner or later Gotham was going to claim his life and that he would probably be going sooner rather than later.

He spent a lot of time recovering in those days. Maybe more than he did catching lowlifes or solving crimes.

And then everything changed when the Flying Graysons fell.

The crime that touched Dick mirrored the crime that affected Bruce. (It’s actually pretty interesting from a meta standpoint. The Waynes died in a circle of light - under a Park Row streetlight and the Graysons paralleled that with the spotlight remaining on them long after they hit the ground.)

And Bruce looked into the eyes of little 8-10 year-old Dick Grayson, and saw himself. But more than that, he (Bruce) saw an opportunity to change things for him (Dick). So that Dick would not end up like him.

(Want to know a cool thing? The reason why Dick’s relationship with Bruce is different to the approach Bruce took to Jason, Tim and Damian? Age difference. Bruce is about 14-18 years older than Dick. Putting him in that weird spot where you could simultaneously be a teen parent or an older sibling. Bruce has a more Older-Brother-Promoted-to-Parent relationship with Dick than father-son. It’s why in the Rebirth Nightwing vs Hush Prelude to the Wedding issue, Dick thought he could be a candidate for Best Man).

This is also the reason why I love Dick’s and Damian’s relationship so much is because it directly parallels Bruce’s and his. I don’t quite know what the age difference is post-Rebirth (and I tend to outright ignore the New 52 at times) but since Rebirth tends to mirror Pre-Flashpoint more than not, I think the age difference between Dick and Damian is about... 14-16 years? Again, simultaneously a teen parent and older sibling.

This is also why I don’t think a Damian as the first Dark Squire would work, because Bruce would not be in a good place to help out a child. Nor will there be the same connection that there was between him and Dick. Damian being first would probably ruin Batman for ever taking on someone in the ‘apprentice’ role.

So after Bruce (eventually, inevitably) takes Dick in, Bruce is forced to realise that he has to be more careful because he has to be there for Dick.

This is when Bruce fully embraces the amount of Crazy Prepared he’d need to be to be.

And then Dick (at 8-10 years-old! Seriously we talk about the amount of detective skill Tim has to figure out Batman’s and Robin’s identities... But we don’t talk about the amount of charisma, courage and will it takes to out-stubborn the Batman???) makes his way onto the streets (and Bruce can’t stop him so he has to help him). So now what does Bruce have to do?

There is a rule medics and first responders have to follow: Protect yourself in order to save others.

Bruce is no longer allowed to accept dying as an option (until Dick is old enough to take care of himself). This forces Batman to work situations to his advantage so Batman and Robin can both come home.

Basically, Dick made Batman evolve into the Batman we know and expect today.

Batman’s relationship with the police significantly improved after Dick Grayson debuted as Robin. Batman’s relationship with other Justice Leaguers improved after Dick Grayson debuted as Robin. Batman’s relationship with Wonder Woman and especially Superman/Clark Kent improved after Robin.

So let’s remove Dick from the lineup and stick him at the end as the youngest then. And... put Damian as the eldest son... that’s... not going to work.

Hey Damian. Where did you go?

Remember the timeline. Without Dick as the eldest Bruce can continue to be reckless. Batman was a suicide mission until Robin stepped in.

No Dick? Batman continues to be reckless. Reckless Batman? Dead Batman. The Al Ghuls and the League of Shadows/Assassins? Probably would have nuked Gotham and Bludhaven. Also Damian Wayne will not have his male genetic donor because... Without Dick Grayson as the eldest son/brother? Batman would not have survived to catch the eye of the League of Shadows/Assassins.

It is necessary for Dick to be the ‘eldest son’ otherwise the rest of Bat!Lore will not fall into place. Dick was Bruce’s more traditionally heroic foil from the start without which we would have a dead Bruce Wayne before Batman could take off. 

TLDR:

Robin was created as Dick’s Tribute to his dead family. If Dick wasn’t the oldest - Batman’s partner (if he would even have one!) would NOT be called Robin.

Bruce and Dick met very early into his career as Batman. If they didn’t meet Bruce would have carried on his reckless path and possibly DIED before Damian could even be ‘conceived’.

And that, my friends, is the tea.

Tagging @theflyingwonder as inspiration of this particular meta

[thedcdunce]

Red Robin

“At the end of the day, I have to accept that I can control everything, except the things I can't control.” - Red Robin

Real Name: Timothy Jackson "Tim" Drake

Aliases:

Robin

Alvin Draper

Batman

Mister Sarcastic

Gender: Male

Height: 5′ 6″

Weight: 125 lbs (57 kg)

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Black

Abilities:

Aviation

Acrobatics

Computer Hacking

Computer Operation

Driving

Martial Arts

Escapology

Firearms

Gadgetry

Genius Level Intellect

Investigation

Lock Picking

Meditation

Photography

Stealth

Vehicle Combat

Tactical Analysis

Throwing

Weaknesses:

Immunocompromised

Equipment:

Utility Belt

Redbird

Redboard

Robin's Motorcycle

Batarang

Robin's Battle Staff

Universe: New Earth

Citizenship: American

Base of Operations: 

Gotham City

Titans Tower

Parents: 

Jack Drake; father

Janet Drake; mother

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: Student

First Appearance: Batman #436 (August, 1989)

Last Appearance: Batman: Gates of Gotham#5 (October, 2011)

Abilities

Aviation: Tim Drake is able to fly a variety of small jets, including the one the Teen Titans use to get to missions.

Acrobatics

Computer Hacking

Computer Operation

Driving

Martial Arts: He can even keep up a conversation while taking down multiple well armed enemies. He's fought trained ninjas and assassins as well as mercenaries.

Stick Fighting

Karate

T'ai Chi

Aikido

Kung Fu

Judo

Escapology

Firearms

Gadgetry: Tim has invented a number of his own innovations such as his "bang-a-rang" flash grenades and his "redboard", a powered skateboard.

Genius Level Intellect

Business Management

Criminology

Disguise

Mechanical Engineering:

Multilingualism: Tim has demonstrated at least some proficiency in Spanish, Hong Kong Cantonese, Russian, and German in addition to his native English. He also picked up at least a small amount of French while studying in Paris.

Investigation: Tim Drake is often recalled as the most investigative and analytical of all the Robins. He is always listening, exploring and scrutinizing.

Lock Picking: The picking of locks was among the skills Tim learned while training to become Robin.

Meditation: Tim has learned a meditation technique that allows him to continue listening to his surroundings even when drugged to unconsciousness, though his grip on his hearing slowly slips. He has also learned a technique that allows him to slow his heart rate which allows him to survive grievous injuries he would otherwise bleed out from and be mistaken for dead.

Photography

Stealth

Vehicle Combat: Tim has adapted his martial arts and skateboarding knowledge in order to design a way to fight efficiently while skateboarding.

Tactical Analysis

Throwing

Weaknesses

Immunocompromised: Tim lost his spleen in a confrontation.

Equipment

Utility Belt

Redbird

Redboard

Robin's Motorcycle

Batarang

Robin's Battle Staff

Personality

Tim Drake is extremely passionate and dedicated, having taken up crime-fighting willingly as a vocation. His parents later died during his career, but he was the first vigilante to become Robin with a stable home life. He has made it clear that although Bruce Wayne has qualities he aspires to, he does not want to be Bruce Wayne.

Romantic Relationships

Ariana Dzerchenko

Lynx

Secret

Stephanie Brown

Tamara Fox

Wonder Girl: She was not attached with Robin, but there is attraction between the two. When they were grieving over Superboy's death, they shared a brief kiss before Wonder Girl ran away crying.

Zoanne Wilkins: She is a classmate of Tim's who reveals feelings for him when he's kidnapped. Their first date at a restaurant is promising, and Tim turns down helping Batman to spend time with her. However, she breaks up with him because he is emotionally distant and not ready for a relationship.

History

Tim Drake is a vigilante and member of the Batman Family. He became the third Robin at a young age, succeeding Jason Todd as Batman's sidekick. Eventually, he would be forced to give up the identity of Robin and begin wearing the costume of Red Robin when he was replaced by Damian Wayne.

Origin

Timothy Drake was the only son of Jack and Janet Drake and he was raised in a wealthy household. As a small boy, Tim was taken to Haly's Circus, where he met Dick Grayson and the Flying Graysons, the same day of their deaths, which he witnessed and could never forget. Some years later, he saw footage of Batman and Robin apprehending the Penguin and he noticed Robin's acrobatics, which reminded him of Dick Grayson. Making use of impressive deductive abilities, Tim learned the truth behind Batman and Robin and he followed their careers very closely.

Tim Drake became aware of Grayson's change of identity to Nightwing and Jason Todd becoming the second Robin. After the death of Jason and at the age of 13, Tim noticed a change in Batman's personality and he went on a quest to reunite Batman and Nightwing, hoping to return the Dynamic Duo back to basics. When Dick refused to become Robin, Tim adopted the identity, despite Batman's refusal. However, after proving vital in the capture of Two-Face, Bruce agreed to train Tim to become the new Robin.

His chance came when he learned that Nightwing had left the Titans for a short time in order to find himself. So Tim followed Dick and convinced him that Batman needed help. Grayson then took Tim to the Batcave and left, as Nightwing, to help Batman deal with the vile Two-Face. Alfred Pennyworth insinuated that Tim was brought to the Batcave to help Batman as the new Robin. But with Clayface on the loose, Tim and Alfred became worried about the safety of Batman and Nightwing, and went out to help them.

Tim donned the costume of Robin and, with the help of Alfred, managed to rescue them. Batman accepted Tim as the new Robin on a trial basis. He trained over several months, first with Alfred, then Batman, and finally, Nightwing.

The Obeah Man captured Tim's parents during a trip to the Caribbean. Janet died in the resulting conflict, and Jack was left with paralysis, despite Batman's help. He now required the care of a nurse/physical therapist, Dana Winters.

After assisting in the defeat of Scarecrow, Batman finally deemed Tim was ready to fulfill his role as the new Robin. He was given a new costume that set him apart from the previous Robins.

Starting on the Path

Tim had his doubts about becoming the new Robin, but Bruce told him that he had every confidence in Tim being his new partner. Bruce also confided in Tim that he was looking for someone with smarts, not just guts, and Tim had that and more. All that was necessary was for Tim to go through some intensive training before taking to the streets in Gotham. This would involve a tour overseas, helping Tim understand who he was in addition to learning how to be a great fighter.

His first stop was Paris, to learn from Rahul Lama, a Chinese martial arts master. In Paris, Tim crossed paths with some thugs working for King Snake, who was himself being shadowed by Lady Shiva. Shiva actually joined with Robin and a man named Clyde Rawlins to help take down King Snake's heroin trafficking in the area. It was not that Shiva was opposed to it for any moral reason, she simply wished to learn for herself if King Snake was truly as dangerous as rumors made him out to be; a good challenge for her talents. Together, they discovered that King Snake was interested in more than just drugs: he was going into chemical weapons and manufacturing his own bubonic plague. They followed the trail to Hong Kong, and whilst there, Shiva continued to train with Robin and it was during this time that he acquired his collapsible fighting staff. King Snake's plan was to unleash his plague into Hong Kong so as to leave it a rotting cesspool before the Chinese reclaimed it from the British. The team split up when they breached his lair. Clyde found him first and was quickly killed by Snake. Robin managed to defeat him, but refused to kill him when Shiva ordered him to. He returned to Gotham, ready to take his place alongside the Batman.

Tim distinguished himself from Jason Todd by being far more reserved in temperament and from Dick Grayson by being more cerebral a detective and less a great acrobat. Whereas Dick had been brought up from a very early age to be acrobatic, Tim had to work hard for it. He proved himself more than capable of holding his own alongside the Batman. However, Batman did have strict orders with Tim--whenever Tim came across a known killer, he was supposed to withdraw and summon help. Tim also started dating a classmate around, this time, a young girl named Ariana Dzerchenko, who was the daughter of Russian immigrants.

Knightfall

On his new role as Robin, Tim fought with Batman during Bruce's most weak moment. He assisted Batman stopping the False Face Society from continuing the arson attacks on Wayne Enterprises' buildings and he helped on the rescue of Lucius Fox from Black Mask. During those days, he took his father, Jack, to his therapy sessions with Dr. Kinsolving. At night, Robin helped Batman after the fight he had against Metalhead.

Bruce assigned Robin to train Jean Paul Valley and together they captured a gang that was stealing from Wayne Enterprises. Robin and Azrael stopped a couple more crimes in progress and later along with Batman, they managed to save Lucius Fox from Cypher and captured the criminal. When Killer Croc reappeared in Gotham, Bruce was out of action and Tim gave Jean-Paul the Batsuit so they could fight Croc. However, Bane appeared and defeated Croc, leaving Robin with an injured Jean-Paul.

Tim was in Gotham City when Bane broke open Arkham Asylum, unleashing nearly every inmate into the city, and was the first to suggest to Batman that Bane was responsible. He set out with the Batman at first, and initially they had some good progress busting up the Mad Hatter's tea party and bringing in a half dozen or so thugs along with him, however they got separated when Robin decided to pursue Bird while Batman went after The Ventriloquist. Robin joined Batman again at the girls' school where Mr. Zsasz held many students hostages. Batman sent him away and Tim spotted Talon again and decided to keep track of the animal this time. Later, Robin was briefly captured by Bane but managed to escape thanks to Killer Croc. Tim then did some detective work regarding Firefly, but a physically and emotionally drained Batman ordered him to stay in the Batcave while he took on Firefly by himself. Tim saw some action when Riddler held a live TV show hostage and helped to apprehend the self-appointed Prince of Puzzles. During one last mission, Robin tried to help Bruce against Two-Face, but Bruce denied Tim the chance. However, Robin and Alfred went looking for Two-Face and they found him during Batman's time of need. Together they managed to capture the villain and Batman was grateful that Robin decided to join.

Later, Tim was safe at home when Alfred knocked on his door, asking for help as Bruce was being brutally beaten by Bane. Tim joined Alfred and Jean-Paul to rescue Batman after Bane broke his back and threw him from a rooftop in downtown Gotham. They acquired an ambulance and took Bruce back to the Batcave. Later, Robin contacted Jim Gordon to get some medicine that Bruce needed and waited from Bruce to recover.

As soon as Bruce recovered his consciousness, Tim was asked to give Jean-Paul the mantle of the Bat, as Gotham was in dire need of Batman. Unfortunately, Robin realized that Jean-Paul became brutal and driven, but he could do nothing to restrain him. While they were out on a mission, Robin was dragged along to witness Jean-Paul's newfound brutality and for this reason, he was not present at the time when his father, Jack and Dr. Kinsolving were kidnapped from Drake Manor. Robin assisted Jean-Paul against some of Bane's henchmen, but after their failed mission, Tim finally learned about his father's disappearance and Bruce's efforts to bring him back. Tim tried to reason with Jean-Paul once again, but all he managed was to get pushed away from the crime-fighting team. Later, Robin found Jean-Paul's designs for the new batsuit and he tracked him down to the place where he and Bane were fighting. After saving the passengers from a train, Robin witnessed Bane's defeat at the hands of Jean-Paul and how the winner spared Bane's life. This event changed Robin's mentality about Jean-Paul and he admitted that he earned to be called Batman.

Flying Solo

Tim soon learned that Jean-Paul didn't want him as his sidekick and blocked almost every entrance to the Batcave. However, when Tim received his special driver's licence, he entered the Batcave as Robin using an entrance Jean-Paul didn't know about and he tried to take his own vehicle, the Redbird with him. Unfortunately, he was confronted by Jean-Paul, who almost killed Robin. Finally Robin decided to part ways and he took the Redbird with him.

Later, Tim met up with Ariana Dzerchenko, his girlfriend, for their first date in weeks, doing his best to put Jean-Paul, Bruce, and even his Dad's disappearance aside for a few hours. There was some excitement at the party they attended when some masked thugs, the Speedboyz, tried to carjack another student's vehicle and Tim had to intervene. Later that night, Robin decided to try and track them down, only to be confronted by a local county cop, "Shotgun" Smith, who mistook Tim for one of the carjackers. Robin managed to evade arrest and got to work tracking down the Speedboyz. He managed to bust up their gang and leave a phone call for Shotgun, letting him know who to thank.

Going back home, Tim had to blow off Ari, who was beginning to think that he was seeing someone else. Tim decided to make it up to her by taking her to the movies. However, his mind kept wandering having just learned that the Cluemaster, and some other thugs, had escaped from prison. One was the Electrocutioner. Another was Czonk, who decided to create a new identity for himself, the Baffler. The others didn't like the name, so he changed it to Headbanger. Robin got to work investigating, stumbling into Spoiler soon enough. Unsurprised at this, because he knew that Stephanie was the Cluemaster's daughter and had reasoned that she'd turn up eventually. He went to the last known location of the gang and here Robin discovered a clue that the Baffler had left for the police. He followed the clue to the gang's heist: an armored car robbery. He and Cluemaster got sealed inside the car, and the other two put it in a pit and started covering it with cement. Robin could only wait until the others came back but they arrived much earlier than planned because the cops were onto them. With some help from Spoiler, Robin was saved and Cluemaster and his buddies were sent back to jail by Smith.

Robin bumped into Huntress and helped her get out of a jam from her involvement in a gang war with Mandy Paul. Tim reaffirmed that while he had discovered her real identity, he had never told Batman. They came to Mandy's lair only to find a man calling himself Deathangel, trying to "send all sinners to God" with a pair of pistols. After a firefight where Deathangel fled the scene, Robin and Huntress split up, with Robin following Mandy to a church. Huntress found Robin and Deathangel at the church, after correctly guessing that he was really Danny DePaolo, Mandy's brother, a priest at that very church. He was suffering from a delusion caused by his sister's wickedness. Everything led to a final confrontation with Mandy and her goons. Deathangel could not pull the trigger, but his sister could, and she gunned down her brother. Robin kept Huntress from killing him.

Afterwards, Tim felt the need to assist Jean-Paul in locating the serial killer Abattoir, but by the time he managed to locate the killer's hideout, Jean-Paul was already confronting him on a nearby foundry. Robin tried to get there in time to help Batman, but he could only witness how Jean-Paul refused to help as Abattoir fell to his death in a vat of molten metal.

KnightsEnd

Soon after this, Tim was glad to hear from Bruce and learn that he had rescued his father. Once Bruce and Jack returned to Gotham, Tim learned of his father's intention to spend more time with him, but he had to put that conversation aside as he had the duty to inform Bruce about Jean-Paul's actions as Batman. After telling Bruce everything, Tim was pleased to know that Bruce would fight Jean-Paul for the mantle of the bat after an intensive training.

While Bruce trained with Shiva, Robin was asked to keep a close eye on Jean-Paul and Robin noticed that the new Batman was in fact acting very strange. As Robin was unable to find valuable information by himself, Batman summoned Nightwing to help Robin and the two of them went looking for Jean-Paul. The two of them went to the Batcave and placed surveillance equipment to monitor all of Jean-Paul's activities. After this, they were shocked to see Jean-Paul acting as a madman, talking to himself alone in the cave. They decided to tell Bruce about Jean-Paul, but when they found Bruce, they witnessed how he apparently killed one of his opponents as part of Shiva's training. However, they soon learned that it was all a ruse to deceive Shiva and Robin joined Nightwing preparing the Batcave for Bruce's final comeback.

Robin and Nightwing joined Batman on his final confrontation with Jean-Paul, but they were sidetracked by the bodyguards of Penn Selkirk, who were trying to kill Catwoman. After dealing with them, they witnessed the fight between Bruce and Jean-Paul until Bruce was apparently killed inside an exploding Batmobile and they were confronted by Jean-Paul, whose armor had turned red. After Nightwing and Jean-Paul started fighting, Robin decided to help people after the accident and he soon learned that Batman had avoided the explosion and was ready to challenge Jean-Paul.

Robin left Bruce to confront Jean-Paul on his own and the next night he learned that Bruce had defeated Jean-Paul and taken back the mantle of the bat. This victory meant that he could still be Robin and the Dynamic Duo were back in action.

Prodigal

Afterward, Bruce decided he needed some time off, and this time he handed the mantle over to the right person, Dick Grayson.

Robin and the new Batman got along great, working against the likes of Two-Face. In his home life, Tim kept trying to make it up to Ari while his dad kept insisting on some bonding time because of his absence. Jack also hired Dana Winters to be his personal physical therapist. On a date with Ari, some teens picked a fight, and Tim had to take some hits, not wanting to reveal his martial arts training. He vented his frustration later that night when he went out with Dick. On another night, when he ran into the teens alone, he got his revenge, but it was spoiled when he visited Ari and found out her uncle had been attacked at his shop by gangsters.

Dick's tenure as Batman quickly came to an end when Bruce decided to return to the job. That event also brought some long needed healing between Bruce and Dick, who were very much like father and son. Bruce redesigned his costume, making it darker than ever.

Robin then had a run in with the KGBeast, but unlike their last encounter, he did not have the backup. KGBeast was perfectly willing to kill Tim and destroy most of Gotham City. KGBeast had already put down Harvey Bullock, who only survived due to Robin's knowledge of CPR. The battle against the KGBeast was tough. Robin was tempted to use Bullock's sidearm but refused. He managed to defeat him just as Batman showed up. Bullock was comatose for a while, but recovered.

Robberies were up recently, and Batman discovered that someone was sending very lame clues to the police department from inside Blackgate Prison. Figuring it was the Cluemaster and the villain would talk to Robin, Batman took Tim to the prison. Cluemaster told them that he was being blackmailed to plan some crimes by some thugs on the outside and that they had kidnapped Stephanie to ensure his cooperation. Batman tracked down their lair and Robin came along. Robin saved her life and rescued her, and after changing into her costume, she insisted on coming along. Batman was not amused, but Stephanie told him that Cluemaster had conned them and was in on the whole thing. While Batman went for another chat with Cluemaster, Robin and Spoiler stayed put until he pointed them in the right direction, where they rounded up the rest of the gang. Spoiler acted like the whole thing was a date, despite Tim's protestations that it was serious business. Afterward, Stephanie paid a visit to her dad in jail.

In an attempt to expand his criminal empire, King Snake came to Gotham. After a brief encounter with King Snake's enforcers alongside Huntress, Robin was told to back off by Batman. Robin next saved the life of Mayor Krol from a disgruntled city employee, but the credit went to another man, someone who had recently been fired for trying to blow the whistle on safety violations around the city.

Following a couple bizarre heists, such as a missing lion, Robin stumbled across Ulysses Armstrong, recently released from juvenile hall. Ulysses had recruited a vagrant who was under the impression he was Julius Caesar and together they plotted a crime spree. With some help from Shotgun Smith, Robin foiled the plot. Returning home, he discovered Ari was in his bedroom. She told him she had run away because her uncle was planning on moving away from the city because of the attack on his shop.

Tim might have been in some trouble with his father and maid for Ari spending the night if Jack's physical trainer hadn't come out of Jack's bedroom that morning. Dana had worked wonders on Jack in more ways than one, and he was up and walking about with a cane. Robin got to take his mind of things by helping Batman investigate a string of local robberies perpetrated by a gang of amateur ninjas, one of whom died when he fell off a rooftop. The deceased turned out to be a classmate of Tim's and he learned that the kid had gone to a Ninja Camp. Robin followed another classmate and easily defeated some of the ninjas, though they managed to escape. Tim decided to go undercover and enrolled at the camp using his alias, Alvin Draper. He impressed the camp leaders enough that they let him in on their outfit, provided he could pass one last test. Robin passed with flying colors and arranged for the ninjas to be arrested. Tim got home and learned that Ari's uncle had sold his store and they would be moving at the end of the week.

But things weren't so bad, thanks to a little help from Bruce Wayne. Bruce arranged for Lucius Fox and Wayne Enterprises to buy the store at a very generous price, enough for the family to open another store in a better neighborhood and remain in the city. Ari would even be going to the same school as Tim. Robin felt great. That night on patrol, he heard that Killer Moth had broken out. Figuring Moth for a third tier super lightweight, Robin went after him on his own. Moth had just sold his soul to Neron during Underworld Unleashed and been transformed into Charaxes. The monstrous being shredded its way through some cops and evaded a shootout with Sheriff Smith while capturing Robin, hoping to devour him. Robin was saved by an unknown party before Batman could turn up, and Charaxes was gone.

Robin met the new Green Arrow about that time. Green Arrow and Spoiler joined Robin to take down some gunrunners who were selling guns around Tim's high school. One of Tim's classmates, Karl Ranck, had been given a gun by his dad to protect himself, prompting Tim to tell his father. Jack had a talk with Karl's dad, who took the gun away. Karl then took one of his dad's guns and was killed in a shootout at the school. Tim was so angry that the beat-down he gave the gunrunners might have been much worse had Stephanie and Connor not been there. Tim spotted Stephanie at Karl's funeral and tried to avoid her, prompting Ari to misread the situation. Luckily, Tim managed to straighten that out easily enough. Robin and Spoiler then went after the guy who shot Karl, who was part of a larger street gang. They had to be saved by Batman, who was not happy that Robin decided to go at the gang without more backup than Spoiler. He also reminded Tim that Karl had made the choice to pick up the gun and become a target.

Contagion

Batman sends Robin to track down a plague survivor named Kendall Stuart when the Apocalypse Virus breaks out in Gotham. He reluctantly teams up with Catwoman, but they're both beaten by a bounty hunter named Tracker. Azrael intervenes to save them, but Robin fails when Stuart is shot dead by the Order of St. Dumas. He fights rioters with Nightwing and Huntress, then gets infected when one of them spits in his face. Alfred is forced to take care of him in the Batcave, and Tim hallucinates while dying. He's saved when Azrael deciphers the cure, and dutifully helps the relief efforts even in his weakened state.

Ariana briefly bleaches her hair blonde, and Tim is distressed to realize that she's jealous of Stephanie. He's captured by Maxie Zeus and Julie Caesar, but manages to defeat them both without help. When he meets Wildcat at a car show, he is thrilled to team up with a legendary hero against the Speedboyz.

When Armand Krol dies, they realize the Apocalypse Virus was never cured and Tim still has it in a dormant state. Batman travels to the Sudan with Nightwing and Robin where they track down an ancient cure. It's revealed that Ra's al Ghul is controlling the virus, and they're forced to fight through an army of assassins while he escapes. Nightwing and Robin chase his acolytes to Paris, where they stop a terrorist attack on the Louvre. Robin beats up Shen Chi in a surprise showdown, and is forced to work with Henri Ducard. Batman destroys the last of the plague in Gotham, and Robin pursues Ra's with Huntress and Nightwing. They track down his boat The Shrike, and Robin steals data from his computers before escaping while it explodes. Bruce and Tim blame themselves for the number of deaths, and Alfred reminds them they should count everyone they've saved.

Final Night

Robin met Impulse for the first time when their respective classes went on the same skiing field trip in Colorado. Alfred went with Robin, for they had an extra business, a plot involving a group called White Heat and Mystral. Tim met Bart early in the trip, and once he saw Bart in uniform, he was able to instantly guess who his identity, much to Bart's surprise. This would mark the beginning of a long and close friendship.

Tim hated that he kept having to mislead Ari ; trouble seemed to come up everywhere, even at a student outing to "Macbeth on the Beach" where Tim had to avoid Helena Bertinelli so she wouldn't recognize him. Tim cared for Ari very much, even if Spoiler kept making passes at him. During the Final Night, the Robin and Spoiler were trapped in a snowdrift along with a thug who tried to kill them with a chainsaw. Spoiler could not understand why Robin tried to save the thug trapped in the snow. While they were digging him out, they found a woman and her child also trapped in the snow and rescued them.

"General" Ulysses Armstrong got out on parole and Robin decided to visit him at home, and remind him that he should stay in line. He knew that Armstrong would not do so, and sure enough, the kid soon joined up with the Toyman to try and steal the toy collection of a local eccentric, Phillip Crouch. Robin tracked them to Crouch's manor, where a fight broke out with some hi-tech, deadly toys. Toyman betrayed Armstrong, and Robin had to rescue him and stop them both. Both were arrested.

As a young child, Bruce Wayne enjoyed watching Roy Raymond, a TV criminologist. His son, Roy Raymond Jr., had a TV show that aired dramatizations of crimes on which he called himself Manstalker. Tim thought the show was a joke, but it couldn't take his mind off things. Ari had been a little distant lately, and his friend Ives was keeping secrets too. On patrol, Robin found Slyfox and his crew trying to rob an insurance company, and of course, Manstalker and his TV crew arrived on the scene during a special episode. Robin had to destroy the tape in the camera before heading after the hoods, whom he apprehended.

While Spoiler was out getting into some trouble with Lynx and her goons, Tim was spending time at Ari's. He got the shock of a lifetime while they were alone at her house and she walked out of her room in her underwear, wanting to sleep with him. Tim finally learned what was bothering her; when she had dyed her hair, she had hung out with another guy and the guy tried to rape her. It was an unsuccessful attempt, but it left her feeling very scared and vulnerable. Tim told her that he loved her and said it would be best if they waited to have sex. While Tim and Ari were sharing a tender moment, Ari's uncle and aunt walked in and was cross with them. Ari's uncle was not in the mood to listen to an explanation. Tim had to flee before Ari's uncle strangled him. He decided to go on patrol, where he ran into Spoiler and she explained about Lynx's Ghost Dragons. Robin agreed to work with her, but the Dragons proved too much for them to handle on their own. Robin knew he should tell Stephanie to give up being Spoiler, but he just couldn't do so.

Soon Tim learned that the only secret Ives was keeping was that he had a job dressing as a giant mouse at a kid's restaurant. Ari, however, was transferred to an all girl's school. Tim kept thinking about Spoiler, and when he went to meet her, he found out she had been kidnapped by Czonk, who was back to calling himself the Baffler. Despite being one of the dumbest goons in Gotham, Baffler managed to tie up Robin and Spoiler and planned on leaving them to die in an old project building that was being demolished. He managed to knock himself out, and they ended up having to save him as well as themselves. Afterward, Robin told Stephanie she might have to stop being Spoiler. When he got home, he found his dad back from his recent lecture tour and Jack had spoken to Ari's uncle. Tim was grounded, but even when forbidden to leave his room, he managed to solve a crime by watching the news.

Second Sabbatical

During the Genesis crisis, Robin was unable to save a hood who had to tried to kill him from drowning. Feeling depressed, Robin headed for the frontlines. Armstrong was back, this time as the adviser to Ali Ben Khadir, a claimant to the throne of the Karoccan Emirate. His rival was being backed by Qurac. With Nightwing's help and a Wayne Tech jet, Robin went over to the war-torn country. Nightwing managed to stop two armies from clashing outside the capital while Robin penetrated Armstrong's lair. He found that Armstrong and his employer had experienced a falling out, so the boy was arrested and Robin withdrew. Robin had Nightwing drop him off in France, saying that lately he'd been feeling lost and decided he needed to step back for a while. He thought Paris was the right place to start, since his training had never really ended there.

Knowing that Rahul Lama was dead, Tim decided to train in the course of the Iron Master, although he remained in his identity as Robin. He stopped a former student from stealing from the master and also met a girl named Dava Sborsc. The girl was there to learn a single move to add to her arsenal of lethal moves. She wanted to be able to fight in the war that was destroying her native country of Transbelvia. After she left, Lady Shiva arrived looking for her. Robin had to withdraw, leaving the Iron Master to fight her alone, and Shiva killed him. King Snake was also involved again, this time selling weapons to Transbelvia. Robin went after Dava to warn her about Shiva. Back in Gotham, Jack Drake, Ari, and Spoiler were all wondering what had happened to Tim. Robin found Dava, a rebel fighting against the oppressive regime using a special chemical called Aramilla that allows her to move at super speed. Together they easily took down some military thugs, but then Shiva turned up. Not willing to step aside and let her murder Dava, Robin attacked, using the Aramilla to his advantage. Not even Shiva could stand up to Robin moving at super speed. Losing control, Robin beat her to death, just as King Snake sauntered in. While Dava fought King Snake and his minions, Robin performed CPR and managed to revive Shiva. Shiva had absorbed some of the Aramilla, and at super speed, she took down all of King Snake's men and went after King Snake herself. Robin left them to fight each other and brought an injured Dava to safety. But the war continued, and Robin decided it was finally time to return home.

Cataclysm

On the flight home, Gotham City was struck by the Cataclysm, a massive earthquake that leveled most of the city. Robin joined with Batman and the rest of the "family," overwhelmed at the near total destruction of the entire city. There was little that Robin could do in such chaos, and Batman asked him to stay out of most of the city. Luckily, the Drake home, in one of the outer neighboring communities, suffered only minor damages and they were able to effect repairs. During the Aftershock, Ari and Stephanie were both staying in a shelter with their families. Stephanie asked Robin to retrieve her costume, worried someone would steal it and learn her secret. Cluemaster was waiting there, but Robin took him down and turned him in to the National Guard.

After spending more time with Stephanie, Robin decides he really does care for her, and that he has to break things off with Ari rather than keep her hanging on. Fortunately, Ari feels exactly the same way about a breakup, although she says it is because they are too young to pursue a relationship. Ari is not seen again.

At this same time, Robin also became one of the charter members of Young Justice.

Tim and Spoiler got along wonderfully. She didn't pry about his real identity, and he could share being Robin with her. After their first real date, Stephanie told him that she was pregnant. Robin was not responsible for her condition, but he stood by her. Disguised as Alvin Draper, he went to classes and told her that she had to give up being Spoiler until after the baby was born. Later, Robin had to save his friends Ives and Hudson from Steeljacket. At school, a friend of Tim's was found dead in the woods and two bullies were suspected of killing him. While Tim initially believed they were innocent, he soon found evidence of their guilt, which led to their arrest.

With all of Gotham city in ruins, Jack Drake decided the family should relocate from Gotham Heights for a while. He decided to move to Keystone City. When they arrived, Robin teamed with the Flash to take on the Riddler and Captain Boomerang. They also got some help from Superman to stop a bomb threat. While they were in Keystone, Stephanie went into labor and needed a C-section. Flash got Robin back to Gotham in time for him to come to the hospital. The baby was born and Stephanie gave the child up for adoption. Jack was furious with his son for running home to Gotham but admitted that he had hated Keystone and also wanted to come back. Robin even managed to help Shotgun Smith take down three monstrous thugs who held hostage an emergency room.

No Man's Land

Recalled to Gotham City by Batman, Robin and Nightwing had to crawl through an extensive system of tunnels and underground chambers, as the bridges were all down and patrols kept them from crossing the river. They had a tussle with Tommy Mangles and Gearhead, but Nightwing easily defeated them and got into the city. Robin was depressed by the despair and desperation he witnessed in people fighting to survive. Batman put Robin to work immediately, ordering him to track down a cache of food from an old shelter. Robin found it and discovered the Ratcatcher there. Robin had to flee from the Ratcatcher and his legions of rats, though a combination of rat bites and exposure to sewage gave him a fever. He managed to stave it off with some antibiotics, and was found by a group of children known as the Wolflings, including a kid Robin knew from his school who was calling himself Aragoth. The Wolflings decided to find the stores, and Robin was too sick to follow them at first. The kids found it, but so did the Ratcatcher and Mister Freeze. Robin managed to defeat both Freeze and Ratcatcher, arranging for them to be arrested. Batman was impressed with Robin's actions. Robin did not have much time to recover, as he knew Batman and the others were fighting for their lives. Robin was captured by Killer Croc, who was planning an all-out battle with Penguin and his police allies. Alfred helped free Robin and he rallied with Bullock and Penguin to defeat Croc. He then had to make the hard decision to call his father and tell him that he was in Gotham and that there was no way out. Jack made a lot of noise, and Washington took notice. Federal agents were ordered to stage a rescue. Tim was told to come to Grant Park to be extracted. The rescue site turned into a fire fight, but Tim was successfully lifted out with some help from the new Batgirl.

Brentwood Academy

Jack decided to enroll his son in Brentwood Academy, a private all boys boarding school not too far from home because of Tim's many absences while attending Gotham Heights High School. His first roommate was Ali Ben Khadir, the religious leader of a small country called Dhabar; and was accompanied by his bodyguard, Zugir. Bruce assigned Alfred to be Tim's personal valet for the rest of the semester. Tim decided life at the school wasn't so bad. He still got to see Spoiler and even created a new hi-tech skateboard. He discovered four Man-Bat-like creatures that warranted investigating. With help from Nightwing, he learned that the bats were Kirk and Francine Langstrom and their children. He had to ask Jason Bard for an antidote Kirk had entrusted him with years ago. The serum worked on the parents, and their daughter but not their son.

Young Justice

Much like Dick Grayson, Tim Drake has allied himself with the other superheroes in his age demographic. He mostly worked with the Gotham City heroes, but on occasion joined forces with other heroes such as Superman, the Flash, Superboy and Impulse. During one adventure where a preteen boy was given god-like powers, Robin, Superboy and Impulse joined forces to defeat him. The boys worked so well together that they created their own team of heroes called Young Justice. Robin acted as the leader of the team until he temporarily quit following the Imperiex War. During that mission, the group was tortured on Apokolips. Afterward, Robin discovered that over half the team, including Superboy, Wonder Girl, Impulse and Cissie King-Jones, no longer trust him. The Justice League had discovered that Batman kept contingency plans on them, and the younger heroes began to wonder if Robin might also have plans to defeat or even kill them. Secret, who has deep feelings for Robin, along with new members Empress and Lil' Lobo however remained trusting of Robin. Still, feeling hurt as well as strained by problems in his personal life, Robin quit temporarily.

When Tim returned, the team agreed to elect their leader, and Tim lost to Wonder Girl. The team still looked at Tim as its tactical expert, aiding Wonder Girl, in leadership, similar to Batman's own position in the JLA. Unwilling to quit Young Justice a second time, Tim took on the identity of "Mister Sarcastic" at a point where Young Justice agreed to become reality TV stars. Soon after, Secret was turned evil by Darkseid, and it was Tim who managed to save the world by reminding Greta of her humanity.

Graduation Day

The Titans and Young Justice are both approached by the corporation Optitron who want to fund them as a massive tax write-off, but Nightwing angrily refuses. Outside this building they're attacked by an android named Indigo, but the team is decimated by bad coordination. Robin broods over his hospitalized teammates believing it's his fault for letting them get hurt, and the android releases a rogue Superman Robot that kills Omen. There's a massive battle and Donna Troy is killed. In the wake of this tragedy, Young Justice decides to disband because their lack of experience gets people hurt. Cyborg offers to mentor them instead.

Teen Titans

Beast Boy, Cyborg and Starfire decide to mentor the next generation of heroes as the new Teen Titans. They establish a Titans Tower in San Francisco and invite Robin alongside Impulse, Superboy and Wonder Girl to join them on a weekends-only basis. Their first battle is against Deathstroke who attacks them saying that kids shouldn't wear costumes, although he's revealed to be possessed by Jericho. They end their first weekend when the Justice League visits and the two teams battle over a misunderstanding, with Robin fighting his mentor until Nightwing tells the League to trust the next generation.

On his 16th birthday, Tim is so busy that he forgets and his friends plan him a surprise party. He receives a present that appears to be a hologram of Alfred from the future. This message tells him that one member of the Batman Family will betray the rest, and turn Gotham into a subjugated nightmare. Robin works hard to determine which of his friends could be the traitor. Eventually, it's revealed that this was a hoax engineered by Batman to test Tim's detective skills.

Robin then helped Batman stop and investigate random crimes around Gotham. Some time later, he was assigned the mission of taking care of an injured Ventriloquist during an attack by a group known as The Body. Having to deal with several enemies, a convalescent crime lord and a deranged Frank Ivers, Robin called James Gordon to help him. However, Robin and Gordon fell victims of an infectious fear that caused them to attack each other and lost control of the situation. With help from Frank Ivers, Robin and Gordon were released from the fear and returned to normality.

Unmasked!

Beginning his junior year at the unfamiliar Louis E. Grieve Memorial High School, Tim quickly makes friends with Bernard Dowd and Darla Aquista. Batman gives him a new motorcycle, and his parents catch him with a black eye after fighting crime. The hitman he was fighting gains powers and becomes Johnny Warlock. Warlock takes over crimelord Henry Aquista's business, then seemingly dies trying to kill Robin and Spoiler. During his weekend with the Titans, Robin takes a joyride in a stolen Batmobile and helps rescue Raven by defeating Brother Blood.Warlock hires the assassin Scarab to kill Robin when he's forced to leave the country.  Jack Drake catches his son lying about the black eye, and confronts Bruce Wayne after finding Robin equipment hidden in Tim's room. Tim's father demands that he quit being a superhero, and threatens to expose their secrets. Tim reluctantly accepts that he has to give up being Robin.

This puts a strain on his relationship with Stephanie, although Tim says being normal gets easier every day. Stephanie catches Darla forcefully kissing Tim and begins avoiding him. Batman agrees to train her as Tim's replacement when she makes her own Robin costume and sneaks into the Batcave. When Tim learns of this he tries to talk to Steph, but she continues to avoid him. Scarab begins systematically murdering teens who look like Tim in an effort to complete her contract on Robin. Superboy visits Gotham and deduces Tim's identity by careful listening. He tries to persuade him to come back to the Titans, but Tim insists he is happier giving up the responsibilities of being a superhero. Batgirl protects Tim while Batman and Robin go after Scarab. Bruce eventually fires Stephanie for disobeying orders.

War Games

When the city is plunged into gang war, Tim's dad urges him to stay at home although he is uncomfortable. Darla is targeted by the Odessa Mob and the Ventriloquist, who send hitmen to kill her at school. Tim is forced to protect other students in his civilian identity, although Darla still gets hit by a bullet. Batman, Batgirl and Nightwing finally arrive to help him deal with the situation. They prevent any deaths, but Darla still leaves in critical condition. Tim decides to break his promise and become Robin again to help. Batman is not surprised to see him back, and they partner up again. He asks Nightwing for advice on his situation. Robin is alerted with all the others when Batman realizes the gang war was one of his "war game" contingency plans. Tim confesses to his dad that he's become Robin again, and his dad begrudgingly realizes that the city needs him. Jack Drake and Dana Winters volunteer at the Thompkins clinic. Robin helps GCPD hold their barrier at the Robinson Park riot. He rescues Batman and allows him to go after the Orpheus impostor revealed to be Black Mask. Robin takes down Mr. Fun, the Ravens, and Trickster, then takes a break and spends time with his dad. When they rally at the siege on Gotham Clock Tower, Robin takes down Scarebeast by parlaying with the cops ordered to shoot on sight. The crisis ends, but Stephanie dies of her injuries in the Thompkins clinic. Bruce told Tim about her death afterwards, and noticed that he did not cry or make a sound. Tim returns to active duty with the Titans shortly afterward.

Titans Tomorrow

Tim encounters his future self in the identity of Batman after his mentor dies in a crisis. This future happens despite his repeated statement that he does not want to be the next Batman, and is rather content being Robin. In this timeline, Tim is now the leader of the future Titans with himself as Batman. After Bruce Wayne's death, Tim has the Titans take control of the entire West Coast. He orders any rebellions put down by Dark Raven absorbing the people's free will and hope. He even hunts down most of Batman's Rogues Gallery and kills them with the handgun that was used to kill Thomas and Martha Wayne. As he explains to his younger self, 'It took me years to do it.' He even begins a relationship with Bette Kane, who becomes his partner, Batwoman. He later kills her during an argument. Wracked with guilt, he made a deal with Ra's al Ghul to restore her using the Lazarus Pit. Once revived, she joined the Titans East and opposed Batman and his team. His latest victim before the younger Teen Titans show up was Duela Dent, the Joker's daughter, whom he murders out of revenge for the death of assorted people including Cassandra Cain and Alfred Pennyworth.

Identity Crisis

Tim, along with the rest of the superhero community, tries to keep all of his loved ones safe after some tragic attacks upon the family members of the Justice League. One night, while Batman and Robin were investigating these crimes, they receive an incoming transmission from Oracle that Tim's father needs to speak to him immediately. It turned out that there's an intruder in the Drake home and a mysterious note with a gun was for Jack suggests that he protect himself. Jack tells Tim that he is proud of him and that he is not responsible if something bad happens. The intruder is revealed to be the hired killer Captain Boomerang. Jack fired as Captain Boomerang unleashed a razor boomerang and the two killed one another before Batman and Robin could make it back to the scene. Like Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson before him, Tim Drake had now lost both of his parents to crime.

Blüdhaven

After Identity Crisis, Bruce Wayne offered to adopt Tim, who was not initially fond of the idea. Tim falsified records to create an uncle who would become his legal guardian. He then moved in with his 'Uncle Eddie' in Blüdhaven, while his stepmother received treatment at a psychiatric hospital. Although Tim covered his tracks well, Batman was still able to figure out the truth. Rather than being angry, Batman is impressed with Tim's subterfuge. He even offers to teach Tim to cover his tracks completely.

To Kill a Bird

Soon afterward, a military superhero legend called the Veteran attempted to recruit Robin. Tim, now concerned with his own mission rather than Batman's, took the Veteran's offer under consideration and went on a mission with his team to get a feel for the job. Tim eventually turned down the offer. Some time after this, Jason Todd, long thought dead, returned as the new Red Hood. Angered that someone has replaced him as Robin, Jason broke into Titans Tower wearing a version of his own Robin costume. Quickly immobilizing the other Titans, Jason confronted Tim to see if the new Boy Wonder was really as good as everyone claimed. The two Robins fought, until at last Jason struck Tim down in the Hall of Fallen Titans. Although Tim was defeated, Jason demanded to know if he still believed himself to be as good as people say, to which Tim replied with a defiant 'Yes' before Todd rendered him unconscious. Jason spared Tim's life, simply tearing off the 'R' shaped emblem from his chest. In the epilogue of the story, Jason has developed a grudging sort of respect for Tim, wondering if he would have been a better Robin and a better person, had he had friends like the Titans.

Infinite Crisis

As in the events surrounding the Infinite Crisis storyline, Robin, along with the Veteran's forces, had to defend the city of Blüdhaven against an army of OMACs who had captured dozens of metahumans for immediate extermination. After a virus deactivated the cyborgs, Tim, the Shadowpact and the Veteran's team captured the metahumans. With Blüdhaven safe, Wonder Girl arrived on the scene asking Robin for help. Along with the Teen Titans, the Doom Patrol and the Justice Society of America, he battled against Superboy-Prime, who had violently assaulted their world's Superboy. The fight overwhelmed Conner's body to the point where it began eating away at itself for energy.

After Robin's departure from Blüdhaven, the city was destroyed by the Society. Although he worried about his stepmother, his "uncle" and Nightwing, Tim continued to Titans Tower. He then led a successful assault on one of Lex Luthor's genetic research bases to find a cure for Superboy. With Blüdhaven still in chaos, Superman left Robin in command of all the superhero rescue efforts. But when the government put the city on complete lock down, the Titans were kicked out. Following the discovery of Superboy's death at the North Pole, Robin joined the rest of the world's heroes in a final battle against the Society in Metropolis. Although the heroes won the battle, many on both sides were injured and killed.

52

After the Infinite Crisis ended, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Tim Drake went on a trip to retrace Bruce Wayne's original journey around the world in his quest to become Batman. The journey took them to Europe, where Robin and Nightwing went on a quest to stop Intergang's associates on different countries. While on this quest, Robin changed his costume's colors in order to strike fear into the eyes of criminals.

At a ceremony honoring Superboy one year after his death, Robin attended in a new costume made up primarily red and black. When asked why by Jimmy Olsen, he explained that they were the colors of Conner's costume.

One Year Later

When Batman and Robin return to Gotham, they work better together and start a crime-purge. Having trained together, they are able to wipe out major super-crime in a month. Bruce informs Tim that since his parents died he has decided to adopt him, and Tim joyously accepts. Robin is framed for murder when Lynx turns up dead in a Batgirl suit and Cassandra Cain goes missing. He is forced to break David Cain out of prison for the ransom, but it turns out Cassandra is responsible. Cassandra has turned evil and taken over the League of Assassins, now wanting Tim to fight at her side. He refuses and barely escapes alive.

Tim leads the new Teen Titans, and he tries to put the team back together with Cyborg. When Wonder Girl learns he is trying to clone the dead Superboy, they share a grief-stricken kiss.

Teenage Wasteland

When Robin goes undercover to stop a crew of kidnappers, the wannabe super-hero Dodge interferes and is put into a coma. Tim blames himself for this, but talks through these problems while convincing a teenager not to commit suicide. He teams up with Klarion the Witch-Boy and Teekl when a Limbo Town resident named Uriah attempts to create a Judgment Beast. Tim goes on a successful date with his classmate Zoanne Wilkins, although they are interrupted by the super-villain Jitter. On Halloween he goes after the serial killer Scary Mary. Jamie Harper enlists him to fight a metahuman street gang called Lords of the Avenues, and Cassandra returns to murder his enemies. Zoanne breaks up with Tim because she believes he is not ready for a relationship. Deathstroke puts together his own team of super-villains called the Titans East to battle the Teen Titans.

The Big Leagues

On his first Father's Day with Bruce, Tim plans a nice evening and has to fight the Jury so he can make it home in time. Dodge returns to take revenge with a crew including the villains Brutus, Cheater, Macro, Micro, Skill and Tapeworm. Robin takes them down with the help of Zatara and Ravager posing as Skill to be their spy. Dodge realizes his mistake and dies a hero, protecting Robin as his powers finally kill him. Tim has a relapse into violence on the anniversary of his father's death, but swears to honor him by improving. The Teen Titans have another encounter with the Titans Tomorrow despite two of their present day deaths.

The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul

Damian arrives in the Batcave to warn everyone that Ra's al Ghul has returned. They have a rematch when Robin doesn't believe him, although Alfred scolds Tim. Wayne Manor is attacked by the League of Assassins, and Nightwing is forced to let them be captured while he rescues the Insect Girls. Ra's asks Tim to serve at his side and realize his true potential, promising to resurrect his parents. Batman is forced to choose whether Ra's will use Robin or Damian as his new host body, and Batman offers to take him to Nanda Parbat instead. Robin and Damian escape and fight their way through White Ghost's ninjas. Tim reconsiders the offer Ra's made and decides to sacrifice himself for his lost friends and family. Nightwing fights to stop him until I-Ching breaks them apart. Tim is allowed to make the decision on his own and chooses not to, breaking down in tears. They travel to Nanda Parbat and fight an army of ninjas, until Rama Kushna saves them from Ra's in his new body. The four men realize it's Christmas on the plane-ride home, and toast to family.

Violent Tendencies

Robin begins chasing a new vigilante who reminds him of Spoiler named Violet. He takes down Condiment King, and Harper puts him in contact with her corrupt superior officers Marcus Wise and Roman Cavallo. They are working for the Penguin and use Robin to wipe out his competition, starting with Maxie Zeus's illegal casino. Sebastian Ives is diagnosed with treatable cancer and Tim supports him. He chases Violet to a Korean counterfeiting operation, where they're interrupted by someone wearing a Spoiler costume. He loses track of both women, but later hunts down "Spoiler" with Batman. She reveals that she is actually Stephanie Brown, having only faked her death. Tim gives her a huge kiss and they talk through the details. Robin and Spoiler become a crime-fighting duo again, although this creates a rift between Tim and Zoanne.

Batman R.I.P.

Robin and Nightwing put away the Wonderland Gang and after this, Batman warned them about Hush's return. A few days later, Robin and Nightwing were summoned to the Batcave to confront Hush and put an end to his evil scheme.

After this, Batman and Robin took the new Batmobile out for a test drive, stopping a criminal wannabe named Green Vulture. Tim was worried about Bruce's mental health since the Thögal Ritual, and is angry that no one will tell him the results of Damian's paternity test. Batman went missing and Robin searched the city for him with Spoiler, believing he has lost his mind. He took down the Sprang Bridge Soldiers, made a deal with Penguin and brought Jamie Harper deeper into his confidence. While Robin was reading through the Black Casebook, he's ambushed by Pierrot Lunaire and Swagman of the Club of Villains. Robin teared the city apart, vowing that he will either save Batman or take him down. However, he learned that Spoiler had been sabotaging his efforts under Batman's request. Robin escaped from Pierrot and Swagman to alert Knight and Squire. He rallied the Club of Heroes and they dealt with the Black Glove all over Gotham. Robin went to Arkham in time to see a helicopter crashing. He explained the situation to Gordon as Hurt's helicopter went down.

Afterwards, Robin helped Batgirl decipher a code sent by the Black Glove in which they revealed their master plan to eliminate the Outsiders along with Batman.

After a while, Nightwing returned to Gotham and together they started working on the reconstruction of the Batcave. Later, Robin and Nightwing went to Vietnam to capture Hush and they took him back to Gotham, where they locked him in a secure cell at the top of Wayne Tower.

Search for a Hero

Robin tries to protect Gotham in Batman's absence, as the gangs and police begin rioting. Jason Todd tries to take control of the gangs, but Robin has him put in Blackgate. Spoiler continues testing Robin, hiring mercenaries like Jaeger and Scarab while he's already fighting Lynx. Jason Bard takes down Cavallo and Wise, making them work for Robin, then begins dating Jamie Harper. The General returns as Red Robin, then becomes Anarky while Lonnie Machin is paralyzed. When the riots reach a climax at Anarky's manipulation, Tim wears the Red Robin costume and adopts a grimmer persona. Spoiler worries that to make him a better hero she's made Robin a worse person, and Tim recognizes that he must do whatever it takes to keep Gotham safe.

Lady Shiva challenged Robin to a fight to the death. He made peace with his loved ones and broke up with Zoanne Wilkins. During the fight, Shiva broke three of his ribs, but he defeated her as he had poisoned her food earlier in the day. Later, Tim also defeated the Obeah Man when he got out of prison in Haiti, and had him extradited to a US prison.

Battle for the Cowl

In the wake of Batman's death, Robin patrolled the city constantly to keep order and stopped criminals like Nocturna.

Later, there's a massive gang war and the entire Network was enlisted to help, leading Robin to team up with Squire. Tim tried to convince Dick to become the new Batman, but Dick refused and Jason Todd began wearing a Batsuit to gun down criminals. Tim responded to this by putting on a Batsuit and took to the streets, but Todd impaled him with a Batarang through the chest. Tim was barely rescued from dying by Damian and Squire when Jason's make-shift Batcave collapsed. Shortly after, Dick defeated Jason and became Batman.

Red Robin

Tim believes Bruce is still alive somewhere after seeing a painting of his "ancestor" Mordecai Wayne in Wayne Manor. He is angered when Dick chooses Damian Wayne to be Robin instead of him, and nobody believes him when he insists that Bruce is still alive. Traveling to Europe to investigate Bruce's disappearance, he begins wearing the Red Robin costume as it will allow him to become darker without tarnishing an existing symbol. In Paris he's attacked by Owens, Pru and Z of the League of Assassins but it's revealed that this is Ra's al Ghul reaching out to help him. These assassins help him fight the Wild Huntsman when he infiltrates a museum, and Ra's explains that they are completely in Tim's service. This leads him to a cave painting that proves Bruce is lost in time, but outside they're attacked by Widower of the Council of Spiders who kills Owens and Z.

Blackest Night

Red Robin is called back to Gotham by Batman and Robin when their old enemies start rising from their graves as members of the Black Lantern Corps. He arrives in the Batplane to save them from a siege at GCPD Headquarters by sweeping the building with flame-throwers and airlifting them out. His father Jack Drake becomes a zombie and reenacts his own death with Captain Boomerang, to get an emotional response from Tim and feed off his life-energy. Dick and Tim use Mister Freeze's Freeze Gun to avoid the zombies' detection, then have Deadman unfreeze them and pass on their information to others.

Council of Spiders

Ra's al Ghul has Red Robin and Tam Fox kidnapped by the White Ghost. Drake is put in charge of the League of Assassins while they're attacked by the Council of Spiders, as Drake is the only person to survive an encounter with the council. He sets up fake assassinations across the world to bait the Spiders, but they slaughter his men and infiltrate the League's headquarters to kill Ra's. Drake is barely able to save Tam and Ra's is seemingly killed by their leader the Wanderer. Despite the entire League of Assassins having been killed by them, Drake takes on all of the Spiders simultaneously and wins. Before leaving with Tam he uses the League's computers to blow up all of their facilities across the planet, and Ra's announces he will retaliate by destroying Wayne Enterprises.

Collision

Tim reunites with Conner Kent in Paris, while trying to look for a Mother Box in order to get to New Genesis. After looking for one of Lex Luthor's labs in the catacombs of Paris, Tim broke down and told Conner of the hardships he'd faced. Conner emotionally supported him, also believing that Bruce is alive.

Returning to Gotham, Tim takes down Killer Moth and tries to reconcile his new grim persona with his old life. Ra's announces that he will kill those dearest to Bruce Wayne, and Tim teams up with Batgirl to save Leslie Thompkins. Pru gives them inside information on Ra's plans, but they are ambushed by the Seven Men of Death. They are able to survive these assassins, and Tim enlists Batman and Robin to help as he believes Ra's is planning something larger. Tim uses his connections in the Network and the Titans to rescue the hostages, explaining that unlike Batman he has friends. To stop Hush from transferring control of the company to Ra's, Lucius Fox has Tim appointed CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Ra's is outraged and kicks Tim out a window, although he calls him "detective" and privately admits he'd like Tim to father an heir. Tim apologizes to his friends for the dark direction he's taken and reveals his evidence that Bruce is still alive. Vicki Vale publishes an article saying he is engaged to Tam Fox. Alfred designs a modified costume for Tim, allowing him to truly become his own person.

Hit List and Return of Batman

After dealing with Ra's al Ghul's attempt to destroy the Bat-family, Tim Drake began a new quest of his own to take down several of the Bat-family's currently active foes, starting with the new Lynx. He also enlisted the help of Lonnie Machin to be his "Oracle," had a confrontation with Damian Wayne, and captured Ulysses Armstrong, who had stolen the Anarky persona.

Red Robin was then summoned to the Justice League Headquarters to help them rescue Bruce Wayne from being stranded in time. After Bruce's return, he teamed up with Red Robin to defeat the Council of Spiders in Amsterdam, with a little help from Prudence, Tim's ally, formerly of the League of Assassins. Later, after Bruce had established Batman Incorporated, Tim, as Red Robin, traveled to Hong Kong, where he contacted Cassandra Cain, the former Batgirl. Cassandra was still affiliated with the Bat-family but had no interest in returning to Gotham City. Nevertheless, he gave her a duplicate of her old costume, which she accepted. After here turned to Gotham City, Red Robin sprang Lynx from prison, the latter having claimed to be an undercover Hong Kong Police Officer, who kissing him in return. Batman was mildly annoyed by this but gently offered to give Tim advice on his dealings with Selina Kyle, as Tim considered Lynx to be on the road to becoming his own personal Catwoman. Tim then revealed that a Neon Knights center had been established in Gotham City, and that they would be preventing young people from turning to crime while the Bat-Family fought crime.

The Rabbithole

Tim's next mission was to investigate the supervillain communications network, the Unternet and discern how to either control it, or destroy it. He traveled to Russia, with Tam Fox in order to find out whether or not industrialist Viktor Mikalek had anything to do do with it. He was met with an icy reception from Red Star, who told him to be careful when dealing with Mikalek, as his actions had contributed greatly to the Russian economy. Tim and Tam arrived at Mikalek's headquarters, and were discussing a proposal to set up a Neon Knights center in Moscow, when a vigilante calling herself Promise broke into the meeting room and started to attack Mikalek. Red Star appeared to resolve the situation, but Promise managed to escape. Later, as Red Robin, Tim looked for Promise with the help of Lonnie Machin, who has been rendered catatonic following torture by The General, and was now only able to communicate by a special computer, thus allowing him to hack anything. Tim tracked Promise to her hideout, and after a brief conversation, Red Star attacked them, thinking that Red Robin was in league with "the terrorist." Meanwhile, Tam and Lonnie had hacked into the Unternet, and Red Robin had given Promise a comlink. After a fierce chase, Red Robin found himself aboard Red Star's ship, where he discovered dozens of missiles. At this moment, one of the Calculator's defenses was activated, which resulted in Red Robin, Tam, Promise, and Lonnie being knocked unconscious and their consciousness being absorbed into the Unternet. There they discovered a very surreal world where all of the persons inside manifested as they saw themselves, with the Riddler representing Tim Drake's mind figuring things out. After a series of scuffles with manifestations of the likes of the Joker and Deathstroke, they encountered Promises's manifestation, who revealed to them the meaning and purpose of the Unternet, and that Viktor Mikalek wished to regulate it, and make the world's supervillains pay him to use it. Tim, Tam, and Promise were able to escape, leaving Lonnie behind as a spy and to police the Unternet.

Shortly thereafter, Tim discovered that the Calculator had constructed hundreds of androids that looked like him, and had sent one such android to kill Tam Fox in an attack instigated by Catman. Tim realized that he would need some help tracking down the real Calculator. Thus, he contacted the Teen Titans, who met with him. The Titans were very happy to see him, with the exception of Damian Wayne, who had joined the Titans as Robin. The group set out in the Teen Titan's jet, and found that the Calculator's base of operations seemed to be in Istanbul. They used Damian to draw out one of the Calculator's androids, and followed it to one of the city's most popular nightclubs. After the Calculator android explodes, Kid Flash barely got Robin out of the way. Red Robin then realized in shock that there are several Calculator androids scattered throughout the crowd. Acting quickly, the group destroyed the Calculator robots and entered the location where Calculator's signal was originating; a nightclub. Digging underneath the building, the team stumbled across what appeared to be Calculator himself, who revealed to them that he had tortured and killed Kid Eternity. He then deployed a set of other more powerful robots against the Titans. Red Robin worked with Robin to destroy a few of these robots, and helped him to realize that this Calculator was also an android, the latter destroying it a few minutes later. In the aftermath of this occasion, Red Robin rejoined the Teen Titans, but Robin resigned, telling the former that the team "already had a Robin." Tim eventually discovered that the source of the Unternet was the Madmen, who had been turned by Darkseid into living servers for it. Red Robin lured them to Gotham City where he was forced to fight with them. He finally managed to render them catatonic, and thus disabling the Unternet, by contriving for them to hooked up to the Gotham City power plant.

Fun Facts

Tim Drake is not religious, believing that if God existed he would not let so many bad things happen. He has mentioned that his mother was religious but his father was not at all. This becomes relevant during Judgment on Gotham when the Crusader questions his faith and Tim is forced to admit he does not believe in God, although he knows this will put the city in further danger. This makes him a confirmed atheist.

Tim's birthday is on July 19th.

Tim's grandfather Charles Drake was 15 when he snuck off to join the military during World War II. He won the silver star for conspicuous valor at Iwo Jima. 

Tim's father Jack gave Tim his first beer. Tim took a big swig and immediately spat it out all over his dad. Jack did not know he was giving his chronologically 15-year-old son beer because Tim was temporarily aged into adulthood as a result of the Sins of Youth event.

Tim considers Conner Kent to be his best friend, and Bart Allen to be a close second.

[secretlystephaniebrown]

The Mangled Past, the Bright Future

I really have wanted to bring Duke Thomas into the Red Hood Steph verse for some time. Originally, he was slated to make his debut in the next Big entry, but I kind of wanted to establish some more things off the... well. Bat. It’s my first time seriously writing Duke, but I really did have fun with him and hope to do so again soon!

This takes place sometime before The Bitter Taste of Graveyard Dirt. 

There was a kid in the Batcave.

“Who are you?” Steph asked, squinting at him. He looked to be about fifteen or sixteen. His dreadlocks were pulled into a ponytail behind his head.

“You’re the Red Hood!” He yelped, backing away from her. A smart reaction, all things considered, from someone who might have just broken into the Cave.

“Sure am. That doesn’t answer my question,” she said.

“This is Duke.” Cass’s ability to come and go silently as she pleased was always uncanny, but Steph had long since learned to adjust to it. She hesitated, placing a hand on Duke’s shoulder as she looked at Steph. “He’s my Robin.”

Steph felt her breath leave her lungs. Of course Cass would have a Robin. Damian was far too young to spend his days following Cass across the world, despite the hero worship. An older, wiser Robin would be called for, to fight alongside the International Bat.

She knew what Cass was afraid of. Steph was volatile by nature, and she had attacked Tim time and time again for reclaiming the mantle of Robin. Damian was different; Steph and Damian went way back, and he was Dick’s partner anyways. Duke was to be Cass’s partner, and he was a stranger to Steph. There was no mistaking the way that Cass stood, just perfectly on the balls of her feet, ready to move if Steph snapped. Steph wished she could be offended, but how could she be? She had done far worse things than attack a sixteen-year-old for the crime of fulfilling a dream that Steph had once held close to her heart.

Steph examined the kid more closely. He was decently muscled for a sixteen-year-old; certainly he was bulkier than Steph or Tim had been when they’d been his age. He was already taller than Cass, a fact which Steph knew she would get excellent mileage out of, and he had a serious look on his face.

She wondered how Cass had found him, how she had chosen him. Would he balance Cass out, like Robin was supposed to balance Batman? Looking around the cave, she saw scraps of fabric laid out, in the Robin colors. Apparently the kid was inclined to favor yellow as his primary color, which would be interesting.

She hoped he was better at the job than she had been.

Steph nodded, and pulled off her helmet. She tucked it under her left arm, and stuck out her other hand. “Well this will be interesting,” she said.

He stared at her, and she flinched internally, guessing what he was about to say.

“You’re Stephanie Brown!”

There was nothing quite so uncomfortable as the fact that people knew who she was. Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler, the Robin who had died. The blonde superhero, recognizable even years later, with heavy scarring and short hair. Long after baby fat had faded away and the signature smile had shriveled and died, people could still see Stephanie Brown in the mangled remains that was The Red Hood.

She had once been scared that Bruce would not be able to recognize her when she took off her helmet. Now, it seemed that every time she took off her helmet, someone recognized her as what she was; the twisted ghost of the failed Robin, smeared in blood.

She flashed him a grin with too many teeth. “Stephanie Brown died.”

“But…” he looked at her, and then turned to look at Cass.

“Steph,” Cass reprimanded, looking disapproving. Cass hated it when Steph was flippant about her own death, especially when she tried to use it to wiggle out of questions she didn’t want to answer.  

She shrugged, making eye contact with Cass. Being the Bat suited Cass; it gave her an aura of confidence and power that went beyond what she’d had before. Even standing there in sweats, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, Steph wondered how anyone could see her as anything else. “What? I did.”

“You died?” There was horror there, as well as incredulity. Steph wondered what the kid would say if she pulled down the high neck of her shirt to reveal the autopsy scars.

Steph’s grin felt brittle to her. “Funny thing they never tell you about being a superhero. They don’t tell you that death is just that much less likely to stick.” And wasn’t that just unfair? Why did superheroes get to come back, when innocents who died in their wakes didn’t get to? And why did some people get glorious resurrections, while she had to claw her way out of her own grave?

Something like understanding settled on his face. He was sharp, she realized. Possibly the sharpest of the Robins in that department. She wondered how Tim felt about all this; about being replaced not once but twice over. Red Robin or whatever it was that he was calling himself these days was busy, running around with the Teen Titans and searching for evidence of whatever conspiracy theories he was gathering together this week. She wondered if he’d met the new Robin, and what he thought of him.

“You went after the Mask. I remember reading that in the papers.”

“You read papers?” Steph was delighted. “Oh man, please introduce him to Oracle, I can’t wait to see what she thinks of a luddite grand-protégé.”

“I’m not a luddite!”

“You’re a sixteen-year-old who reads the newspaper,” Steph said. “I call it like I see it.”

Cass laughed softly, then kissed Steph on the cheek. “Play nice,” she said, then wandered off towards the big computer.

Steph sighed. “When you said there was an emergency this was not what I thought you meant!” She yelled after her best friend’s retreating back.

Cass wanted her to meet her protégé, and, Steph suspected, to know what Steph thought of him. Something warm unfurled in her stomach there; there was trust there, but more than that, there was… Cass wanted Steph to like her new sidekick. Cass cared about what she thought. It went beyond just about anything else that Cass had done for Steph, since Steph had ended up back on the side of the angels.

Well, if Cass had asked… she turned to Duke, sizing him up again. She’d love to see this kid in action; she wanted to see where he fell on the spectrum of the Robins. “Well, I guess Cass has you covered on the fighting grounds,” she said thoughtfully. “You done much detective work?”

There was pride on his face as he straightened up. He wore a letterman’s jacket from a local high school. She couldn’t really remember what the patches meant, but he had a lot of them. A king of his high school, she suspected. “Yes,” he said. “I beat the Riddler’s puzzle when I was thirteen. Deduced the original Batman’s secret identity too.”

Steph’s eyebrows raised. Cass had picked very well, it seemed. “Brains and brawn? I demand a recount, I’m being outclassed as a Robin again.”

A beanbag flew through the air. Steph barely dodged it in time. “Missed!” She yelled at Cass, who was engrossed in whatever case file she was reading.

Duke looked between the two of them, worry wrinkling the area between his eyebrows. “I thought… Cass didn’t like killing.”

“She doesn’t,” Steph said shortly. “None of them do. But especially not her.”  

He looked around the Cave, clearly questioning her presence.  

Sometimes, Steph couldn’t help but question it herself. Since Bruce died, things were strange. There was a sort of mockery to her inclusion here, in this family. A hollow echo of the way things should have been, of the role she should have played. Suspicion and avoidance from everyone but the often absent Cassandra Cain, who alone extended a hand of forgiveness every time, no matter how often Steph had thrown the kindness back in her face.

What made her different? She wanted to ask Cass, time and time again. Why did she get to be forgiven, to not be forced to pay for her crimes. Was it the secrets she held in her heart? Surely Cass realized that even if they sent Steph packing to Arkham or Blackgate, she wouldn’t tell. There was a cell in the Manor that had held her for months, until Talia had arranged for her release. They could hold her.

Steph wanted to be better. She wanted to change.

But why did she get to?

She was scared to ask Cass, and she couldn’t ask Bruce. Maybe they believed that death had twisted her into this, failing to see that there had always been this darkness, this anger inside of her. Or maybe they believed that she hadn’t done enough damage, because she had never managed to kill the targets of her rage and vengeance.

There were too many maybes.

But Steph knew what it boiled down to, at least enough to provide the newest Robin with an answer for her presence in this world.

“Cass believes that people can change,” Steph said, speaking slowly as she tried to figure out how to explain Cass to this kid, who couldn’t have known her for very long. “And the old man apparently felt bad about… things. So I got to have my second chance, I guess.” She shrugged. Thinking about Bruce and his last message still hurt. She didn’t know what to do with that information. “I don’t kill these days. It’s bad for the kid.” She tried to say it lightly, but she completely failed.

“Scarlet,” he said.

“Yes. Her.” She tilted her head at him thoughtfully. “What’s your rates for babysitting? Because you look like you might be able to stop her from climbing out the window to play games with the other Robin. And you seem responsible.”

He snickered, then fell silent. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and pointedly looked over her shoulder. “You weren’t a bad Robin, you know,” he finally said. Steph’s body locked up, making it difficult to breathe. “You were my favorite, when I was a kid.”

Then he turned and walked towards Cass, leaving Steph alone, feeling tired and hollow inside.

She texted Cass “He’ll be fine,” and then went home to Nell.

[davidmann95]

Where does Robin stands nowadays in the Batman's world in your opinion? How different is it from where it started in the DCU?

Over 78 years and at least 4 ‘main’ versions, yeah:there’ve been some changes.

The thing about Robin though, in terms of how he grewalongside Batman? For the first 30ish years of his existence, he’s not actuallya character; he’s an accessory, another item on the utility belt, albeit oneBatman cared about a lot more than a grapple gun or flashbang. Past that greatpage with him and Batman swearing the vow by candlelight, providing valuablesymbolism and context for (much) later on - and even there, Batman’s emotionsand motivations for bringing this kid into his world amount to “Well, Iguess you and I were both victims of a similar trouble.” - Dick’s just*there*, the junior crimefighter, thrown in to add variety to fight scenes andgive his partner someone to bounce dialogue off of. As little as the comicsbrought up Batman’s parents dying in a filthy alley back then, it at leastoccasionally merited a mention, whereas I could almost believe you if you toldme Robin’s origin was literally never brought up again for the first 20 yearsof his career.

To be clear, that’s not at all a failing of those stories. Robin’s great even then, a fitting splash of color into Batman’s world thatpaved the way for further weirdness down the line and a great design in his ownright (even if the lack of pants hasn’t aged as well as Superman or Batman’slooks at the time), as well as a reader-identification figure in a time whenhanging out with Batman still seemed like a fun prospect. But compared to itsbig rival in Superman, which silly as it got still often dove intobig, primal emotions children could relate to - at least in the Silver Age- Batman was mostly rooted in process: here’s how Batmanfights his way past the goons/escapes the deathtrap/figures out the mystery.The closest there was to an ongoing emotional conflict was Batman wonderingwhether or not he should settle down with Batwoman. As a result, despite reamsof pagetime and plenty of solo stories, Robin himself had less characterizationthan, say, the likes of Jimmy Olsen, or even Lori Lemaris. Even stories zeroingin on their relationship like Robin DiesAt Dawn are based on Batman’s guilt, not anything substantial on Robin’send. He’s not even a tonal contrast yet, since Batman himself is pretty chipperby now, and will be for the next few decades.

The turning point is in 1969 when Dick leaves for college aspart of a general attempt at streamlining Batman’s operation; while the O’Neil/Adamsteam hadn’t come onboard yet, the Adam West and Burt Ward show had ended theyear before and I imagine DC was already feeling the backlash, so it marked thestart in earnest of trying to get everybody to take Batman a bit moreseriously. The unintended result being that Robin, while appearing on occasionin the main titles, was for all intents and purposes hermetically sealed awayin his own corner of the DCU away from what was happening to Batman, first insolo adventures and then with the New Teen Titans. And eventually,inexorably, that meant that Robin shifted to not really fitting with Batman’sworld as we knew it anymore, and that’s therefore what came to define DickGrayson: he’s not like Bruce Wayne, and moreover he doesn’t especially want tobe, until him even nominally being Batman’s sidekick anymore doesn’t work oncehe grows up and realizes he doesn’t want to sit in a basement scowling for therest of his life.

Of course, taking Dick Grayson out of the picture meantthere wasn’t going to be a Robin period, and the rejection of the fun Robinrepresented wasn’t complete enough to deny the value of his iconography, soalong comes Jason Todd, The Robin Who Makes Sense For Grim Batman once he getshis Post-Crisis origin. He’s got a dark backstory (one that even doesmarginally more than Dicks’ did to justify the conceit of Batman taking on ayoung aid - after all, if Jason wasn’t Robin he’d possibly be doomed to a lifeof crime), and a personality that lets him trade jokes with the bad guys inclassic Robin style, but as fueled by a rage at injustice that meant he didn’tcontrast that harshly with a post-Miller Batman. There’s a bit more of adeliberate contrast with how Batman himself functions - something that becomesimportant later - but it’s subdued in the face of Jason’s anger boiling over,until his presence becomes untenable both in-universe and among the fanbase,and what happens, happens. Because goodness knows that if there’s one thingBatman was lacking, it was a defining tragedy to motivate him to fight crime.

So you have a company that recognizes that Robin probablyshould be a thing, but their attempt at making him mesh with therough-and-tumble modern world of the 1980s failed so spectacularly that havinga child beaten to death by a clown was preferable to having to continue to putup with him. So they were going to have to work with something a little morefamiliar, while at the same time finding a whole new way to make the ideapalatable, especially now that the obvious dangers of bringing a powerless kidto fight supervillains were right at the front of everybody’s minds.

And that’s how you get the most important Robin story of alltime past his debut in A Lonely Place OfDying.

Not the best,mind you; later stories explored the idea introduced here in far moreinteresting ways. And for that matter, I’mon the record that Tim Drake is by far the least interesting Robin, ageneric grab-bag of traits from other characters who never remotely approachesthe sum of his parts (and that disappointing streak in fact starts right here,where the question of “how do you justifyendangering a child after what happened to Jason Todd?” is kicked under therug by having a new kid show up out of nowhere who happens to be amazing andperfect for the gig both physically and mentally). But what happens here iswhere the idea hinted at now and again in the likes of The Dark Knight Returns finally clicks into place, where Robinactually becomes Robin as we now know him with the idea that his contrast withBatman isn’t a bug, but a feature.

That’s what Robin brings to the table, retroactivelyexplaining why Dick worked and Jason didn’t, why he makes sense in Batman’sworld, and why Bruce in fact needs him: because there needs to be a light inthe dark, someone to remind Batman just what it is he’s fighting for and keephim from losing himself entirely to his mission. That Robin saves Batman justas much as the other way around, and that having a laughing young daredevil outthere alongside him will keep Batman’s head in the game, keep him alert andengaged and alive now that he has someone else to look out for. In short, Robinbeing around forces Batman to be an adult, rather than the kid still crying inthe alley all these years later. And in so doing, he has the chance to showthese kids a better way, just as he once found one. It’s a take that sticksright away, since that’s the contrast they went with a couple years later for Batman: The Animated Series, setting instone how those two related to each other in the public eye to the point whereit’s hard to remember it any other way (especially since flashbacks to Dick’s period as Robin now retroactively cast him as the upbeat good cop toBatman’s hardass).

It doesn’t quite hold in the comics among the creatorsthough, and the result was an odd period where things were thrown in twodirections at once; some writers it was becoming obvious actually did dislikeor even hate Robin, or at minimum had no use whatsoever for him, and he startedto get kicked to the side at every available opportunity since now not only washe silly on his own but he actively represented the idea that Batman shouldhimself lighten up. Others clearly started to like Robin as a figure more thanBatman himself, hence getting storieswhere it turned out Nightwing was called into Gotham on the night of Jason’sdebut so Bruce could rub it in his face that he was replaced, or Brucereplacing Tim with an inadequately-trained young woman who eventually gotkilled to try and bait him into resuming the role himself. And by the timethings returned to some sort of equilibrium, it was already just about time forthe next big shift.

Finally, we come to the star of the show if we’re talkingabout how Robin works and where he stands today: Damian Wayne. The son of Batmanasopposed to the brother, and therefore probably why Bruce catastrophically fails at every turnwhen trying to raise him (outside maybe a few so-so Tomasi comics) - he’s acesat barking orders at partners, but not so much at emotionally connecting with achild who’s for a change actually immature compared to him, rather than beingnoticeably emotionally healthier. He couldn’t even properly help Jason; what hope didhe have at reaching a 10-year-old assassin raised from birth with the promisethat his destiny is to one day wreak bloody revolution and seize the world inhis grip? Bruce fights crime; what’s he going to do with a kid essentially raisedby the platonic concept of capital-C Crime? Hence why he’s not Bruce’s Robin, andnever really could be. Even if they could work together without findingthemselves at each other’s throats, it’d be two terse efficient warriors cooperatingsmoothly, with none of the spark that makes Batman and Robin thrive as apartnership in an emotional sense. He’s Dick’s.

He has to be Dick’s,because as Dick’s grown since his years in the speedo, through Nightwing toBatman and back again, he’s become the official adult in the room of the BatmanFamily (at least as far as the members in tights go). He’s the one who smiles,who has at least semi-stable relationships, who Bruce saved and who thereforegrew up not being afraid and vulnerable in the same way as him. And because ofthat he’s the one who’s able to talk with Damian as a human being to beunderstood and guided rather than an apprentice to be disciplined - just as hewas retroactively the one to make the effort to connect with Bruce, he’s ableto do the same thing here, except this time the power dynamic favors him - and becauseof that Damian eventually comes to understand there’s more to crimefightingthan punishing ‘degenerates’, but in protecting the innocent and serving ahigher ideal of justice. To the point where the privileged little brat whooriginally thought blood alone made him worthy of being Batman not only turnshis back on the crime that defined his life, but joins the Bat-Family inearnest by essentially orphaning himself with the rejection of hismother.

It’s the completion of a circle, where Dick proves hisworthiness as Batman by succeeding in saving Damian where Bruce failed to saveJason. They have the chemistry that defines Batman and Robin as a modernpartnership, able to bounce off each other with the wise snarking veteransuperhero always able to needle the self-important teen samurai billionaireuntil the kid comes out, whether to laugh along with him or show how deep hiswounds go. And the reason this truly works as a reconfiguration of the Batmanand Robin relationship rather than a new one altogether became clear in Nightwing Must Die!, where we see whatDamian brings to the table in turn: Dick as a well-adjusted person doesn’t havethe diamond-solid certainty in his identity or mission that Bruce did, butDamian most definitely does, and can bring the fire to Dick when he needs itthe way Dick could with Bruce. He’s the one who believes in Dick as Batman evenmore than he believes in Bruce. Hell, probably even more than Dick believes in Bruce.

As is that’s the issue with Robin, at least as far as thecomics go - he’s not working with his partner, and you can’t especially shove himtogether with Bruce without either killing the drama or going endlessly back tothe “You’re not my real dad, man!” well (yetanother reason Dick should absolutely still be Co-Batman), and while he’s honestlya strong enough character to work on his own, that’s not his situation at themoment. Thankfully we’re still getting a pretty effective contrast with JonKent in Super Sons, along with whatever they’re doing in Teen Titans right now,but as Robin specifically rather than Damian Wayne he’s kind of inevitablysidelined until Dick either takes back the cape or just takes Robin as hissidekick even while he’s Nightwing. Bruce himself seems to have moved pastneeding a Robin truly all his own at the moment, instead cycling through thelikes of Bluebird and Signal and Gotham Girl. The honest answer to what Robinmeans in the DCU right now is probably “identitythat’s going to remain in a holding pattern until the DCEU Batman and Nightwingmovies come out, and then they’ll do whatever lines up with those”. So, uh,come back to me in 2019 or thereabouts. But on the whole? Batman and Robin arethere to save each other. It’s that simple.