#meanwhile dick and Tim:

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Instead of Dick or Tim, Red Hood straight up goes for kidnapping Bruce Wayne and keeping him hostage just to see how desperate the birds get in trying to find him.

It’s a foolproof plan. Batman won’t blow his cover unless absolutely necessary, and “Brucie” would never know how to slip away from a crime lord of Red Hood’s caliber. It’s foolproof. It’s perfect. Jason can keep dropping hints and make threats towards the birds and watch Bruce squirm without consequences if he plays this right.

But then “Brucie” keeps begging him not to hurt his kids…

[ktkat99]

Jason comes back from the dead and, as he's still a bit out of it, heads to the manor.

Crawling straight up through six feet of compacted earth is hard, especially after waking up suddenly in a coffin, so after he makes it inside, he sits down to rest on the couch.

And immediately falls asleep.

Hours later, Bruce returns home to find Jason's body, covered in dirt, dug up from the grave and left on his couch.

[notrobinsomethingworse]

Steph, looking at two Robins: So which one’s Dick?

Robin 1 laughs tugging Damian’s arm and pointing to the street below. Robin 2 looks ready to bite someone.

Tim: The smiley one is Jason.

Duke: Nah man. The last time I saw Jason smile he was holding some dude off the Wayne office roof. Then he turned to look at me. Gave me chills dude!

Tim: Noted and ignored. Jason last smiled when Alfred gave him leftover bread pudding to take home.

Duke: That doesn’t count! Everyone smiles at Alfred.

Steph: Okay that doesn’t narrow down who’s who.

Duke: Well it does because Jason doesn’t smile and has a tendency for [whispers] paranoia.

Steph: Duke, my buddy my bro my good pal. We’re Bats. All we eat is paranoia.

Duke: That does not sound as good as you think it does.

Tim: And who was the stalker here? I know my Robins and Jason is the smiley one.

Steph, facepalming: How many times have I told you that does not make you cooler and makes you like 160% more of a weirdo.

Tim: Three times.

Steph: And?

Tim: … Noted and also ignored.

Duke: Come on man you know I’m right.

Damian: We are all wasting precious time. Drake is obviously wrong and Jason has disappeared.

Duke, Tim, Steph: WHAT?

-

In the cave.

Dick, Sitting on the bat computer desk and swinging his legs: And so there was a beam of light and that’s all I remember before waking up to these annoying people who wouldn’t stop talking. They kept on calling me ‘Jason’. B isn’t that annoying?

Bruce: Hm.

Dick: So I left while they were arguing because it was getting all boring and because I wanted Alfred’s cookies really badly. I’m really hungry B do you think Alfred’s made those ones with the gen-gion-

Bruce: Ginger.

Dick: Yeah the ginger! And the bread. But they’re cookies! Do you think he’s made those?

Bruce: You could ask him chum.

Dick: But then I would have to ask him why he’s old now B and that would be rude.

Bruce: Right.

Dick: Why are you more ancient now B?

Bruce: [audible sigh]

[thesulkycroissant]

Tim: You shouldn’t have done this, Bruce.

Bruce: I'm gonna make it up to you bc I called in your fav.

Dick: 🕺

[methoughtsphantom]

silly headcannon #2 that Bruce never got the reference that Jason always made of himself being short round (he always thought it was Jason saying he was short) until after he died and Tim, avid Indiana Jones fan made Bruce watch the movies with him, only the man breaks out crying., sobbing, full on breaking down over the two second scene that is Indy ruffling Short Round’s hair as he explains they first met when he caught the kid stealing from him, and then took him under his wing.

[superbat-lmao]

Jason and Damian stay with the League. They’re basically royalty and functionally generals, completing missions with Talia and serving Ra’s and the needs of their family.

As such, a large portion of that is maintaining a public cover. Talia lives a very public life that she uses for political maneuvers.

Jason attends college and Damian attends school, everything is public record and on visas.

However, it isn’t until Bruce is required to attend one of Lex’s galas in Metropolis that he becomes aware of Talia’s status as a Mother.

It’s also the first time he meets her sons.

Cut to Bruce blue-screening as Talia introduces Jason and Damian al Ghul, who are the very picture of upper class royalty.

Nightwing and Robin are immediately in his ear over comms (teamed up with Uncle Clark to foil whatever plot is going on) asking what’s wrong as Bruce can’t take his eyes off his dead son and a child that looks like the spitting image of his father.

[kettlefire]

As Good as Good Gets (DP X DC Snippet)

Richard "Dick" Grayson is the golden child. In the eyes of the public, and in the eyes of the league. Dick is a sweet, caring son, a man who went from being a sidekick to being a hero. The pipeline from Robin to Nightwing had many people applauding his dedication to keeping Gotham safe.

No one knew the full story, not truly. No one but Bruce Wayne himself. And maybe a certain butler. Many don't know that Dick only became Robin to stop him from hunting down and killing the man who killed his parents.

No one really knows about the harsh fights and arguments he has had with Bruce. The times when Dick would find himself cut off from the Wayne name for a week or so. No one knows that the first person Dick warmed up to was Alfred. Having been bribed with cookies.

Things weren't always this good, trusting, happy relationship between Bruce and Dick. It had been a rough ride, a complicated one. But that was okay, because it got better.

Dick stopped being so moody and angsty. He grew up, he learned, and he changed. He became an older brother, found people that needed him. Needed him in a way that the citizens of Gotham didn't need him.

His brothers like to call him annoying. A goody two shoes who Bruce trusted more than everyone else. They couldn't fathom how someone like Dick could be so stupid and bubbly at all times.

All times, except when shit hits the fans. Despite the name calling, despite coining Dick as the stupid Wayne. They all knew better. They knew that when it mattered, Dick Grayson always pulled through. He was a force to be reckoned with when needed.

The whole Wayne family was a force to be reckoned with when called for. It didn't have to be under the guise of costumes and vigilante acts. Whether he was Officer Grayson or Nightwing, Dick was a man with his morals and values.

One night on patrol as Officer Grayson, Dick found someone who needed that force. A force willing to protect and care for the innocent. The hurt. The damaged, yet still good.

It started like any other night. A call of shots fired by an empty warehouse. There was no sighting or knowledge of any rouges being there, so Dick took the call. Told the team he'll contact them if it seems more than just a civilian incident.

The warehouse was dark, reeked of copper and oil. It didn't take long for Dick to find the trail. The liquid he found looked like the person had been dragged before walking. There was a clear struggle, even with the mess and emptiness that was the warehouse.

That wasn't Dick's biggest concern. The concern lay in just how much blood there was. Too much for any normal person to lose and still manage to stumble through the warehouse.

It wasn't just blood. It wasn't that much, but Dick could spot the strangeness in the liquid. The mixed in green that had an eerily similar color and glow as a certain pit.

Without thinking, Dick followed the trail. Barely remembering to make contact with his family. Give them an update on what he found. Words telling him to stay put for backup went in one ear and out the other.

Something in Dick's gut was telling him he couldn't wait. He needed to find the source. Whoever was currently bleeding out in this warehouse. He silenced the comm, moving further through the dimly lit building.

Then Dick found it. Or more so, he found him. It was just a boy. A boy that reminded Dick too much of the youngest Wayne. A boy sat against a wall, looking pale and weak.

Red and green coated the front of the boy's shirt, arms wrapped tightly around his middle. An attempt to stem the bleeding. A puddle had already started to form beneath the boy, and Dick moved without thinking once again.

He quickly found himself kneeling beside the boy, hands carefully reaching out. Before Dick even touched him, the boy flinched. Eyelids suddenly opened, wide and terrified blue eyes landed on Dick's.

In just that one look, Dick knew what he had to do. The haunting, terrified, and pained look in the boy's eyes told Dick everything he needed to know. The boy was in danger. Someone had hurt this kid, and it was clear it wasn't the first time.

The boy struggled weakly against Dick's touch, terrified whimpers, and barely coherent pleas spilled from the kid's lips. It had Dick's heart aching, clear as day the poor kid has been through hell and back.

It took a lot of reassurance, gentle touches, and promises of help before the kid let Dick take a look at the bleeding wound. A promise on Dick's soul had been the final thing that earned him any semblance of trust. A strange promise, but Dick was willing to make it.

That concern turned to pure anger the moment Dick managed to pull the sticky shirt away from the wound. The sight of a Y-incision cut perfectly into the skin, stitches tight on the skin, but blood still leaking heavily from the wound.

It didn't take long for Dick to realize why. Despite the perfect surgical care of the wound, a good couple of stitches had broken. Leaving gaping spots for that red and green liquid to pour out of.

The boy was deathly silent, tears streaking down his cheek as wide blue eyes stayed trained on Dick. In that moment, Dick knew he had to help. Had to get the kid to safety, patch him up, and find out what kind of monster would do this.

It didn't matter if the kid was human or not. It didn't matter if the kid had special abilities or not. No one, absolutely no one, deserved to be vivisected.

The kid was shrouded in mystery, but that mystery only seemed to grow and become clearer when Bruce had entered the scene. The boy had tensed, eyes flashing a bright glowing green.

Lazarus pit green.

It set a pit of dread in Dick's gut. His mind brings forward memories of Jason. Jason, after his revival, after his dip in that cursed pit. The same flash that his brother would get if he got too angry. Too emotional.

As much as Dick wanted to focus on finding who did this, if it had any connection to Ra's al Ghul. He couldn't. Not when the kid tried to get up, to pull away as Bruce and the others made their way closer.

Right now, Dick only cared about making sure the boy was okay. Fixing those stitches, getting him a meal, and a warm bed.

He needed to get this kid someplace where he felt safe and secure. Comfortable and protected. Dick wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the promise he had made, but he wasn't letting anyone get to the kid.

That included his family. As strange as it seemed, Dick put himself between the others and the kid. Shooting them all a glare that they had only ever seen a handful of times.

Dick lifted the poor boy up in his arms, cradling the crying child close as he led the way out of the warehouse. Ignoring the questions or confusion coming from Bruce and the others. As Dick walked, feeling the trembling boy clinging to him, he made a rather obvious realization.

Maybe the eldest son really was more like Bruce than he expected. Just a few short moments the the boy, a boy that Dick didn't know his name, and he was ready to pull out adoption papers. To give the boy a safety he so desperately needs.

Give him the chance that Bruce had given him all those years ago.

[dragonpyre]

The batfamily can actually be evenly divided into two categories. Those who grew up in middle to lower class America, and those who have never learned the concept of money

[fantastic-nonsense]

super funny thing about fanon is people genuinely thinking Dick is this perpetually emotionally mature, touchy-feely guy who handles his grief well and Tim is the sad, self-isolating Batkid when Dick's consistently out here acting like this every time his life goes to shit

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Brucie Wayne gets into a mild accident in public (read-got hit by a car). And Batman would just walk it off (“it’s barely a bruise”), but Brucie obviously… can’t.

So he has to suffer the ordeal of having civilians call paramedics, getting fussed over, and having-

Having his dead son get into the back of the ambulance with him.

Oh- oh no. He must have hit his head worse than he thought. He thought he was past this…

[ktkat99]

Slightly Crack Batfam AU

Duke, shortly after being adopted, finds an old demon summoning circle burned into the floor under a rug in one of the rooms.

That, combined with some of the literature he finds laying around, leads him to conclude that someone in his new family is secretly a demon and he starts trying to figure out who.

Could it be Bruce, the literal demon of the night?

Dick, who bends and flips effortlessly in ways no normal human could?

Jason seems the most likely, as he climbed out of his own grave, but to be fair, he'd never actually seen Tim sleep.

And then there was Damian.

He never would have guessed that the demon is actually Alfred, summoned by a desperate, distraught Bruce the night of his parents' deaths.

Originally, their deal was just for Alfred to help Bruce get his revenge.

The reason he stuck around, though?

He realized he needed to make sure that Bruce and his collection of equally crazy orphans stayed OUT of the afterlife (and therefore AWAY from the throne of hell, which he has no doubt someone would eventually take) and decided to stay on as their oddly perfect butler.

[lunewolf13]

Spilling Tea Part 2:

All the Robins are sitting criss-cross applesauce on a plush carpet, summoned by Dick Grayson to play "truth or dare but without a dare and you can choose what to spill" (Dick is work-shopping the name).

Tim raises his hand: Why aren't Cass and Barbara here?

Jason: I thought this was a Robin-only meeting.

Tim: No, Dick told me it was a Robin and Batgirl meeting.

Dick: Cass volunteered to distract B so we can bond uninterrupted. And Babs...

Steph: She laughed in his face and said "no thanks."

Jason: I did that too and yet I'm here.

Dick: That's different, Little Wing :)

[bruciemilf]

Bruce’s kids detest Valentine’s day because no matter where they are he finds a way to get them their valentines gift (usually new weapons or a better suit because he’s emotionally constipated)

As for Bruce he’s too busy scheming to wonder why all his old flames, current flames, and best friends are fighting. (They want to be his Valentine)

WITH THIS OCCASION—

What Bruce gets for Valentine’s Day:

Dick: Promises not to prank him for a full week and/or reignes from the police force

Jason: A formal handshake followed by a moderate cuddling session, except it lasts way longer, because Jason falls asleep. Sleep has been damn near extinct without Bruce holding him, so, no one’s in any hurry to wake him.

Tim: Hacks LexCorp’s finance department. Surprise surprise, the owner of a mega conglomerate doesn’t pay his employees properly.

It’s just bad enough that Lex can be threatened. Bruce gets half of Lex’s workers livable wages and healthcare.

Stephawnie: A comically tiny collection of batarangs

Alfred: A week long supply of Sufganiyot; Martha’s recipe.

Damian: He and Talia handcraft Bruce a list of his enemies and tell him to take his pick! Bruce just nods and frames it somewhere. (He does pick Ra’s)

In addition to that, Talia buys his favorite perfume and hypothetically wears it over lingerie, but shhh—

Clark: Learns Bruce’s favorite planet/galaxial body and makes jewelry out of it. Law physics mean nothing to romance, and to a country boy in love.

Harvey: Very classic? Big ass bouquet of flowers. Like, Bruce disappears behind it, kind. More chocolate than he could eat. Also, lots of martial arts equipment.

Plus some nerdy Gray Ghost merchandise that, “I love you like a sin, but I will kill you if you wear this outside.”

[methoughtsphantom]

halfas are the found family trope foster child

they all adopt each other. it’s the reason Vlad wanted so badly to have Danny as his son and the reason Danny immediately went with sure you’re my cousin now with Dani. it’s a survival mechanism from being so very few of their species. Sooo, halfa!Jason except he sorta isn’t yet cause Jason’s core is extremely ruptured from the lack of ectoplasm involved in his forceful resurrection. So when Danny finds Jason in his catatonic state he can’t quite tell the dude’s been dead and remains some, just that the guy for some reason seems very friend-shaped. Danny doesn’t mind his friend is braindead, and is also a john doe, he gives familiar vibes and that’s apparently enough for Danny to constantly find himself in the hospital doing his engineering homework on the room with the guy, and talking for hours about the updates on the absolute clusterfuck of the city and how he was from a freaking ghost town and he can almost even draw comparisons. he blabbers about how he’s not homesick enough times to even corner himself to talk about a ghost lore many times and how he’s just finding himself a little more prone to violence and in constant pain since none of the people he has adopted as his family are here with him and he can’t consider a place a lair if there’s isn’t someone of his in it.

But Danny could never drag someone with him just because of some it, after all it was Danny’s choice to come to Gotham to collage and not stay where at least his parents (good parents Jack and Maddie) were in Amity.

Ironically, Danny essentially can’t feel that his core has been spoon feeding ectoplasm to Jason. As months go on, the little ball of energy builds in anticipation practically vibrating in the waiting pulse of something (Danny doesn’t know but more often than not has he found himself laughing in happy confusion. it weirds him out in a good way) It’s really that he’s feeling the slow healing process of his friend (brother brother brother) ‘s core.Imagine it’s just about to properly, correctly heal when canon strikes back and Jason gets snatched by League assassins. Danny is left feeling like his core got torned out. His core had spend months helping another’s only to feel the other’s imprint and to not be able to protect it in return is— forget it being an obsession; thats like having your newborn baby being ripped out of your arms. An all assuaging feeling of helplessness that is devastating. Danny just beginning to feel like home lair when out of nowhere the rug is swept under him. Danny suddenly struggling to not flunk all his classes and beat every single liminal that he can feel crossing paths with him to the ground. Danny suddenly having his chronic pain (that hadn’t been so bad lately) dialed up to the point that there are just bearable and bad days.

The worse thing is he doesn’t know why.

Jason had only been a guy.

…

It’s only a three weeks before Jazz tells him she accepted a job offer in Gotham.

(and the guilt only makes him feel worse when he can feel himself feel better because of it)

…

now

whimsical time skip ✨

Danny is now on his feet again and friends with a Wayne of your choice (or maybe they were friends a little before Jay dissapeared and it was badTM cause Waynes? liminal 🥲) Danny definitely didn’t enjoy snapping off to his friend like that. anyways it’s been a year since that and he and his friend are having a grand time playing civvies, uhh let’s say dick because I want them to meet while ice skating, Also Dick because he definitely turns a blind eye when Danny goes airborne for a second there yep. He’s just having too much fun.

anyways as alwaysTM Danny doesn’t clock celebrities and like why would he, Dick is just the random guy who’s was fast to turn Danny’s slow day in the ice ring into a competition one day and brighten when Danny matched up his puns. So he totally doesn’t get why the guy’s so gloomy one day, anyways as you can figure, it’s Jason’s deathday and Dick is a deprecating bean, Danny tries to cheer him up by having him remember his brother instead and Dick attempts to, but even skipping through some photos in his phone make his eyes burn.

It is because of that that he doesn’t notice Danny absolutely freeze up at the photo of his friend Jay (Jay because he’s a John Doe, but that’s just too impersonal and so the first letter is J *wink wink*)

Danny absolutely doesn’t know what to do with this information, barely catches himself from asking Dick how did his brother die. Most importantly when because Danny just saw Jay—Jason less than a year ago, and this somehow doesn’t feel too recent.

Annd that how we find Danny digging into the Wayne second son tragedy. Staring at the date of death while the knowledge that they met almost six months after burns his forefront of his mind. Danny spends a day going over all the questions running through his mind over how the fuck he couldn’t sense Jay was a ghost—err was… in past tense?? what the fuck?? Danny would really like a refund on his ghost sense.

Anyways Danny goes check out the grave (now that he knows there is one) and boom although intangible he somehow triggers those shitty ass sensors/alarms that somehow didn’t go off when jason was literally digging himself out.

Obviously the bats get in the case immediately. And boy are they absolutely enraged that someone would steal Jason’s body.

[superbat-lmao]

A “buddy” vigilante story where Jason and Tim go back in time during Dick’s time as Robin, when the Worlds Greatest Detective was still young.

Basically, they significantly change the past and in the most annoying way possible. Tim knows that no one will know it was them and has been pretty morally flexible about the whole thing. They go down the list of rogues, down the list of siblings, bickering about it the whole time.

Jason kills the Joker, Tim rescues Cass, and both of them try and get one over on the other about their past selves.

Because Tim tries to talk baby Jason into stealing the Bat’s tires early while Jason’s out murdering Zucco, and Jason’s out snatching Tiny Tim and his camera from rooftops trying to leave him gift wrapped in the batcave while Tim’s out stealing info from Luthor.

It’s one giant clusterfuck but they’re successful because Tim and Jason combined are absolutely lethal and no one ever saw them coming.

Meanwhile, they keep running into Robin and absolutely losing it over seeing their oldest brother so young and angry.

Dick tries to track them down after they killed Zucco, he wants to ask why. What the hell they could possibly be doing or why that would matter to them.

Tim pushes Jason off a roof.Jason lights Tim’s ancient computer on fire. Tim tears a book in half. Jason takes pictures of Tiny Tim and sets them as his wallpaper. It’s a comedy, your honor.

And probably the worst headache Batman will ever get.

[heroesriseandfall]

Introduction to Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, April 1990

Introduction by Dennis O'Neil for Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (1990 collected edition)

Transcription below the cut/readmore.

INTRODUCTION by DENNIS O'NEIL

Robin was gone. We needed a new Boy Wonder. There had been two previous Robins. The original first appeared less than a year after a new costumed hero called Batman made his debut in DETECTIVE COMICS #27, to instant success. Some time within the next eleven months, his creators, artist Bob Kane and his writer-collaborator Bill Finger, decided to give their dark, obsessed hero a kind of surrogate son, Robin, who was hailed on the cover of DETECTIVE #36 as “the sensational character-find of 1940—Robin, The Boy Wonder.” Over the next 40 years, Batman’s fortunes varied: always, however, Robin was at Batman’s side.

He served a couple of functions. If Batman were real (and it may shock some of our more avid readers to learn he isn’t), and if he were the grim, obsessed loner he is often portrayed as, Robin, with some help from Batman's faithful butler Alfred, would keep him sane; a man whose every waking hour is focused on the grimmest aspects of society, who is unable to release the effects of seeing his parents murdered, whose life is an amalgam of sudden violence and lonely vigilance, would soon skew into a nasty insanity if he did not have someone to care for, someone to maintain a link with common humanity. But Batman is, of course, not real. (My apologies to avid readers.) He isn’t exactly a fictional character—more on that shortly—but he does not and could not exist as a living, breathing human being. That doesn’t make Robin any less useful: he serves the same functions in the Batman stories as Watson served in the Sherlock Holmes canon and the gravedigger serves in Hamlet: like Holmes’s faithful doctor, Robin is a sounding board, a person with whom the hero can have dialogues and thus let the reader know how brilliantly he’s handling matters and like the gravedigger, he occasionally provides a bright note in an otherwise relentlessly morose narrative.

Which is why I was a trifle uneasy when we—the editorial staff of DC Comics—decided to let our audience decide whether he would live or die. It came to be known in our offices as the “telephone stunt.” We had a character, Robin, the readers didn’t seem terribly fond of. This wasn’t the original Robin, the “character-find of 1940”; that Robin was Dick Grayson and he had graduated from sidekick to bona fide hero who fronted a group of evil-fighting adolescents, The Teen Titans. In 1983, it was decreed that Robin should grow up and assume a crime-fighting identity of his own—become his own man, as befitted the leader of the mighty Titans. He left Batman’s world to assume the name, costume, and persona of Nightwing. Gerry Conway and Don Newton replaced him with a second Robin, Jason Todd, whose biography was virtually identical to that of Dick Grayson. Why not? Gerry and Don were not trying to innovate, they were simply filling a void. The assignment they were given was simple: Provide another Robin. Quickly and with as little fuss as possible.

In 1986, Max Allan Collins inherited the Batman writing assignment and told his editor he had an idea for an improved Jason Todd. Make him a street kid, Collins said. Make his parents criminals. Have him and Batman on opposite sides at first. Sounded fine to the editor and, since DC was in the middle of a vast, company-wide overhaul of storylines anyway, Collins was told to go ahead. I was the editor; I did the telling. And I’d do it again, today. Collins’s Robin was dramatic, did have story potential. But readers didn’t take to him. I don't know now, and will probably never know why. Jason was accepted as long as he was a Dick Grayson clone, but when he acquired a distinct and, Collins and I still believe, more interesting backstory, their affection cooled. Maybe we—me and the writers who followed Collins—should have worked harder at making Jason likeable. Or maybe, I guessed, on some subconscious level our most loyal readers felt Jason was a usurper. For whatever reason, Jason was not the favorite Dick had been. He wasn’t hated, exactly, but he wasn’t loved, either. Should we write him out of the continuity? It didn’t seem like a bad idea, and when we thought of the experiment that became the telephone stunt, Jason seemed the perfect subject for it. The mechanics were pretty simple: we put Jason in an explosion and gave the readers two telephone numbers they could call, the first to vote that Jason would survive the blast, the second to vote that he wouldn't.

It was successful—oh my, yes. We expected to generate some interest, but not the amount or intensity we got. As soon as the final vote was tallied—5271 for Jasons survival, a deciding 5343 against—the calls began. For most of three days, I talked to journalists, disc jockeys, television reporters. We got a lot of compliments. They ranged from a critic’s liking our stunt to the participatory drama of avant garde theater to the brilliant comedy team of Penn and Teller expressing mock envy that we beat them to “the kill-your-partner-900-number scam.” But then came the backlash, ugly and, to me at least, totally unexpected: one reporter claimed that the whole event had been rigged—that, in fact, we had decided on Jason’s demise ahead of time and staged an elaborate charade; a teary grandmother said that her grandchildren loved Jason and now we’d killed him; several colleagues accused us of turning our magazines into a “Roman circus.” Cynical was a word used. And exploitive. Sleazy. Dishonorable. Wait a minute, I wanted to reply. Jason Todd is just a phantom, a figment of several imaginations. No real kid died. No real anything died. It’s all just stories—

I would have been wrong. Batman, and Superman, and Wonder Woman and their supporting casts are quite a bit more than “just stories” if, by “stories,” we mean ephemeral amusements. They’ve been in continuous magazine publication for a half-century, and they’ve been in movies, and television shows, and in novels, and on cereal boxes and T-shirts and underwear and candy bars and yo-yos and games—thousands of ventures. For fifty years. Fifty years! Although the circulation of our magazines is relatively modest, these characters have been so enduring, so pervasive, they have permeated our collective consciousness. Everybody recognizes them. They are our post-industrial folklore and, as such, they mean much more to people than a few minutes’ idle amusement. They’re part of the psychic family. The public and apparently callous slaying of one of their number was, to some, a vicious attack on the special part of their souls that needs awe, magic, heroism.

We had promised to abide by the telephone poll, and we would. But within a few days, it became apparent that we’d have to begin growing another Robin. We had forgotten that Batman exists outside the pages of our comics, is not the exclusive property of DC’s editorial staff; because he is both popular and imperishable, hundreds of others have some legitimate interest in him (not the least of whom are the readers who, for one reason or another, had missed the voting.) Our medium may have kept him alive, but others have added immeasurably to his success. When we began hearing from them, the consensus was that a Batman without a Robin wasn't quite a Batman. I wasn’t surprised. Nor did I disagree, particularly. So our problem became: how to create Robin III without generating the hostility that plagued poor Jason. Dick Grayson was the answer. If, as we thought, readers felt Jason had somehow usurped Dick’s place, then we should link the new Robin to Dick—give Robin III his predecessor’s stamp of approval. One writer had done almost all of the Dick Grayson material DC had published for a decade: Marv Wolfman, co-creator (with George Pérez) of the New Teen Titans. That made Mary the first, and really only, choice to undertake the task of giving Batman a new helper. And if we were using Marv, why not have some of the story happen in the pages of THE NEW TITANS, which he was already writing, and thus be able to take advantage of the very considerable talents of Marv's collaborator on the Titans, George Pérez? George volunteered to co-plot the story with Mary and do layouts on the TITANS episodes, and editor Mike Carlin enlisted Tom Grummett and Bob McLeod to complete George's graphics work. I asked the regular BATMAN artists, Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo, to handle the BATMAN issues. Finally, we chose a name for Robin III—Tim Drake—and, after a couple of editorial conferences, six gifted gentlemen retired to do what they do best.

The result seemed worthy of being collected between one set of covers, to be read as a graphic novel. We decided to do that and you’re holding the result. I hope you enjoy it. But please don’t think it’s the end of the Robin III saga. Dick Grayson’s lasted 50 years, after all, and Tim Drake does have his blessing.

Dennis O’Neil

April 1990