#hes still a dick tho

[c0ff1nn]

acrylic marker bullshittery

[mocking-the-bird]

I returned to drawing Tiny Tim because I am a weak human being controlled by dopamine release

I think I'll make part two with Jason and Bruce, and I hope you want that too :p

[gaywineauntsstuff]

Random headcanon number 20207483927

-Dick doesn’t spy on his families teams

Because he doesn’t need too

They’ll either tell him what’s happening

Or their teammates will

He’s friends with 80% of them anyway

Jason Todd was honest to god on a team with Dicks Ex who still adores him and starfire /j

No but really Roy and Kori 100% have doxxed Jason’s entire life to Dick Grayson

A) bc I will ignore any canon where these 3 aren’t close

B) Kori has never had a filter ever

C) Dick absolutely has indoctrinated the fab 5 into mission reports and now they feel weird without a debrief

D) Roy would find giving Dick and ulcer over the stupid shit his brother does hilarious

E) Roy would find giving dick and ulcer over the stupid shit HE does so so so fulfilling (revenge)

Damian is on the Titans.

No matter what titans generation of titans it is they’re responding to Nightwings status report request, fully detailed in MLA format with a reference list following APA 7 guidelines

Dick does not have to worry about young justice despite the fact they are very much NOT snitches bc Tim absolutely calls Dick and Doxxes his entire life story to him once a week minimum

(See Tim telling Dick random shit in the comics causing him to lose his balance and fall a compilation Im sure exists)

Both Clark and Wally are on the justice league. Bruce’s every dangerous move is reported to Dick via Clark and all his stupid ones are reported to Dick via Wally.

No matter how weird Dick and Babs relationship (on again, besties, off again, not talking etc) is she’s absolutely telling him either via concise email or 7 hour long sip and bitch session every single thing that happens not for help but bc ughhh wtf is happening.

Now frustratingly the same is not reciprocated

Bc

“Donna or Garth would kill me” -Roy

“*graphic details of sexcapades to distract from question*”-Kori

“Nightwing is busy” -oracle (babs just leaves when asked as a civilian)

“I’m sorry it’s just so hard to not talk to him okay?? He’s so nice” -Jon during supersons

“He’s my friend too, I can tell him what I want” current jon

“Listen he barely talks to me as it is I’d rather he still come to me with issues and insecurities without worrying his father will hear it” -Clark

“If you think I’m saying shit to you, you’re in idiot, if anything was wrong and I told you you’d make it worse go fuck yourself” -Wally

(OG Bruce Wayne hater of titans. him and Roy do fight over this title at the titans new years. Wally thinks Roy lost his place bc he found a new bird to be mad at the bat over so his timeline should shrink. Roy thinks this is bullshit bc now he hates Bruce for reasons of bird^2)

[megaawkwardhuman]

[yandere-daydreams]

Out the yandere batfam who do you think would be one who would allow the reader to have more freedom? Like going out on walks and whatnot

hmmm a tricky question,,,, i don't think any of the batfam are full-blown 'chain you to the wall in a broom closet so they'll know exactly where you are at all times' types, but bruce and tim are definitely significantly more hesitant to let you leave the mansion chaperoned or otherwise. cas is a little more lenient, trusting her family to take you out for the occasional errand, but jason's definitely the worst. deadbolts on the door, tracker implanted in the side of your neck, driven to a full blown panic-attack by the very thought of you wandering gotham on your own. he's also the most likely to break your legs/cut your tendons to keep you safe and immobilized, even if it would take a little more than a push for him to get there.

dick's probably the most lenient. he wants your relationship to be loving and mutual, and loving couples go on dates :) the only downside is that he can't actually stomach the idea of you spending time or making eye contact with anyone else, meaning that most of your little excursions end in the back of his car, your face pushed into leather seats while he makes you promise over and over again that you'll never ever leave him. you did get boardwalk ice cream before his possessive breakdown though, so there are silver linings.

[mikakuna]

are we ready to face the truth that is bruce did not love jason as much as jason loved bruce?

[tangerrinds]

You can’t tell me that Ballister didn’t think that he had just been with Ambrosius in this scene omggg

^ so here we se Ballister waking up and still being tired or sore or something, which would normally be because he’s just been running around and fighting off guards with a Rhinoceros, BUT, he doesn’t know that because he has just woken up after being knocked out. So it’s only right to assume that he is currently wondering why he’s sore

^ he looks over and sees a FRESH and HOT cup of coffee or tea or wtvr, and freshly lit candles. Like the last set of images where there would’ve been something that tells him that there would have reminded him he wasn’t with Ambrosius (the last one being his prosthetic that was under the blanket), this one is the axe handle, but he doesn’t notice, instead looking at the candles and mug. The candles and mug themself are very caring and sweet things to have, and we know that movie Ambrosius is very caring and attentive, so this is definitely something he would do, and Ballister knows that

^ you can see how Ballister relaxes and smiles comfortably, contempt with having assumedly spending the night with Ambrosius

^ then this is where Ballister kinda wakes up to himself and knows that he’s not with Ambrosius (this is more implied when he’s slowly sitting up and looking at Nimona, knowing Ambrosius wasn’t there and now just confused with what had happened)

This is so silly and I am going FERAL over Bal and Ambrosius, so expect to see more of them, including a fic that’s currently being written trehee

[the-bat-bros]

Please enjoy these panels of Dick Grayson being the best big brother 💕

He gave Damian the stick HE GAVE DAMIAN THE STICK.

Don’t mind me sobbing because Robin is crying. He watched Alfred die. Alfred died because Damian couldn’t stay away. Yes it was Bane’s fault but my poor boy blames himself 😭.

“But you were my Robin.” Brb I need some aftercare after being emotionally FUCKED.

The wink. Dick knowing that this is basically a right of passage. The others just giving up and going along with it because Dickybird is right - as always.

[1yr4b3ll3]

found this on pinterest. i KNEW this bitch wasn’t 5’8

[the--firevenus]

Like to think about Jason being the most over protective Robin between all the Robins, like they all are protective of the batman but he's the most vocal about it and will not be shy saying it cuz it's the truth also that's his dad bro hello? Yes he'd say it out loud!?

Like to think that habit didn't die actually, just repressed really really well but the second a threat was aim to Batman's head suddenly you got punch good square in the face by red hood, it's scary cuz for a big guy (bigger than batman) they didn't hear him coming nor does they expect the goddamn crime lord to protect batman, but he did, he's very pissed about it too, then he yelled at Bruce for his lack of awareness to the surrounding

And if Bruce felt nostalgic for a moment from that, well, he won't say it to anyone but his ever slightly soft smile on his face as he type his report would gave it away to anyone observing

[nightmarearian]

yk, I want Bludhaven’s Nightwing and Gotham’s Nightwing to be different.

In Gotham, obviously there are. A lot more people. There, he is “the nice one” (compared to the others).

In Bludhaven? Blud-worse crime rate than Gotham-Haven, managed only by Nightwing? There’s no fuckin way.

Personally I don’t think it’s. Mainly a conscious decision or smth? Just he does more in Bludhaven and maybe ends up being generally less cheery? Or smth. He’s more willing to be (externally) tired with Bludhaven than he would be with Gotham.

Idk, smth for him to really embody the Terror of Bludhaven title yk? Nightwing is Bludhaven’s Batman; you know like, before robin and everything. He works too hard and he’s something to be scared of. He is Bludhaven’s Batman - just a bit more flippy & quippy (and a lot more friends).

[mattodore]

when i say they'd act like this in public too...

[wasabichips]

[bunnieswithknives]

I hope peri doesn't hold it against the kid. Throwing something on hand at the scary thing is just instinct. That said, Dev should give peri someone to eat or something, since I don't think the kid is good with saying sorry. Giving a gift tho...well, love languages and all.

Dev did it on purpose ❤️

He's still under the impression that Peri is the one who caused all this, and that all his denial and talk about how "Dale's fineeee" are Peri just bold faced lying to him. He saw Dale and went, '"'You caused this you deal with it BYE!'"'

That being said, Peri isn't going to be holding it against him. He's got the same logic as you, and he is supposed to be keeping Dev safe anyway. He will not be getting an apology tho lol.

[a-cha0tic-intr0v3rt]

words cannot describe how much i love ichi and jyushi’s dynamic like seriously bro their dynamic is so cute like RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH 😭💜💛✨

sorry abt that i just love these two soooooo fucking muchhhhhh 😭🙏

apologies for the lack of posts in the past few weeks— luckily i just finished my finals few days ago and i’m finally on winter break yippee

[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