#knightsend

[kisnroses]

I have so many thoughts, and I'm never escaping this rabbit hole. Jean-Paul is a cautionary tale?? He's icarus. He also has a lot of parallels to the batfam. Like his parents die, and he wants to avenge them. Bruce sees that and relates to that, but Jean-Pauls is also everything he didn't want Dick to become. Jean-Paul is a bitter ends justify the means kind of person who isn't here to save people and just working his own agenda.

Also, I think Jason would hate him. Reducing crime isn't a thought he doesn't want to control it he is hyperfocused on vengeance. He doesn't really care for innocents. Jean-Paul hasnt thought about crime w/o thinking about what it took from him personally. Jean-Paul would let Jason die while killing the Joker in the background.

I didn't have this many thoughts when it was just me, Tim, and our criminal of the week. I'm on KnightsEnd 4.

[robjn93]

i think an important arc that implicitly brings to life the parallels between broken brucebat and azbat is year 3, the one from batman 436 to 439, the one that sets the seeds for the introduction of tim drake, because it creates an interesting comparison between bruce and jpv/azrael at their lowest, both tampering with their 'base of operation' to disrespect the legacy of the inhabitant.

with bruce, for example, his inability to process jason's death got him ridding the manor of any sign of jason's existence and instead fixate on his role as batman. not just the crime fighting side, but the mythos as a whole - to the point where he almost called nightwing 'robin'. hanging onto the mythos that is so important to batman, ignoring bruce's wishes to mourn his own son. he is rejecting bruce’s side completely, the compassionate man who loved his children, and replacing it with the image of the strong, brute batman who pushes everyone bruce has ever loved away.

for azrael, the need to find an identity and carve his own path on the mythos brought him to desecrate the batcave by introducing a shooting range with batman’s enemies as targets, because jpv has been taught that batman would never kill, making the suit shaped based on azrael’s, a judge and executioner, what batman was never supposed to be, and tarnishing his relationships with robin and commissioner gordon.

azbat’s relationship with robin is especially interesting because the suit being a symbol of hope could only be achieved by the cloth being used, the circus costume, filled with pain and grief but also sweet memories and hopes for a new life, for dick grayson as ward and helper of bruce and batman. that very suit was now being rejected by azbat, because ‘batman needs a robin but azbat needs nobody’ and, in the same place where dick grayson was shown the light, the suit of batman, for the first time, now tim drake was being nearly choked to death by azbat gone berserk.

but then there is it. bruce ‘successfully’ manages to witness zucco’s death, what batman has always tried to teach dick against, betraying his robin, the way azbat has finally destroyed tim, showing his 'worthlessness' in the face of the true strength of azbat and kicked him out of the cave, betraying his robin, and their vulnerable side comes out. they shudder at the idea that they might have ever wished for what had happened, clinging onto the morals that become more and more warped and confused, onto their job as batman and their duty to gotham.

‘taking the cowl off’ was the only thing that could save them, tho with azbat was more literal. in bruce’s case, questioning the usefulness of a batman without a robin was a clear sign that his work was not needed, not in those conditions, that he put a child (tim) in danger because of his own recklessness, therefore ‘taking the power from batman’.

[saint-of-ossaville]

Editions of the Knightfall Saga

[wwprice1]

AzBats by Simone Di Meo. Awesome.

[zahri-melitor]

KnightsEnd:

I have to say, I got here and finally got to say “this is FUN!”, something that was missing from this whole saga up to this point.

Bruce shows off one of his long term coping mechanisms for ‘I feel like I am no longer Batman, I must rediscover my Purpose’ by heading off to Shiva for training. And hey, far be it from me to criticise Bruce for it when he gets completely self-absorbed in Returning To His Roots and the supporting cast get left in the lurch to deal with everything in the meantime…oh wait.

Bruce running around attacking various ninja that Shiva set him up to fight? Fun. My inability while reading this storyline to work out whether Bruce ACTUALLY defeated all 7 students of the Armless Master (I know he got 6 of them, but cannot tell if he took out the 7th)? Endlessly amusing to me. I want it to be 6 so the 7th is still out there lurking. (Also I appreciate that his brother, the Legless Master, gets to train Tim in the future until Shiva also offs him. Continuity! It’s good for stuff!)

Dick losing his temper during a fight because he thinks someone he loves has been injured/killed? Yessss a highlight every time it occurs, get your anger over the whole situation out on JPV.

And finally, the last few pages of B:LOTDK 63 are just SO GOOD. I gasped from the tunnel page onwards. Perfect imagery. The tunnel stripping everything away from Azrael. Bruce defeating Azbats with sunlight and returning him to JPV - “time for both of us to leave the dark”. The Catholic imagery playing out here works just so well for a character like JPV (it’s about faith AND works!)

(However Bruce, can I please stake a firm complaint here that you just said all this meaningful stuff about the light and leaving the dark and growth and forgiveness…right before you spend the entirety of Prodigal redesigning the Batsuit into Black Gloom™. You are such a giant walking hypocrite)

[alto-tenure]

oh yeah. thinking about how in knightsend bruce while training to take back up the mantle wears a tengu mask. tengu is often translated in English as demon, and there is some similarities -- tengu is a collective name for a variety of evil spirits. and then there's jpv, azrael, batman, the avenging angel. bruce takes the mask of a demon to defeat an angel. batman is not a purifying light, but the fears that linger in the darkness. it is the light that kills while it saves, and it is the dark that protects.

[thedukeofdormont]

#Xmen 28 Knights End Variant by Ivan Tao

[silverwhittlingknife]

prodigal 2? :O

hi!!! <333 This is the continuation of Two of Six that I got distracted from uhhhh more than a year ago now, I think sdfdsfs actually when I looked back at it just now to find an excerpt I had a lot more written than I remembered! i should get back to it

“You’re good at silent cues,” Dick says.  “You anticipate.” “I try to,” Tim says.  He’s frowning, but the self-consciousness is gone: Dick can see him thinking over the problem.  “Usually it’s easy with you.  Because I watched a bunch of tapes with your fights, you know?  To try to learn from?  So usually I can tell where you’re going to move.  Like, I don’t have to think about it, I can just kind of tell, right?  I watched a bunch of tapes with your fights is mildly disturbing, although maybe Bruce assigned him to do it?  Seems unlikely.

[comicchannel]

DC Multiverse Batman Knightsend Azrael Batman Armor - McFarlane Toys

Link para compra BR: *Possível importar pelo Link abaixo

Buy here: https://amzn.to/4c4dggr

[lonniemachin]

side effect of this fucking fic which is now more like a series of fics because i can't fill in every single time jump is that i now associate so much kate bush music with azrael (not the character but like the vigilante title) even if it doesnt fit them

[desperatecheesecubes]

I’m so sorry to Azrael enjoyers but every time this man shows up in comics I suffer

[kisnroses]

More ramblings I'm going down a rabbit hole in my Tim "speed run". (Wild when one section has damn near 200 comics, but I want to). Anyway I'm reading KnightsEnd (which has at least 8 comics in the story line) where Bruce leaves and give the cowl to Jean Paul Valley or something and Dick being mad that Bruce didn't pick him is wild for so many reasons.

Mainly, he didn't want the cowl, and Bruce probably knows this, but he's hurt by it. Dick sees the cowl as the ultimate form of trust. I have no proof for this, but I'm almost certain Bruce sees it as a burden, but he also believes it's absolutely necessary and integral that it doesn't die with him. It's a constant thought in the back of the mind most characters that interact with him. The narrative also kinda agrees ??? the plot and arc of several storylines rely on who surpasses him.

Also, who tf is Harlod?

Also Also, so many issues could be fixed if they communicated. Where's the fanfic where the Bat family goes to therapy and learns healthy ways to communicate.

[meteortrails]

took a break from Batman to fight with my parents (things are bad! almost drove my car off a bridge but I’m fine now) and went to start reading again and. I completely forgot azreal carbombed Batman lol. I was like wtf is dick so upset about as if he didn’t just watch his dad get caught in an explosion

[catacoves]

knightquest is an absolute slog to get through

[neon-zoologist]

creature azbat returns!!

[zahri-melitor]

so i'm reading certain nightwing volumes from '96 - 02 for my current reading run following NML (shout out to @havendance, cannot thank you enough 🫶🏾) and while some aspects of how he's written is very compelling and interesting to chew on, for the most part it's been pretty....boring?? like i'm gonna keep reading it so i can have as much context as possible, but it feels more like a chore 😩

anyways, i read your response on that “who’d you choose to write nightwing” poll and i’d love to get your opinion on what nightwing runs/writers to read outside of those 8 volumes. i really wanna get into dick grayson’s character and personality! also, if it’s cool with you, anyone else please feel free to add to this!

-dominomasc

Hey, dominomasc. Unknowingly you've just raised one of the fundamental incongruities of how comics work.

Comics are about layers of stories providing depth to a character and about dozens of different interpretations more than they are about a single amazing run. (Some characters have That Run! But on average, most don't). Dick Grayson, a character that has existed for 84 years, has some very fun stories from all sorts of writers. His title, Nightwing, is also an excellent example of how a lot of long running titles often don't really have a stand out section that's head and shoulders above the rest.

I promise, you are never going to run out of stories to read about Dick Grayson (Comicsvine has him at 9,593 appearances as I write this). So yes, this is going to be about two things: advice on finding stories about Dick that vibe for you; and advice on understanding Dick alongside other storylines.

Taking into account what's listed above and the fact I'm moderately obsessive, I have compiled a discussion of most of the major writers who have written Nightwing runs, or who have written major titles that Dick also prominently appears in.

I am at heart a 'Dick belongs to the Bat Office' person and my expertise in most characters starts with COIE. On that basis I'm not going to dip into pre-Crisis here.

Marv Wolfman & George Pérez: New Teen Titans (1980-1993ish). I am not going to explain all the title names here; you're going to have to go get more detail from someone who treats NTT period as their special interest. Wolfman and Pérez are the architects of Nightwing as a character, separate to Robin, that Dick grew into. Read this period if you're interested in Dick as a young adult among the other Titans going through the transition into adulthood and independence, and his relationship with Kory. Basically it's a superhero young adult soap opera. It can be quite uneven in places, particularly towards the back end, and there are approximately a thousand discussions over which storylines are good and which should be fired into the sun. I am not a subject expert for this period.

Because of the state of the Titans titles in the early 1990s, the Bat office demanded Dick Grayson back under their control. Exactly when they got him back is slightly debated, but it would be fair to say Batman #500 (October 1993) marks his transition back to being a Bat character (around the start of Knightquest); by KnightsEnd and Prodigal (July 1994-January 1995) Dick is once again firmly a member of the Batman set of characters, and has remained so to date.

Prodigal, by Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, Doug Moench: (Batman #512 to Robin #13). Use a reading list here as the stories are spread across multiple titles. Prodigal is 12 issues about Dick's first time being Batman, with Tim as his Robin, and his feelings about returning home to Gotham as an adult. Robin #13 in particular is possibly the most important issue of the story, as it's the foundation of a reset in Bruce and Dick's relationship with each other and how it is going to be characterised for the next decade or so.

Chuck Dixon: (Nightwing #1-70 1996, Nightwing: Alfred's Return, and a bunch of other one shots) So Dixon is probably DC's most prolific writer of all time, and is the architect of what's been treated as 'default Nightwing'. In this run, Dixon creates Bludhaven and the situation of Dick being its protector, out of a desire to be his own man apart from Bruce. He sets up an extensive Rogue's Gallery for Dick, the most famous of which is making Blockbuster one of Dick's main enemies. He has Dick working at a cop bar and then decide to enter the Bludhaven Police Department in an attempt to investigate it from the inside due to the levels of corruption. This is also the run where Dick and Babs get together as adults. Basically, everything about 'default' Dick that you probably know comes from this run. Dixon's great for character interaction, for world building, and and particularly at making various titles tie together - because he was writing at least 1/3 of DC's entire line for a while there he's the king of crossovers, giving a lot of depth to friendships because characters just pop between titles he's writing. His actual plots however vary between middling to occasional flashes of greatness. I'd consider The Hunt for Oracle (#45-46 and BOP#20-21) and the Shrike story (#55-58) to be the standout storylines in his Nightwing run; for individual issues I'd also point to #6 and #25 for his relationship with Tim, #16 for Dick building his car, and then his crossover issues in events tend to be quality.

Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty: (Robin: Year One 2000, Batgirl: Year One 2003, Nightwing: Year One - Nightwing #101-106 1996) I am separating these three out from the rest of Dixon's work as they're quite important as retcons over Dick's backstory. Robin and Batgirl are well regarded rewrites of events; Nightwing is less so, partly because it's a solid example of the Jason personality retcon, and partly I think because a lot of people reading this were still well across the two 1980s versions of Dick's transition from Robin to Nightwing. I highly recommend Robin Year One, particularly with the Shrike storyline of Nightwing, as they are interlinked.

Devin Grayson: (Nightwing #71-100 & #107-117 1996, Nightwing/Huntress 1998, Gotham Knights #1-11 & #14-32, The Titans #1-20 1999) Oh, Devin. Devin Grayson is a Dick Grayson superfan (she uses Grayson as her surname because of Dick). She is really good at character introspection - Gotham Knights #1-11 contains some amazing character work. She's also not shy about establishing her own headcanons on characters and retconning their backstories. Devin's biggest contributions to the Dick Grayson lore are in establishing him as Romani and actually writing Bruce adopting Dick. Her run on Nightwing is best understood as a whump, break-the-cutie run, where Blockbuster sets out to destroy Dick's life, and in the process gets Dick fired, breaks up Dick and Babs, burns down Haly's Circus (for the first time), blows up his entire supporting cast, chases Dick out of Bludhaven and leads to Dick going under cover in the mob essentially to punish himself (also not the only time). Dick's also sexually assaulted in Nightwing #93 but I really beg people to read this in context of the rest of the run; this should be looked at as PART of the whole flow of whump, rather than as a separate situation. Grayson also had the title taken off her before she got to the 'comfort' part of the extended hurt/comfort storyline she was writing. It reads a lot better if you think of this in a more transformative fandom, ficcish manner of story rather than as a more standard run. If her Nightwing run is too grim for you, I highly recommend Gotham Knights and her Titans run; Devin Grayson is honestly best when she's writing a constellation of characters around Dick more than when she's writing Dick himself. She adores his friends and family. Standout issues to get a sense of Devin include: Nightwing #100, a self-reflective issue on Dick's history; Nightwing #81, where Dick's in hospital and Cass goes after Slade for him; Titans #15 1999, where the Fab 5 go on a camping trip together to get back to their roots and deal with a lot of tensions in the group; and Gotham Knights #8-11, Transference, where Dick and Tim team up to rescue Bruce, who's been brainwashed by Hugo Strange.

Jay Faerber: (The Titans #21-41 1999) Honestly Faerber's run on The Titans is not that Dick Grayson focused. It's entertaining if you want to read some solid Titans dynamics, but the standout characters you read this run for are Roy and Donna. Seriously, if you're into Roy, Cheshire and Lian drama I highly recommend Faerber's work; otherwise it's not an essential run for Dick.

Judd Winick: (Outsiders #1-25, 34-49 2003, Batman & Robin #23-25 2011) Winick tends to write an angrier and darker edged Dick Grayson, and he has a bunch of really common tropes you see pop out in his writing. These are no different, and thus include an awful lot of violence and characters having sex (so much sex). He can be quite funny as a writer, but honestly his Outsiders run does not have much of that humour. The Batman & Robin story is basically Winick finding some space to tie up his Jason Todd plot before Flashpoint obliterated it, more than an actual story about Dick. If you want a good encapsulating issue to get the vibe of Winick about Dick, take a look at Outsiders #21, which has a good chunk of Dick and Roy AND Dick and Bruce in it, though it's helpful to remember that this issue is set very shortly after War Games and so Dick is in a massive guilt spiral.

Bruce Jones: (Nightwing #118-124 1999) It's One Year Later! Bruce Jones moves Dick back to New York City (as Bludhaven went boom due to Chemo in the lead up to Infinite Crisis) and theoretically sets up Dick's status quo out to Reborn. So. The story Jones is most famous for is the first 4 issues of the run, which are generally referred to by fans as the TentaTodd story. Jason Todd turns up to run around annoying Dick by ALSO dressing up as Nightwing and committing crimes. He also turns into a tentacle monster for a bit. It is certainly a story that exists, but it actually is pretty in line with Jason and Dick's relationship up to Flashpoint: Jason turns up to be a brat who wants attention, does violent things, and Dick exhaustedly kicks the shit out of him and gets him locked up while despairingly going 'why is this my life'. Because of Jason running around killing people as Nightwing, the NYPD get mad at Nightwing and start trying to hunt him down. Jones is for the completionist.

Marv Wolfman: (Nightwing #125-137 1999) Lacking any better ideas, Wolfman gets a run on Nightwing. It's not Wolfman's finest work, to put it bluntly, and it's very obvious that Marv hasn't actually read any of Dixon or Grayson's runs. Marv does set Dick up working as a gymnastics and trapeze coach, which is always a decent job for him. If I had to pick one story from Wolfman, read Nightwing #127, where Dick gets buried alive and digs his way out of the grave.

Peter J. Tomasi: (Nightwing #140-157 1999, Batman & Robin #20-22 2011) Tomasi loves Dick Grayson, and particularly loves Dick's connection to his friends and family. Let me put it this way; in the lead up to Final Crisis and Blackest Night every title got an Origins and Omens short story on the back of an issue. Most books used it to write creepy or introspective reflections on awful stuff especially deaths that have happened to the characters. Tomasi used his to have Dick take Barbara skydiving for her birthday, and echo a bunch of themes from his first issue. I think this is one of the most mature and grown up looks at Dick prior to Flashpoint; Tomasi treats Dick as a grown adult with an adult relationship with Bruce. I love Freefall. Read Freefall to see some really interesting meta on Dick's relationship to the concept of falling and to the concept of catching falling people, a theme that's frequently present in his stories.

Grant Morrison: (Batman & Robin #1-16 2011) Astonishingly given how much of Reborn was designed by Morrison, they don't actually seem to care that much about Dick as a character more than as a prop to set Damian against. Dick's extremely focused on Damian in this title but also does not actually appear to like Damian very much. If I were going to recommend one story out of it I'd probably point to Batman & Robin #7-9, because Dick gets to be a giant hypocrite in them and tries to resurrect Bruce. It goes badly, for all involved.

Scott Snyder: (Detective Comics #871-881, Gates of Gotham, and like every Bat event during n52) The Black Mirror is probably my favourite piece of Dick!Batman storytelling set during Reborn. It's just elegant in terms of how hard Snyder pushes Dick and how his reactions are very much not those that Bruce would have. This is helpfully extremely obvious in that The Black Mirror and Gates of Gotham are actually part of a trilogy, the third act of which is Court of the Owls and due to Flashpoint Snyder had to rewrite CotO quite extensively including swapping Dick out of being Batman and having Bruce as the lead. Read The Black Mirror for Dick having a minor breakdown while solving a complex case with links to James Gordon and Babs. Read Gates of Gotham for incredible Dick & Tim & Cass & Damian fourway storytelling that shows the dynamics of every pairing out of the four.

Fabian Nicieza: (Nightwing #138-139 1999, Batman #703 & #713, parts of Battle for the Cowl, Nightwing #51-56 2016) The thing about FabNic is when he's on, he's very much on, and when he's not it can be painful. I actually almost would have skipped him on this list, but he very much deserves recognition for writing the Nightwing issues of Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul, which alongside the Robin issues portray exactly how far Dick will go for Tim; and for Batman #703, which is the only issue prior to Bruce's resurrection that actually puts Dick, Tim and Damian on page together as heroes. He also got saddled with writing the start of the Ric Grayson saga under the script of Scott Lobdell, which, well, is definitely at the 'not well regarded' end of his oeuvre. FabNic is again a writer that is really good at character interaction, and I tend to find whenever I'm reading events where there's heaps of writers involved and he's there, the issues I really enjoy are the ones he's had a hand in.

Tony S. Daniel: (Battle for the Cowl, Batman #692-699 & #704-707 & #710-712) Oh, Tony Daniel. Why. Daniel's stories are probably the most classic-Batman of the Dick!Batman stories. His stories revolve a lot around drama at Arkham Asylum, with Harvey and Gilda Dent, and with the Falcones. On balance I think you could probably actually trade Dick out for Bruce in half these stories and it wouldn't make a huge amount of difference. If I were going to suggest one to try, maybe go with #710-712? It's Harvey focused and it has Kitrina Falcone and doesn't actually depend on the whole Jeremiah Arkham thing.

Kyle Higgins: (Nightwing #1-12, 0, & 15-29 2011) For a reboot of Dick Grayson down to his fundamentals, and working within the requirements of the 5 year time line, I like Higgins' work on Nightwing. Sure, I could have done without him burning down Haly's circus, again, and all the Court of the Owls revelations, but some of that was clearly dictated to him, and they way he gave Dick time as a teenager with relationships with other characters at Haly's before his parents died worked quite well. If I were going to cite a favourite part of this run it's probably the last section, #18-29 when Dick moves to Chicago and tries the 'strike out as my own hero with my own city, screw you dad' thing for the first time in the new timeline. Higgins put in quite a bit of cast building work and it's a shame none of it ever got used again between Forever Evil and then Rebirth just ignoring everything during this period.

Tom King and Tim Seeley: (Nightwing #30 2011, Grayson #1-20) I'm going to treat these two together here as I can't actually easily subdivide the run between them. This is the longest period Dick goes undercover working as a spy because his life has just gone to shit. He is both spying on Spyral (for Bruce) but also his job within Spyral is as a spy and special agent. Think James Bond, except Dick also gets to be the focus of the objectification camera. Some people enjoy it as a change of pace, some people can't stand it because it's just a very weird story for Dick and Dick's generally personally unhappy when he's stuck undercover, and it definitely is a highlight in the 'did you know Tom King worked for an intelligence agency? Tom King is working out his feelings about working for an intelligence agency again' oeuvre. If you want to try an issue, I recommend Grayson #5 as probably the best character and storytelling piece in the entire run.

Tim Seeley: (Nightwing #1-34) Good stuff I can say about Seeley's run includes that he used Rebirth as a impetus to rebuild Dick's status quo. He did quite a lot of world building for a new version of Bludhaven, he got Dick back into Nightwing and back into a blue V costume for the first time in 7 years, he's interested in looking at the Grayson family and not so much in terms of the Court of the Owls stuff. He likes Dick and Damian's time as Batman & Robin. Seeley's also a fan of a lot of character beats in terms of Dick's characterisation that were pioneered by Devin Grayson - particularly in terms of Dick being easily attracted to women, being impetuous and hot headed at times, and in the Romani retcon. I don't necessarily see eye to eye with Seeley on all of his characterisation and story choices, but he does a lot of repair work on getting Dick back to being Nightwing, including things like repeating beats from the Dixon and Grayson runs so that Dick has that backstory again, and what that means for his character. I might suggest Nightwing #8 2016, because it revolves around Bruce and Dick and the concept of falling (I'm a sucker for a good falling metaphor) or #9, which is literally a discussion of the changes between n52 and Rebirth with both of the Clark Kents, and in which Clark points Dick to return to Bludhaven (in a sort of re-encapsulation of Clark originally giving Dick the inspiration for the name Nightwing, but this time pointing him to what people treat as his default 'home'). If you like the shape of Dick as Bludhaven's hero from fic, you probably will find Seeley's run has stuff to enjoy.

Sam Humphries: (Nightwing #35-41 2016) So Humphries' storyline is another good example of what a lot of the current run of Nightwing contains since 2016 - reinterpretations and new versions of old stories. In this case, it's an adaption of the Hanging Judge storyline to have taken place in Bludhaven in Bruce and Dick's past. I don't mind it as a story, but it's definitely there to remind you of old story beats.

I haven't yet read Benjamin Percy's run, or any of Ric Grayson yet (which is a combination of Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza and Dan Jurgens), or Tom Taylor's run, so I don't want to give you too explicit opinions on these.

In general terms from experience on other titles and what other people have said: I really loved Benjamin Percy's Detective Comics #35-36 story in n52 and I suspect his Nightwing writing is a perfectly acceptable fill; nobody particularly likes the plot surrounding Ric Grayson, and the fact Scott Lobdell had a hand in plotting it seems to me to explain a bunch of the aspects of the scenario premise that upset a lot of people; Dan Jurgens is a DC workhorse who can turn his hand to anything; and Tom Taylor's run has been described as many as 'rewrite the arc of Devin Grayson's run but make it light and fluffy and free of consequences'. I honestly think if you haven't read much Nightwing yet, Taylor's run may be a good transition run to try to see if he's your vibe; I keep getting the impression he probably makes a good intro for new readers.

If you have any other writers you would like my impression of, please ask specifically; as I've said, Dick's been written by a LOT of people over the years.