He started out as Robin, but over the past 80 years, Dick Grayson has evolved in a way
that very few other comic book characters have.
From the way that he redefined comics in the Golden Age to the heroic haircut that he finally
ditched in the '90s, here's the truth behind the evolution of Nightwing.
Nightwing's origins start all the way back at the dawn of the Golden Age of Comics and
the explosion of new superheroes had hit the page after Superman debuted in 1938 and became
a ridiculously profitable hit.
Rather than trying to shoulder into the already crowded field of costumed superhumans (look
up Stardust the Super Wizard sometime if you want to see how weird that side of things
was getting) Bill Finger brought artist Bob Kane the idea of a costumed hero without superpowers
who was a little bit darker than the others.
The character was called Batman.
You've probably heard of him.
The thing is, the Batman who debuted in 1940 wasn't quite the pop culture icon that he'd
become.
Instead, the first few Batman stories are really just ripping off the Shadow, a popular
pulp novel and radio character, but with pointy ears and a bat-winged cape instead of a slouch
hat and a trenchcoat.
Over the next few months, however, Finger, Kane, and artist Jerry Robinson would refine
their character.
If you need proof that they were just figuring things out as they went, consider that Batman
didn't even have an origin story until Detective Comics #33, a full six months after he made
his first appearance.
It was in Detective Comics #38, however, that those creators added the final ingredient
for making Batman the character we can still recognize today.
On a cover that announced him as "The Sensational Character Find of 1940", which, in retrospect,
is maybe the most accurate a comic book blurb has ever been, Robin was introduced to the
world.
Sidekicks had existed before Robin, but Dick Grayson the circus acrobat turned boy vigilante,
redefined the role.
He was wildly popular with kids in the audience who already loved Batman and were excited
about having a character their age who got to hang out with their favorite character
and be his best friend.
All things considered, it was a much more pleasant power fantasy than Batman himself,
who watched his parents die in an alley.
Sure, Robin's parents died too, but not only did he get a new dad, his new dad was Batman.
No offense to the Flying Graysons, but that's almost always going to be an upgrade.
Before long, the sidekick population exploded in the same way that superheroes had boomed
after Superman.
Marvel's original Human Torch teamed up with Toro a few months after Robin, giving readers
the dubious image of a man on fire being accompanied into battle by a child who was also on fire.
By the time Captain America debuted alongside Bucky Barnes in 1941, a kid sidekick was virtually
mandatory for the genre, but none of them could hold a candle to Robin's popularity.
While he'd always be best known as the back half of "Batman And," it was clear from the
beginning that Robin was every bit as popular as his mentor.
For proof, just look at the comics: it's nearly impossible to find a Batman story in the '40s
or '50s where he wasn't hanging out with the Boy Wonder, but Robin had plenty of solo stories,
even headlining Star-Spangled Comics for five years.
That means that if you do the math, Robin had more appearances in the Golden Age than
Batman did.
By the early '80s, he was even the star of DC's hottest book, The New Teen Titans, a
revival of a series where a bunch of kid sidekicks were thrown together for wacky adventures
that had been reimagined as an X-Men-esque superhero soap opera.
Finally, someone thought to ask the question that had been hanging over Grayson's head
for at least a couple of decades by that point.
If Dick Grayson can work just as well on his own, then does he need to be Robin?
The answer, it turned out, was no, but that also led to another question: what's he going
to be now?
One of the most interesting things about Nightwing as a legacy is that it doesn't actually start
with Batman, at least, not in the way that you might think.
Instead, Dick Grayson inherited that heroic identity from a somewhat unexpected place:
Kal-El of Krypton, or as he's known to his coworkers over at the Daily Planet, Clark
Kent.
"Who are you?"
"A friend."
Oh, he's also Superman, but you probably knew that.
What you might not know is that he has another heroic identity, too.
Back in 1963, Superman and Jimmy Olsen took a vacation to the shrunken Kryptonian city.
Since Kandor replicated the conditions of Krypton, Superman didn't have any of his powers
while he was there, but when he discovered that he and Jimmy still needed to fight some
bottle crime, they created a pair of new identities inspired by their friends in Gotham City:
Nightwing and Flamebird.
In later versions of the story, Nightwing was a Kryptonian folk hero who was essentially
that world's equivalent of Batman, and Dick learned about him when Superman told him the
story.
In both versions, the outcome was the same: after leaving behind the identity of Robin,
and paving the way for that role to be filled by other characters, establishing the idea
that Robin was a legacy to be passed down rather than a static, permanent identity,
Dick Grayson adopted the identity of Nightwing as his own, complete with a wild new costume.
After he briefly took over for Batman when Bruce Wayne was recovering from the back injury
he'd suffered at the hands of Bane, Dick Grayson finally took the step that, going forward,
would define him as a character: he cut the mullet he'd been rocking since the late '80s.
Seriously, look at this hair.
It had to go.
Oh, and he also got his own series, which would run for over 150 issues.
In a lot of ways, the launch of Nightwing was when Dick Grayson became the standalone
character he'd been on the verge of becoming since 1947.
He hadn't been Robin for well over a decade at that point, and there had, in fact, been
two other Robins in the intervening years, but he'd always been seen in the context of
other characters, mainly as a member of the Titans.
Now, though, things were a little different.
Dick was still a member of both the Batman family and the Titans, but it was at a remove
that allowed him to flourish.
He got his own city to protect in the form of Blüdhaven, a hilariously named exurb of
Gotham that had all the crime but none of the vigilantes, and developed his own roster
of enemies.
He also got a streamlined, minimalist costume that stands as one of the greatest designs
of the '90s, and still exists, with a few minor alterations, today.
Nightwing isn't the only other identity that Dick Grayson adopted after leaving behind
his 40-year career as Robin.
In fact, the most surprising thing might be that he never went back to being Robin at
all.
Instead, Dick stepped up after Bruce Wayne was apparently killed in an event called Final
Crisis.
Needless to say, Bruce wasn't actually killed, and was instead sent back in time to caveman
days before he clawed his way back through the time-stream while being pursued by a techno-demonic
"Hyper-Adapter" that was once summoned through a Satanic ritual by Thomas Jefferson.
You know, comic book stuff.
Anyway, while all that was going on, Dick took on the identity of Batman, while Bruce's
son Damian, who had been raised by the League of Assassins, became the new Robin.
Dick and Damian's tenure inverted the classic dynamic of the duo, with Robin being the violent
grump and Batman being more friendly and approachable.
Once Bruce returned, Dick went through another career change.
After his identity was revealed to the world, Dick signed up with a multinational secret
intelligence agency called Spyral, where he went on sexy adventures that answered the
question of what James Bond would be like if he lived in the same universe as, say,
the Riddler.
Eventually, however, he found his way back to Blüdhaven and the role of Nightwing...just
in time to be shot in the head, get amnesia, and emerge as "Ric Grayson," presumably because
DC Comics had finally hit their breaking point after 80 years of jokes about his name.
While Dick Grayson has been seen on the screen since the first Batman film serial in 1943,
DC Universe's Titans marks the first time that his identity as Nightwing has ever been
seen in a live-action project.
That almost wasn't the case, though.
You might not remember it because it was overshadowed by all of Arnold's extremely cool ice puns…
"Alright everyone, chill."
...but part of the plot of 1997's Batman and Robin is built around Dick Grayson's frustration
with his role as a sidekick and his desire to strike out on his own.
That makes sense, considering that this particular version of Dick Grayson appears to have been
adopted by Bruce Wayne in his mid-20s, but mostly, it's an excuse for him to be tempted
away by Poison Ivy.
In the novelization, however, it's mentioned that Dick is constantly switching up his identity
and costumes in an effort to find something new, and at one point, he suggests "Nightwing"
as a potential codename before being shot down by Bruce.
That didn't make it into the film, but Robin's infamously nippled costume there definitely
borrows most of its elements from the Nightwing suit, replacing the previous movie's take
on the contemporary '90s Robin costume.
Also, while it wasn't live-action, it's worth noting that Nightwing had been featured on
TV shows before as well.
When Batman: The Animated Series was redesigned as The New Batman Adventures, Dick Grayson
became Nightwing, complete with mullet, and the transition from Robin to Nightwing was
even part of the Young Justice animated series as well.
Nightwing has also been seen occasionally on Teen Titans Go, also with the mullet.
We just can't get rid of that thing, can we?
On DC Universe's Titans, Dick Grayson's arc as a character began with an attempt to move
out of Batman's considerable shadow and past his role as Robin, and in the second season
finale, he finally makes the move that he's been building to the entire series.
This time, however, he doesn't take his inspiration from Superman.
Instead, the shift to Nightwing truly begins when Dick allows himself to be arrested, isolating
himself from the rest of the Titans in an effort to keep the team away from the danger
posed by their longtime arch-nemesis, Deathstroke the Terminator.
While he's locked up and mired in a deep depression, he finds a purpose in helping out a couple
of his cellmates, a pair of undocumented immigrants in danger of being deported and killed once
they get home.
From them, Dick hears about Alazul, a legendary figure from their village.
"You know Alazul?
In our village, Alazul's our hero.
He lives between the moon and the stars, and in the time of greatest need, he flies down
and saves you."
Realizing that they're talking about something that sounds awfully familiar to a nocturnal
bird-themed vigilante, Dick decides that this is the new inspiration he needs to get back
in the hero game, escaping from prison and getting a brand new cape-free costume.
With that, his evolution into Nightwing is complete, but as longtime fans are no doubt
wondering, only time will tell if this Dick Grayson will ever get the one true element
that separates Robin from Nightwing, the sidekick from the hero: that sweet, sweet power mullet.