Pimping My Stuff: What I'm Reading

Big thanks to JK Parkin and the rest of the crew over at Robot 6 for letting me be a part of their weekly What Are We Reading? feature and gave me a chance to rant about Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Daytripper, X-Factor and more.

I'm a big fan of the blog and WAWR in particular, so this was a real pleasure for me. And as if that weren't enough, I got to team with my main man, Sean T. Collins! Score!

So consider this my Five Comics to Read for this month and do check out Robot 6 on a regular basis as they're doing rad stuff over there.

Linko! LIX

* Two issues in, and I'll admit to being impressed by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma's Morning Glories series from Image. It's not a perfect comic or even the kind of thing that demands to be read by everyone for all the eggs its breaking, but its creators seem very confident in their ability to tell a big, sprawling, TV-style genre drama in the comics form, and that confidence carries you well through the few awkward moments in the book so far. If you're still on the fence about checking the book out, you could do a lot worse than by checking out my pal Josh Wigler walking through the first issue with Spencer at CBR. Lot of spoilers in there, FYI.

Still, maybe I don't need to be saying much on behalf of that series as apparently it sold out so fast in NYC this week that Tom Brevoort was S.O.L.

* Another worthy read for the week: this Comics Alliance roundup with some bigger retailers speaking to how the $3.99 price point has affected sales. I'm still not convinced yet that that price is causing as much trouble as some speculate or even upsetting as many fans as you'd think, but I would bet it's exacerbating a situation already under the influence of maybe a half dozen factors. Still, getting the opinions of comic sellers out there is a pretty important part of the discussion.

* Everybody and their third cousin Alice has already linked to this, but in case you missed it: Mark Andrew Smith and Matthew Weldon's New Brighton Archaeological Society comic is now online in full. Also kudos to Brigid Alverson for getting Smith on the horn to essentially ask him what the hell he was thinking doing that.

* Holy fuck, Dash Shaw:


More at the official web site for "The Ruined Cast." (Via)

* This NY Times story about a "comics in court" exhibit at Yale was a fun example of how comics have continued to crossover into other parts of our culture. In an odd way, so was this pice of political reporting in the paper for its offhanded Stan Lee reference.

* Hey, speaking of the Times: here's another profile on my poor, proud hometown of Flint, Michigan.

* In more fun news, Topless Robot had a couple of fun lists up this week including "8 Superheroes That Turned Evil But Got Better" by my friend Eric Drumm and "The 10 Coolest G.I. Joe Ninjas" which was less entertaining to me and more like the kinda thing that makes you go, "I can't fucking believe there are ten G.I. Joe ninjas in a list and I can name at least two that got left off." Speaking of Topless Robot, props to site editor Rob Briken for making me laugh yesterday by ReTweeting this.

* Finally, yeah that Joaquin Phoenix thing was a gag. Fuck Roger Ebert, I guess?

Where is Force Works now?

If you haven’t read Kiel’s post from yesterday about Force Works and its prescience in terms of comic book trends, I urge you to do so now, as it’s a brilliant piece.

For my part, I figured I’d pitch in by helping flesh out the world Kiel outlined a bit and shed some light on who comprised and what became of Force Works’ semi-sprawling cast. I’m not talking about the core former West Coast Avengers guys like Scarlet Witch, USAgent and Spider-Woman, who most people know their states and whereabouts (batshit in Eastern Europe, new warden of the Raft in Thunderbolts and new Madame Web in the Spider-Verse respectively), or Iron Man, who is in limbo or something, but rather the fairly ambitious and oft-impressive original creations that Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning brought to the table over their 22 issues.

Because seriously, guys? As my good close personal friend TJ loves to say all the time, sometimes Force Works!

CENTURY
Kiel more or less covered Century yesterday and I think he’s got more to say about him yet, but I just wanted to note that every time I ask Dan and/or Andy about why he hasn’t shown up in one of their various cosmic epics, they always look at each other with little grins and give me some joke answer. I totally suspect those boys have at least one big Century story up their British sleeves…

THE SCATTER
Seriously, of the numerous alien races who populate comics, most seem pretty tame, but a few are genuinely creepy, most notably the Brood for me, but also these fuckers. Their deal was that they didn’t just conquer, but would basically descend upon planets that had already been weakened by some sort of previous threat like a swarm of locusts, set up a beachhead, and then just start consuming everything and everybody in sight until they completely hollowed the place out; they were the universe’s ultimate omnivores (besides Galactus, I guess). The grosser thing was that the alien-looking bodies we saw were actually just shells for hives of little insectoid creatures, as Spider-Woman discovered much to her horror. Lotta credit to MIA artist Tom Tenney for making these guys so icky. To the best of my knowledge, their two-issue stint in Force Works was the only time we’ve ever seen them, which seems something of a waste.

EMBER
Another neat DnA idea aided by a terrific Tenney design, Ember was the tribal champion of the Dudak, an oppressed class of people in The Scarlet Witch’s native Slorenia. Interesting twist was that there was really no one Ember, as any Dudak who touched the mystic talisman that empowered the creature became him/her/it. Outside of Force Works, Ember fought War Machine once and then got chumped out by Ultron during the “Ultron Unlimited” story in Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez (I always thought it was kind of cool that Busiek took the time acknowledge a Force Works creation myself).

BLACK BRIGADE
The slightly less interesting but still visually stunning yin to Ember’s yang, Black Brigade was just your run-of-the-mill Russian cyborg who the Slorenian government hired to keep the Dudak people down. His coolest aspect was probably all the little mini-robots he had hovering around him that did his bidding (and gave him the “Brigade” part of his name). Like Ember, he showed up in War Machine and then bought it during “Ultron Unlimited.”

DREAMGUARD
I didn’t actually read the issues where Dreamguard debuted, but from what I remember from solicits and interviews, he was basically an aborigine super hero who jumped into peoples’ consciousnesses via the Australian outback (maybe). He has not shown up again, but he makes frequent appearances in various incarnations of the Marvel Handbook, so clearly he’s got a fan or two.

VOLKHVY
Another Slorenian heavy, this time with mystic powers. He made less of an impact than Ember or Black Brigade and didn’t earn any appearances outside of Force Works, though he did get a solo fight against Spider-Woman (who, believe it or not, won a letters column poll as the most popular member of the team towards the end of the Avengers West Coast run).

FISHER TODD
The Force Works tech support guy who was in love with Spider-Woman but always kinda came off as a weirdo stalker to me; after Force Works, he was never seen again.

AMANDA CHANEY
The poor PR rep for Force Works who got killed off by crazy Tony Stark during The Crossing because she figured out what he was up to. It’s kind of sad that likely more people remember Iron Man killed Luna’s nanny during that storyline than this lady. I initially suspected she was a spy or something, but if that was in the cards, DnA never got to it.

MOONRAKER
The mystery man who showed up during the early part of The Crossing as a founding member of the team and boyfriend of Spider-Woman as far as all the other characters knew, save for Spi’s daughter Rachel, who suspected something was up with him. He turned out to actually be Libra, founding Zodiac member and father of Mantis, who had altered time in order to thwart his daughter and Kang’s schemes. A few years later, Libra showed up again in Avengers Forever and flatly denied ever having been Moonraker (and made fun of the name); as that series later revealed The Crossing as being a big Immortus scheme with tons of Space Phantoms as doppelgangers of various characters, I’d suspect one of those was Moonraker.

CYBERMANCER
Suzi Endo showed up early on in Force Works during the “Hands of the Mandarin” crossover, appearing just as a scientist specializing in cybernetics at Stark Industries who got injured during an attack by the Mandarin’s Avatars and was later taken in by Iron Man as she recovered. During The Crossing, an alternate reality version of Suzi with super-powered armor named Cybermancer replaced her and worked with evil Iron Man. In the final issue of Force Works, Suzi escaped and defeated her alternate self, destroying the armor in the process. Years later, Cybermancer returned during Civil War, having created her own armor. Since then, she has helped War Machine during and after Secret Invasion plus joined the Iowa Initiative team, making Suzi Endo of all characters the sleeper breakout star of Force Works!

'Force Works' Was Ahead Of Its Time

Admission: I can't stop reading Force Works comics.


Super serial.

For anyone who doesn't know, Force Works was a Marvel team book published between 1994 and 1996 that was ostensibly a continuation of the publisher's slowly dying Avengers West Coast title with a '90s coat of paint. I'm sure even the most ardent fans don't consider the series much beyond a a footnote in Iron Man history, but the book is kind of notable for being one of the first major American efforts by reigning superhero sci-fi scribes Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (AKA "DnA").

I don't have a tremendous amount of fanboy nostalgia for the book, though I did initially come to the series as a seventh grader. That Halloween, I went trick or treating at a buddy's neighborhood, and one of the houses there was owned by someone who must've had a comic shop because instead of Snickers or candy corn, they were passing out comics. Once the night ended, a bunch of the kids there passed their comics to me because...well, because I was that kid. So I ended up walking home with a few random things like Malibu's Deep Space Nine series and the first issues of Marvels "Marvel Action Hour" tie-ins, which were 22-page adaptations of the Iron Man and Fantastic Four cartoons in syndication – the former of which inexplicably featured Force Works prominently.

Over the rest of middle school, I watched that TV series (even though it ran at 8:00 AM on Saturday in front of a Canadian "Saved By The Bell" ripoff called "Boogie's Diner") start to finish because...well, because I was that kid too. In the meantime, I picked up a few more issues of the Iron Man Marvel Action Hour comic series – attractive to me as someone who'd never found a jumping on point to Iron Man, plus I liked the art by Anthony Williams – as well as a few scattered issues of Force Works (most memorably the series finale which I got mostly because Andrew Wildman drew it). After that, the team remained largely forgotten.

Earlier this summer, that DisneyXD cable channel started re-airing episodes of the '90s Iron Man 'toon in a little bit of inter-company cross-promotion for "Iron Man 2's" imminent arrival in theaters. When I'm up late transcribing (or writing CKT posts, even!) I end up flipping to DisneyXD's late night superhero marathons whenever MSNBC becomes too depressing, and this was no exception. Combine that confluence of events with a string of conventions this summer where the majority of my brief shopping time was spent diving in dollar bins, and I ended up nabbing a handful of the 22-issue Force Works run on a lark.

I caught up reading those books over the past week, and I'll be damned if DnA didn't turn out a story that while not an awe-inspiring game changer for the superhero genre was strangely prescient considering the trends I see in today's superhero team books. Let me show you what I mean.


1. Force Works Was A High-Concept IP Reinvention

Like I said above, when you get down to brass tacks, the Force Works monthly was a simple rebranding of the failing Avengers West Coast series. The big A franchise was hardly in the shape it is now back in '94 (I'm pretty sure the main title was in the throws of Ben's favorite "bomber jacket" era then), and so it's no surprise that the West Coast title was on its way out after a nice run of 102 issues. What is a bit different for the time was that said team would get a high-concept facelift so soon after its demise, and Force Works was the West Coast Avengers team in everything but its name. It featured most of the same characters (Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, U.S. Agent and, to start, Wonder Man) except that they got a new name, a few costume redesigns and a kitschy new tech-powered HQ.

More importantly, the big hook for the Force Works monthly was that this team wasn't just going to sit there on their laurels and wait for supervillains to attack. They were going to be proactive heroes! Or, as the tagline stated, Force Works was "The Best Defense In An Offensive World." If that hook sounds at all familiar to you, it's because the same essential idea is at the heart of a ton of current or recent hero books including Cry For Justice, JSA All-Stars, Uncanny X-Force, Outsiders and probably a half dozen other books I'm forgetting.

These days, almost every new title launched at either Marvel or DC is a tweak or twist on series or concepts from years past, generally pulled out of the back issue bin either to play on nostalgia for a former success or to polish up a good core idea with a modern allegorical twist. Force Works was both as it spent its first year showcasing how much more bad ass the West Coast cast could be in action by telling stories that allowed its heroes to get fake comic book political by taking on everything from rogue super general in former Soviet block countries to corporate raider revisions of old villains. In that respect, the book feels a lot less '90s than it probably should.


2. The Series Launched With The Death Of A Fan-Favorite Character

If you bought the first issue of that best-selling Busiek/Perez Avengers reboot and thought, "Oh hey, Wonder Man is back as an Ionic energy hero...wait! Wonder Man was dead?!?!?" (and I know some of you thought that), know that Force Works was the final resting place of former Hollywood hero hunk Simon Williams. In fact, our boy bought it straight out in the very first issue after the proactive superteam was (ironically?) caught off-guard by a rogue Kree battle ship that appeared in the skies above earth. To keep said ship from crashing into our planet and taking possibly dozens of people with it, Wonder Man flew it into the stratosphere and E-X-P-L-O-D-E-D.

Do I even need to point out how common this is these days? From ongoing series reboots like the recent killing of Ryan Choi in Titans to the death of Banshee in X-Men: Deadly Genesis and from the big events that kick off with shocking murders including Blue Beetle in Countdown To Infinite Crisis and Bullseye in Shadowland, killing an expendable but known character at the start of a story is now the go-to way to ramp up fan reactions to the book. And just as it went with Wonder Man in Force Works, the message being sent by C-list slaughter is clear: "This shit is fucking SERIOUS, you guys. You HAVE to buy our new book because EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW HAS CHANGED."

And in honesty, I'm going to give an edge to DnA and Force Works on this one too. While I know death has never been permanent in superhero comics, it still feels (to me at least) that death had a bit more gravitas attached to it back in the '90s than it did for most of the '00s. Back in the halcyon days of shoulder pads and ammo pouches, when a character like Wonder Man got killed, you had to accept that the creators who pulled the trigger weren't going to go back on that – unlike today when death and resurrection for a hero are planned from page one. In other words, back then you had to wait and see IF Marvel would bring back your fav character fro the grave. Today, you just wait to see WHEN it'll happen.


3. The Support Heroes Mattered Way More Than The Marquee Guys

All right, I know that it's been common knowledge that team books have been able to get more done with B-listers pretty much since Stan Lee introduced "Cap's Kooky Quartet" into Avengers. But even though the best team books hold the honor of kind of making the Hawkeyes and Martian Manhunters of the world feel like they might one day carry a long-running solo series, both Force Works and a number of modern team comics place extra importance on the lives of their marginal cast. And the real reason for this is that writers can fuck up the lives of said cast members.

Over their 22 issues, DnA bolstered the status of perpetual also rans like U.S. Agent and the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman (who besides juggling an in-headquarters stalker and being a single mom ended up dating a mysterious boyfriend no one remembered appearing late in the series...though that last part was on purpose). But the most important thread in the series revolved around the alien warrior made up of 100 alien warriors' minds Century. The cosmic axe-wielding hero created by the writers specifically to work in the team got a TON of love for a complete unknown including several guest spots in Marvel Comics Presents and his own one-shot, and if I'm reading between the lines right, DnA had plans for Century to not just romance team leader the Scarlet Witch but to have a crazy space battler with her darker half on down the line.

Backstory building like this became more and more relevant as the book went along in a way that reminds me a lot of how Brian Michael Bendis essentially used New Avengers as a backdoor Luke Cage solo series here and there or how Dwayne McDuffie's entire Justice League run where seldom seen minority characters like Vixen, Bronze Tiger and Doctor Light earned more page time and development than anyone even when Superman and Batman were still on the team. In fact, the only time Iron Man – the supposed draw of the book – had a major impact on Force Works was when he was threatening to pull funding like a dad killing your garage band's practice or in one of two crossovers he anchored at the time whose plot threads were resolved in other, more important titles. Which brings me to my final comparison...


4. Ultimately, The Book's Big Plan Got Scuttled Thanks To An Event

Probably the biggest reason why Force Works left so little an impact on the Marvel Universe even for die-hard fans is because the series end dovetailed into an event called "The Crossing." If you've never heard of this story, the basic premise is that Tony Stark is driven insane by Kang (or Immortus? I honestly can't tell the fucking difference) and forced to kill a nanny who lives at Avengers mansion or some shit. In an effort to save the day, the other Avengers pull an alternate reality teen Tony from out of the past to kill the original Iron Man, and that was that. The story was so poorly received it helped convince Marvel to hire two of their biggest competitors to take over the entire Avengers franchise from scratch. So yeah...not good.

"The Crossing" pulled Iron Man out of his own team book for the better part of its second year, meaning that the "proactive heroes" high concept was largely scuttled AND that there was no big name character to help keep fan interest in the title much longer. DnA wrapped the run in the middle of a number of subplots with a story that both tied up threads from "The Crossing" probably no one wanted to have wrapped up and pulled a pretty solid "resurrection of Wonder Man" fakeout (I have no proof, but I'd like to think they did that last one just to stick it to the crybabies).

Once again, it may just be me, but this is a pattern I see repeated a lot in this era of Mobius Strip event comics which leap frog one off the back of the other again and again. From the reality TV reboot of New Warriors made cannon fodder for Civil War to half a dozen (surprisingly successful) attempts to tie Agents of Atlas to Marvel U shakeups via new #1 issues to that other New Warriors book that went from some kind of street-level teen rebellion thing to a mashup of leftover Generation X characters to a part of the Initiative and ultimately to a quiet death, the modern event era is littered with high-concept relaunches of old properties whose shelf life is somewhere between 12 months and whenever the next red sky shows up.

Ultimately, I don't think all these trends hold a lot of baring on whether or not any individual comic series is any good or not. The best creators can find ways to make cool core concepts sing no matter what the circumstances surrounding them. But I do wonder some days how many people are starting to see the reboots, redesigns and retcons of books like Force Works more as clichés rather than as creative realignment. Hell, I'm wondering if I myself can really tell the difference anymore.

11 Reasons I Love Gossip Girl Right Now

The more accurate title to this post would be something like “11 Reasons the Season Premiere of Gossip Girl Was Awesome,” but that seemed too long for the journalist in me who loves those short, snappy headlines—and nothing brings out me inner journalist quite like blogging about The CW’s Monday night soap opera de force about privileged New York City teenagers and their sexual escapades!

1. After coming to terms that last year’s abortive attempt to revive my beloved Melrose Place came up woefully short, I had the revelation while watching Gossip Girl’s fourth season premiere on DVR tonight that it’s really ok, because the stuff I truly loved about MP lives on in spirit with GG. Here we have a show that takes its over-the-top, nonsensical craziness and rather than shy away, it revels in it. I give the Gossip Girl writing staff enough credit that I assume they’re at least somewhat in on the joke and realize they’re producing entertainment and not art here and thus have decided to have fun with it, but even if they’re not, they do a great job making it seem like they do, so I dig it. There’s no way anybody would ever talk or act like these characters do—I hope—and thus the writers just keep amping up the suspension of belief more and more—as they should! You have to go for it! And I’m not saying there’s not talent amongst this cast and crew, because I believe there’s plenty, but all the skill in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t recognize the game you’re playing and make yourself comfortable, which Gossip Girl absolutely has.

2. Along those same lines, where it once irked me just how much of the plot twists and tension came from the fact that nobody on this show tells each other anything and everybody finds out about everything second or third hand—I know it drove Sean T. Collins nuts—the show has found a way to get me to accept that this structure is just part of the rules, like Lost having mysteries or Mad Men having alcohol. Of course Dan would successfully conceal the fact that he became a father from his parents and everybody he knows for three months! This is Gossip Girl!

3. I love that they pretty much have characters just come out and say Serena’s a whore now and she doesn’t bother denying it anymore. Like, when Blair was listing off all the guys she had slept with in Paris, Serena didn’t try to protest or make excuses like she would in the past, she just kinda smiled. Good! It always bugged me that Serena behaved as this wild and promiscuous party girl yet was also supposed to somehow be the chaste object of everybody’s affections; she can be a self-admitted tart and still be believable desirable on a show like this, let’s be frank about it. Even her mom straight up was like, “So, how are all those dudes you’re sleeping with?”

4. On the flipside, I hope Serena’s tacit embrace of the skanky side doesn’t totally screw up the chances of her reuniting with Dan after Mr. Morality spent the summer raising a kid without asking for a paternity test. Even though most people seem to dislike the preachy (former) poor kid, he’s still one of my favorites and I still maintain he and Serena should be the center of the show, if for no other reason than so he can continue having conversations with his stepmother about how a relationship with his stepsister wouldn’t work because she wouldn’t want to be a stepmother to his new kid by her best friend-turned-archenemy, yet neither seem to think the aforementioned stepsiblings thing would be the issue here. I love this show because I can write sentences like that about it!

5. Of the entire cast, I never thought it would be Chace Crawford who would refine his acting chops the most over the last two seasons, but give credit to the guy for not just coasting on “being too beautiful for this world” (TM Sean T. Collins). Whereas I once found Nate to be the dullest character on the show, he’s now probably the most real—not exactly a challenge among this lot, but still—and perhaps the most charming behind Chuck and Blair. Now if only he weren’t consistently stuck in the most boring plotlines, which seems to be about to change, since…

6. …holy smokes, Katie Cassidy is playing some sort of crazy middle class stalker who’s obsessed with the Gossip Girl gang! At least that’s what I think. We actually thought she might be Gossip Girl herself for a moment, but I don’t think so. This show has botched stuff like this before in terms of making a character seem super cool and then having their big reveal be kinda lame (Vanessa’s androgynous boyfriend being Rufus and Lily’s lovechild), but I’m keeping the faith here. Katie was one of the few good parts of Melrose 2.0, and I was happy enough to see her playing a non-manic character since that was my major hang-up with Ella, but I’m more than happy to see her take over Ashlee Simpson’s spot as my favorite CW psycho.

7. Vanessa was used exactly in the right capacity: let her come in for a few minutes, say lines like “Let’s not talk about her George-gyna,” (thanks for spoiling that one for me, Entertainment Weekly) then exit promptly.

8. Fucking Georgina Sparks, man! I will never get sick of how this crazy bitch waltzes in and out of the show and consistently manages to outwit these stupid, stupid, gullible people. Michelle Trachtenberg is so perfect in this role, from her completely unconvincing puppy dog routine to her constantly arched eyebrow—love it.

9. I’m ok with them giving Blair some depth, but not too much, if only because Leighton Meester is so good with comedy. Her tender scenes with Chuck or heartfelt confessions to Serena are fine, but let’s never lose the subplots of her self-sabotaging her chances with a studly prince because he pulls an obvious bait and switch and she can’t bring herself to even converse with a lowly driver.

10. Chuck Bass actually has a secret identity? And it’s something as perfectly comic book-y as “Henry Prince”?! It’s really happening, Sean! The Dark Knight returns!

11. Last but certainly not least: Jenny Humphrey reduced to off-screen references and nothing more! Yay! Let’s savor it while it lasts!

Green Lantern's Glo Balls

Rickey found these at the store and put them on Twitter. I couldn't help but share:

Put them in your mouth!

But seriously, I guess someone was impressed by all the Green Lantern stuff at the licensing show this year, huh? By one way or another, DC's whole rebranding of their biggest heroes as the four guys is getting a chance to shine. Apparanty, they also have Flash Cakes:


But I didn't put them in the headline of this post because they didn't make me giggle because I'm 11. But hey, I guess there's some kind of "get yourself on a comic cover" promo from Hostess going with this once these things are out in full force for Halloween. I actually did love to enter contests like that when I was a kid (or, you know, ordering X-Men specials off the back of pizza boxes and what not) so that's nice I guess.

Still, the only contest I'm really interested in in all this is Todd Casey's challenge to Rickey to eat a box of Glo Balls on video.

Do it, Rickey. Do it.

The Definitives: Dick Grayson

A couple months back, I wrote about the evolution of the Robin character, in the course of doing so hitting largely on the progression of Dick Grayson, the original Boy Wonder as a character.

Whether as Robin, Nightwing or currently Batman, Grayson has always been one of my favorite comic book heroes. This is a bit a departure for me as I’m generally more beholden to the snarky rebel types as my touchstones, but there’s also that well-concealed nice guy side of me who really roots for the true blue Heroes with a capital “H” of comics. With Dick Grayson, he’s a guy who represents both sides of my fandom there, as he’s certainly among the more wholesome good guys even in the virtuous DC Universe—particularly when you consider his mentor—but also has that devil-may-care swashbuckler attitude born of the carnival.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Dick Grayson is that in addition to his longevity, he’s probably been successful in more diverse identities than any other major character in comics as noted above. Sure lots of heroes and villains undergo the occasional name or costume change, but Dick has full-on reinvented everything about himself twice now and not really missed a beat as far as remaining at the forefront of the DCU as one of its most popular leading men.

Given that Dick Grayson has a history stretching back to 1940, I certainly make no claim to have read anywhere near even a majority representation of his appearances—I haven’t really read any Batman comics pre-dating the 80’s, including the crazy Silver Age stuff and really good 70’s stuff—but even so, I’ve got quite a few stories that spring to mind when thinking about why I dig comics’ original sidekick.

ROBIN: YEAR ONE
Few writers of the modern era have more familiarity with Dick Grayson than Chuck Dixon, who spent over five years writing him on the Nightwing ongoing title. Here, Dixon teams with co-writer Scott Beatty and artist Javier Pulido not to re-tell Robin’s origin story, but to flesh out his earliest days with Batman. Pulido’s art is perfect here, as he nails the brightly-clad figure of the Boy Wonder but drags him into the slightly darker situations Dixon and Beatty have concocted without dimming his luster. This is a great coming-of-age story that sees young Dick Grayson attempting to prove himself worthy of the responsibility given him by Batman—your basic father-son dynamic cranked up to superheroic proportions—by taking on way more than he probably should be on his own and coming up against Two-Face, foreshadowing later feuds between the two characters across various identities. Dixon and Beatty also show Robin’s nascent relationship with Batgirl and emotionally explore his connection with Alfred, the series’ narrator.

“The Murder Machine” (NEW TEEN TITANS ANNUAL #2)
The climax to the simmering storyline that introduced Adrian Chase into his costumed role as Vigilante is also an extremely important chapter in the life of Dick Grayson, as he reaches his final days as Robin. Having grown distant from Batman, the now-Teen Wonder finds himself partnering with Chase for a harder-edged war on crime and searching his soul for what kind of man he wants to be as he draws closer to true adulthood, seeing both positive and negative reflections of himself in his new ally. This extra-sized tale by the superlative Titans team of Marv Wolfman and George Perez sees the crew team with Vigilante against an army of assassins in an action-packed thrill ride, but more importantly it is for all intents and purposes one of the last true Robin stories as far as Dick Grayson is concerned and key reading if you’re looking to understand the character.

“The Judas Contract” (TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #42-44, ANNUAL #3)
Maybe Wolfman and Perez’s greatest Titans opus—and that’s saying something—this one has it all, from the origin of Deathstroke to Terra’s betrayal to Jericho’s introduction and much more, but for our purposes, no aspect of the story is more important than Dick Grayson’s dynamic debut as Nightwing. Even before putting on his new disco-collared duds, the former Robin proves the only Titans capable of eluding The Terminator, an impressive feat when one considers his teammates, but also a reminder of what makes the character so special. Again, a crucial stage in the larger Dick Grayson tapestry, not to mention of the best comic stories of all-time, so call this a win all around.

“Nightwing: Year One” (NIGHTWING #101-106)
Wrote a whole entry on this one.

“Wings Over Gotham” (ROBIN #13)
The conclusion of “Prodigal,” the 1995 storyline that saw Bruce Wayne temporarily hand over the role of Batman to Dick Grayson while recovering from a prior ordeal that saw Jean-Paul Valley sullying the mantel. This issue, written again by Dixon, has Bruce returning, ready to be Batman again, but Dick not quite ready to give up the cowl until they have a conversation years in the making that has been building ever since he abandoned the Robin persona. It’s another big growth moment for Dick as he stands up for himself against his father figure and asserts not only his independence, but calls Bruce out on his lapses in judgment; for his own part, the original Batman stands his ground, but admits he has sold his protégé short more than once. It’s a watershed encounter that re-establishes the Nightwing-Batman relationship more as one between equals and alters their dynamic moving forward (also, Tim Drake fights a bad guy, but that’s pretty secondary).

“A Knight in Bludhaven” (NIGHTWING #1-8)
Dixon and Scott McDaniel’s kickoff to their lengthy run on Dick Grayson’s first ongoing series and they hit the ground running, creating a brand new playground for Nightwing to establish himself in Bludhaven, a sort of mini-Gotham that’s even more gruesome than the original in some ways. For the next several years, Bludhaven would serve a key role in giving Dick Grayson his own identity separate from Batman or the Titans, complete with his own rogues gallery, supporting cast and unique locales, but especially establishing him as the sole guardian of a place that needed him, not just a stand-in or supporting player. The first eight issues have Nightwing setting up shop and declaring war on Blockbuster, the bulky and brilliant mastermind who would become the Kingpin to his Daredevil, so to say. My personal highlight from this initial run is “The Visitor” from issue #6, in which Tim Drake drops by and the two “brothers” spend a night talking over Dick’s latest adventures as they hop across rooftops and moving trains, really giving McDaniel a chance to show off.

“Till Death Do Us Part” (NIGHTWING ANNUAL #2)
You could argue all day whether Dick Grayson’s true destined love is Starfire or Barbara Gordon, but Marc Andreyko and Joe Bennett make a pretty heartfelt case for the latter in this touching, sweet and often heart-wrenching one-shot covering the “missing year” from after Infinite Crisis and what became of Nightwing’s marriage proposal to Oracle. As the star-crossed duo recovers from the latest upheaval and mull over what’s next for them, Andreyko revisits the high and low points of their lengthy courtship in great detail. That Robin-Batgirl kid crush that became something more is something I feel like is almost woven into culture beyond just the DC Universe, and it’s certainly one I feel like I can relate to, so to see it so thoroughly dissected here and ushered into adulthood not only makes for a good story, but feels integral to who Dick Grayson is. The creative team here does an excellent job showing why this may be DC’s best couple, and at the same time why they can probably never be together for too long.

“Batman Reborn” (BATMAN AND ROBIN #1-3)
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s first arc in this brave and bold new era of Batman showed once and for all that Dick Grayson was more than fit to wear the cowl, but also that he’d be a very different kind of Dark Knight—and that’s a good thing. I remember being really impressed with how Morrison acknowledged every stage of Dick’s past, from jubilant sidekick to defiant young hero, and made this very much the logical destination for the character. Quitely’s art is dynamic and the creative duo usher in wonderfully creepy new villains and a nicely refined status quo for the latest Dynamic Duo.