dick grayson, money, and control
i am so obsessed with dick's relationship with money... the more post-crisis comics i read the more i believe that dick sees offers of money, especially from the rich or powerful, as an attempt to exert control over him. in part because bruce, intentionally or not, had dick in a position where dick was entirely dependent on him for housing and money for most of his life, and has directly used giving or taking away resources to punish or control dick before.
disclaimer: i'm using a LOT of chuck dixon comics here because of his heavy involvement in building out dick's personal history in the 90s/00s. as a reminder chuck dixon is an alt-right homophobic qanon creep and deserves no respect
in robin (1992) annual #4 (dixon's version of the dick's origin story), dick is taken in by bruce but almost immediately feels out of place and unwanted in bruce's home. he thinks of himself as bruce's "christmas puppy" and is certain that as soon as his parents' killer is caught, bruce will send him back:
dick doesn't feel any sense of permanence in bruce's life early on. that's understandable given the multiple traumas he's been through, and the impermanence itself isn't what i want to focus on here—for our purposes, the way dick's sense of instability is framed here is as an adopted pet. a christmas puppy. an animal, an impulse buy.
even at age 8, dick understands there's a massive gulf in power between himself and bruce—bruce has a giant home, while dick doesn't see the manor as "home" because he's always expecting to be sent back into the system. bruce is the person adopting a puppy, while dick is the puppy. their power imbalance is implicitly tied to bruce's immense wealth and dick's complete lack of status outside of being bruce's ward.
in robin: year one #3 (also by dixon), leslie and dick talk about how bruce doesn't mind giving handouts, but neither of them want to go to him for them:
Leslie: That's why I had you come to General for tests. They have equipment I just can't afford yet. And I'm not about to go to Bruce for another handout
Dick: He wouldn't mind.
Leslie: That doesn't make it any easier.
Dick: Yeah. I know what you mean.
leslie says another handout, meaning that bruce has already funded her here, and dick too has received financial support from bruce as robin and as his ward. but they both don't want to go back for more money, despite knowing that bruce "wouldn't mind"—there's a deeper issue here than whether or not bruce minds it or can afford it. it's not "easy" for leslie or dick to accept bruce's money, even though it's easy for bruce to give it.
to me, this means dick still doesn't see his new level of wealth (or, more accurately, his new access to bruce's level of wealth) as a normal, secure part of his life. i don't know if he ever really does, though eventually he'll come to rely on a line of credit from bruce in his teen titan days.
the firing (nightwing: year one version)
in nightwing (1996) #101, the first issue of dixon's nightwing: year one arc, bruce fires dick as robin. in #102, dick goes to clark for advice, and clark is shocked at the news:
Clark: How can he fire you?
Dick: He said, "you're fired."
Clark: It's not a job.
Dick: It is to Bruce. His cave. His car. His rules. He pays the bills, Clark. And in his eyes I screwed up.
i think we can trace some of dick's intense dislike for taking money from the rich to this version of the firing—in dick's eyes, by accepting bruce's cave, car, and money to pay the bills, dick gave bruce the power to then take those things away from him. bruce was able to fire dick from robin because bruce's resources enabled robin. if dick had been funding robin himself, if it had been dick's cave and car, bruce couldn't have taken it away from him. (when he later moves to blüdhaven, dick takes the first possible opportunity to establish a lair in his apartment and build his own car, rebuilding these resources on his own terms.)
notably, at the end of the actual firing issue (#101), bruce orders dick to leave behind the new robin suit alfred made for him, connecting the firing directly to bruce taking back something given to dick:
here dick gets a very memorable lesson that gifts of financial support and equipment—or workplace resources, if you look at it from the "robin is a job" perspective that bruce takes in this story—can be given with good intentions, but later used as leverage to punish and control.
nightwing (1996) #3 by chuck dixon was written years before dixon wrote nightwing: year one (above), so it's not totally consistent with it, but dixon was clearly already thinking about dick's relationship with bruce's money when he wrote dick moving to blüdhaven:
Operator: I'm not showing a credit history, Mr. Grayson. Date of birth? A man your age and there's nothing on my screen. You'll need to send us a certified check for one thousand dollars before we can approve electrical service.
Dick: I'll get one to you this afternoon.
Dick: Everyone wants cash because Dick Grayson doesn't exist. I guess they're right. Seems like I hardly know him. Kory or Alfred always handled this stuff for me. And for years I've had to rely on a line of credit paid for by Bruce. Seems like I've been on fast forward since the night my parents died.
dick moves to blüdhaven without a credit history and without any financial records in his name at all, as far as i can tell. "dick grayson doesn't exist." he's been reliant on other people financially, either to manage his money or for the money itself, and now he's establishing independence as a solo operation by starting to handle all of that himself. and he's establishing that independence as dick grayson, not just as nightwing.
(also, "on fast forward since the night my parents died"—really juicy to me that dick's lack of financial independence gets linked to how quickly he grows up after his parents' deaths!!)
soon dick gets a job bartending and grins thinking about "the look on bruce's face":
Dick: I actually have a job. Can't wait to see the look on Bruce's face.
which is a fun moment of "just moved out of my parent's place and i finally got my first job!!" freedom to me (though he's been out of the manor for years at this point).
we now jump forward to 2003. in titans/young justice: graduation day #1, megacorp optitron offers a massive amount of funding to the titans and young justice. dick is immediately skeptical and assumes that optitron will gradually start to use their financial leverage over the titans to "[get] us fighting their own little wars"—it's clear that he's tying together receiving money with being controlled.
Roy: Think of what we could accomplish—
Dick: With a gigantic pile of money? No thanks. It begins with them just funding us. Then they've got us fighting their own little wars. I'm sure there's some land rights issue in Asia that they'd love for us to tackle.
donna makes it clear that she's well aware of dick's feelings about the rich, and implies that his bias against them is affecting his decisions around optitron:
Donna: You have a chip on your shoulder about the rich. That and corporations.
Dick: What do you mean by that?
Donna: What do you think I mean by that?
and all that evidence of dick's view of money-as-control aside... dick wasn't wrong to be skeptical about ulterior motives!! in outsiders (2003) #21, it's revealed that the offer of funding from optitron in titans/young justice: graduation day was at bruce's behest:
so the entire funding offer in graduation day was part of an elaborate deception by bruce to pay for dick's team without letting dick find out about it. bruce later says he meant well by doing this, but dick is so angry about it that there's clearly a deeper issue here for dick:
Narration: And those who know [that Optitron is owned by Batman] are having a very hard time buying the "hands-off approach."
Dick: I'll kill him.
Roy: Settle down.
Dick: Don't tell me to settle down, Roy. He did this again. He always does this.
"he did this again. he always does this." 👀👀👀
in one of my favorite scenes ever, dick confronts bruce in an explosive rage about his ownership of optitron and specifically calls out bruce being deceptive and manipulative (outsiders [2003] #21):
Dick: What exactly is your compulsion, your burning desire to deceive, lie, and manipulate the only people who give a good god damn about you!?
you should really read this issue if you haven't, it's amazing!! i can't summarize the complex weird conversation bruce and dick have here, it has so many layers, but the point is that dick IMMEDIATELY and VERY EMOTIONALLY takes bruce forcing his money on dick('s team) as bruce being a manipulative control freak.
and like, yeah, we know dick can and does overreact to bruce, but the way he overreacts to bruce here... i am immediately connecting this on the red string board in my mind back to bruce firing dick and dick establishing independence from him in nightwing (1996)!! dick worked hard for that independence!! and then bruce made dick take his money even though dick didn't want to, even though dick has these well-established issues around bruce's money, and he brewed up this whole deception around it because he knew dick didn't want it!! of COURSE dick sees that as bruce being willfully a huge fucking controlling bastard to him!!! GOD!!!!!
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