Nightwing #115 vs Nightwing #92 has me absolutely UNWELL thinking about how much John Grayson and Bruce Wayne might look alike and how a young Dick Grayson would have grappled with that.
How desperately determined he was once upon a time not to see this man as his father, because he had a father already, how Dick gets so much of his looks from John Grayson, how he honors what it means to be a Flying Grayson, how he never gave up his parents' name, but also....
Sometimes Dick feels like he and Bruce are reflections of each other, like there's a great cosmic joke happening, that they lost their parents in a way no one else understands like they do, no one else really knows what it's like to see your parents murdered in front of you when you're not even 10 years old yet and you're there and you can't stop it, how Bruce can look like John Grayson in the right light, how their lives seem to be pushing them towards a father and son relationship.
That in some ways it might have been easier if John Grayson or Bruce Wayne looked different. It might have been easier to accept if Dick didn't look at Bruce and see someone who looked like he was perfectly designed to take John Grayson's place. That it didn't feel like the universe was saying, here's a replacement for your dad, like they were interchangeable and the loss wouldn't matter anymore because you have a new one exactly like the old one.
Looking at it this way, I absolutely can believe someone as stubborn as Dick would dig his feels in and refuse to see Bruce as a father for a long time, that he wouldn't just say, okay, I guess I have two dads--because sometimes it didn't feel like growing to love someone new, when he looked at Bruce's dark hair and blue eyes and sharp jawline, when he saw those things in himself, sometimes it didn't feel like a different relationship, it felt like trying to regrow the first one--and Bruce Wayne was not John Grayson.
Eventually, they get there, Dick has had two fathers in his life and he loves both of them, with time and maturity and growing into a very different dynamic with Bruce than he had with John, Dick no longer sees it as the universe trying to replace what was lost. Even if sometimes he still sees the light slant across Bruce's face just right and he can't help seeing John Grayson's ghost.
jacobvanloon
prguitarman
janainaart
annaxmalina
gummygunk
