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Sure I’m certain it would never have ranked up there with people’s favourites, but I’d love to have seen what her original pitch for the resolution of the storyline was. Presumably the depression-almost-marriage, then Dick runs off and joins the mob, then we finally get a comfort arc where he realises he’s NOT that person and reconciles with the family.

Instead: 9 of the following 13 issues to Nightwing #93 were out of Devin’s control (War Games then Nightwing Year One), she gets her mob arc up only to be informed Dick will be getting sacrificed in Infinite Crisis, and she diverts over to the half done Slade story because nothing really matters at this point, hey? Editorial drops Chemo on Blüdhaven because Dick’s dying anyway, we can sacrifice his city for drama, only for the rebellion to save Dick AFTER PAGES ARE TURNED IN.

I know everyone dislikes #93 and why they feel that way, but it’s also basically the last point for the subsequent two years where Devin had any control over the course of the title, at the end of which she was removed. #94&95 are the start of Dick’s reaction. She gets to write #100 and ONE proper story arc in after this point: the mob arc #107-112. Everything else is scraped together transitions or preempted or someone else’s story.

If her story hadn’t been disrupted for an ENTIRE YEAR at its lowest point by intervening events, so that fans had given up on getting any sort of catharsis out of the whump and had turned on Devin, I can see a world where people enjoy Devin Grayson’s run as ‘the one where Dick gets to go off the rails’. It’d be his Red Robin - known to be Dick not acting normally, but with the fun that yeah, that was DESERVED, and Dick came out the other side solid.

Oh god, where do I start. A lot of this is just...general knowledge or stuff that pops out when you look at a timeline of how the stories going on shake out.

It is very, very clear when you look at how the storyline started, Devin Grayson pitched a 'break the cutie' plot. She spends 18 months carefully making everything go wrong in Dick's life, and then presumably intended for him to come out the other side stronger and more committed to The Mission.

I'm going to compare this again against Red Robin #1-12, which is a compact and successful example of this sort of storyline. RR #1-4 is Tim Hits Rock Bottom. The events of the past 5 years or so finally catch up with him and Tim Breaks. He yells at people he's close to, pushes everyone away, and goes on the run. RR #5-8 is Tim swimming around going 'well I've given in to my Worst Impulses, Am I Evil?' and flirting with Doing Wrong. RR #9-12 is the resolution - Tim realises he still has people who love him and rely on him, he goes to heroically save Bruce's loved ones, and gets a moment of pure sweet resolution hugging Dick in the Cave.

Devin Grayson's whump plot for Dick essentially runs from #71-95, and then from #107-116. She desperately tries to wrap it up in #117 but it's halfhearted at best. The intervening 11 issues (almost a YEAR) in the middle there, #96-106, consists of: 3 issues of War Games, one issue post-War Games that is essentially just the fallout and new status quo being explained to Dick (because he was unconscious during the final parts of War Games), Nightwing #100 (which is about long term stories and doesn't bother to seriously get back to the plot as it's essentially a stand alone issue), and then #101-106, which are Nightwing: Year One, written by Chuck Dixon.

As a writer, Devin Grayson essentially had no choice about anything that happened in that year. Her plot got put on hold for two other stories. It also got put on ice at the worst possible moment: right as Dick hit rock bottom in #93, and let Tarantula shoot Blockbuster. #94-95 mostly consist of Dick wandering around in a daze, probably dissociating from the horror of what he's just let happen, while Catalina tries to marry Dick.

In Red Robin terms, imagine if after RR #4, as Tim is lying there bleeding to death, the plot got put on hold for 11 months while Tim had to go back to Gotham for Blackest Night (instead of those issues just happening as separate tie ins), followed by another writer getting to spend 6 months recapping A Lonely Place of Dying. Imagine what that would do to the story's pacing.

Once Devin gets control of her story back, in issue #107, she launches into the Mob Arc. I like the Mob Arc, being #107-112. It's the equivalent of RR #5-8. Dick's decides that he's a Terrible Person, so he's punishing himself working as an enforcer for the mob. He's also simultaneously remembering what it's like to be part of a family, with a father who cares about you and a little sibling to protect. This is the upswing. It's where Dick is supposed to start recovering, and working out that he's not Evil.

Unfortunately for everyone concerned, the plotting of Infinite Crisis is underway at this point, and Dan Didio wants to kill off a character to seal This Is Really Serious. He wants to do a Barry sacrifice. Didio picks Dick, for a variety of reasons that have been explained many different ways over the years, but that essentially boil down to "Didio saw Dick, as a legacy character, as superfluous". He wasn't Batman OR Robin, but he used to be Robin. People would care but it wouldn't disrupt things that much. Here's a very basic explanation from Didio - there have been a LOT more details leaked over the years.

Didio got it very, very, very wrong. His writer's room for Infinite Crisis essentially staged a coup and forced Didio to accept that killing Dick Grayson would result in half the writers walking/resigning, including iirc Geoff Johns and Marv Wolfman. Geoff Johns was the lead writer for Infinite Crisis. People cared very much about Dick. They swapped his death out for Kon's instead (and the swap came very very late - Infinite Crisis is written as if Dick's about to die, they swapped out pages at the last minute).

BECAUSE Dick was now fated to die during Infinite Crisis, Devin got told to wrap her story up. Nightwing was ending issue #117. She segued over into the Slade plot (which probably was her next intended move anyway - Dick training Rose would be the shock that brought him back out of his moping over being evil), but only gets 3 issues of this, including one where Roy gets to yell at Dick about What Are You Doing??? Slade's also simultaneously part of the Evil Plot going on in Infinite Crisis, and since Dick's dying anyway, the event writers decide to drop Chemo on Bludhaven, to again ramp up the drama and sacrifice. If Dick's dead they don't need the city, plus Devin Grayson had already killed off the majority of characters people cared about there anyway (Batgirl is already scheduled to end at the same time too, and moving Robin back to Gotham was the long term plan anyway).

Standing in the ruins of Bludhaven, in issue #116, Dick finally, finally reaches where RR #9-12 should start. He gets back into the blue fingerstripes and mourns his dead.

Unfortunately for everyone, this resolution arc gets exactly one issue, #117. Dick finally gets to tell Bruce what happened to Blockbuster (which if events hadn't intervened, was more likely to have happened back around #99 or so, or maybe a little later), and he gets engaged to Babs because he's about to die and that was his little treat for getting offed (this is similar to how Steph got to be Robin because she was going to die in War Games. You get a little treat because you're about to be dead).

Unfortunately for Devin Grayson, this level of resolution is about as popular as burnt toast. Didio is shaking up writers for most titles anyway in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis - the point of One Year Later is that they can set up fresh teams on all the books. Devin is off Nightwing, never having got to resolve her plot.

And also, because the last two years of storytelling on Nightwing have been approximately as popular as a root canal with the fans (due to, as I noted, the main plot spending a year in a holding pattern, followed by 11 issues that never fully got back on track after that disruption, as they also got completely thrown for a mess again by Infinite Crisis), Devin Grayson is essentially out the door at DC as well.

I've seen books still be successful around this level of editorial fuckery. But it takes skill, talent and a lot of luck, and Devin Grayson didn't have the trifecta.

When you've amped up the incredibly personal emotional tension SO HIGH, you can't then switch to a larger-then-life tragedy. If he falls apart because of about 20 deaths, in a realistic and long-term way, you can't cap the story with thousands of deaths.

It breaks the tension. The only way to really respond is to laugh. We were so close to the character, and then we pan out and all his problems look so little and trite, and we feel kinda stupid for caring. Ha! It was just a few deaths! This is REAL tragedy! (Not that it was written in a way that engaged any real sense of connection. Just numbness.)

And then our last hope for ANY closure runs into Brothers In Blood. The last tatters of 'maybe he recovered on his trip and we'll get to see how that changed him' are confronted by a tentacle monster. Yeah, this is a joke. Why do I even READ comics?

Red Hood: Resurrection is really damn good so far

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