#n52

The most commonly referenced examples are, of course, the Robin boys and their very tragic stories. Dick being replaced by Jason when he's fired by Bruce (in the more commonly accepted canon), then Jason being replaced by Tim when he's killed by the Joker, and then Tim being replaced by Damian when Bruce is lost in time and Dick takes over as Batman and needs to give Damian an outlet.

I've talked each of those instances to death already, both on this blog and to my offline friends when they decide to humor me, but a moment that I want to focus on now is one that came up specifically in the N52 comics.

Because Dick's origin at the circus is, in and of itself, a story about replacement.

Vols 1 and 2 follow the Court of Owls making a move on Gotham and those in charge of the city (alongside a few infamous individuals who lack actual control but impact the city itself through other, less savory, means), and in them we learn that Dick's great grandfather, William Cobb, is a Talon, and that Haly's Circus is, and has been for a very long time, a means of scouting and training new Talons for the Court.

Furthermore, in one of the stories featured in the Night of the Owls collection, we're introduced to Alton Carver, a Talon recruited from the circus as a young boy who served the Court for an unusually long stretch of time, but who'd progressively become less and less efficient. When he's told by a member of the Court that they're thinking of retiring him, that they've found his replacement (that key word again), he goes to the circus to see for himself the child that the Court's talking about. This child winds up being Dick Grayson, but what Alton has to say about him is this: "I needed to see him. The one who would take my place. No one had to tell me who he was. I could see it. And I could feel it. It was him. And for the first time in decades... I felt fear."

Emphasis on that fear he says he feels. He knows he's being replaced, and he's looking at the boy that will take his place and seeing exactly why the Court has chosen him to do so.

In the end, this is all just to say that the themes of replacement and the fear of being replaced are concepts that are seemingly ingrained into the story of Batman and its characters, but specifically the character of Dick Grayson.

His legacy is intertwined in unwilling replacement after unwilling replacement, so much so that he's most often referenced as being the first to be replaced in regards to the role of Robin, but he, himself, was originally destined to be the replacement of another man who could no longer service his designated purpose— a man who was no longer wanted.

The story of Robin, beginning with Dick, mirrors the story of the Talons and how the Court replaces them when they can no longer do their job with the required efficiency, and we see this in the same line of thinking in the various Robins as each of them are eventually made to drop the mantle and see it picked up by another, younger boy. Whether it's true or not, the Robins each felt that they could no longer do their job to the standards they were being held to and developed insecurities centered around those feelings of inadequacy when comparing themselves to their replacements.

(For the record, it isn't true, there are all very valid reasons for each boy evolving beyond Robin, and the entire family is just incapable of communicating with one another so the feelings of inadequacy are perpetuated and the real reasons— fear of loss, death and grief, and simply out-growing the lessons and security the role of Robin offers— are never explained which breeds further insecurity and resentment towards themselves and their respective replacements, or those that facilitated the replacing).

I think this also is ironic, or maybe just interesting, when put into relation to the fact that Dick was being groomed to be a Talon like his many predecessors before him, but when Dick is told this by Cobb, he responds by stating he doesn't believe in destiny. Despite the fact that he is the first in a cycle that mirrors the way the Court works, thus, in same way, fulfilling that destiny even if it isn't as a Talon.