Nathaniel_Christopher

Man i've been gone a long time lol but i've been keeping track of Nightwing's current series and I agree for the most part. There have been some missteps in my opinion, such as the way the entire business with Shawn has gone down, but overall i've continued to enjoy this series above the rest of the Bat books and it remains the one Bat book that I have yet to drop.

Knightfall in general is my favorite Batman event and i've always loved the Knightquest portion of it for how deeply it fell into the idea of showing us how someone besides Bruce Wayne tackles the cape and cowl. We've seen numerous other attempts over the years, such as Batman Beyond (Not a cape and cowl per se lol), Batman Reborn with Dick Grayson, and most recently Superheavy with Jim Gordon of all people. I think all of these stories, more than anything else, need to go the extra mile to show us how X-character is acting as Batman. The question is, what separates Jean-Paul/Dick/Jim/Terry from Bruce Wayne as Batman? How are they different? Because if there's no real difference then there's really no point to the exercise and we might as well not even bother. So, I can understand complaints of Jean-Paul only really being in costume as Batman, but I think it's partially necessary because that's what you need readers to see. From his standpoint, it then works because being Batman is really all he has. He has no adoptive children or friends to call upon and he quickly alienates Batman's allies in Gotham City. Therefore, all he can be is the man under the mask, which is what makes his final confrontation with Bruce in Knightsend so powerful. He admits that Bruce is Batman and he, without Batman, is nothing, which is absolutely true.

Since the rest of this silly post has been thoroughly covered, let me point out that very few characters actually matter in the larger DCU if we're talking about characters who jump from series to series or whose impact is constantly causing some type of team event style crisis. The quality of an idea shouldn't be based on that however, especially since people are currently sick of that kind of thing anyways. Of course not every character is Batman or Superman and the Titans obviously don't all have the same level of popularity as members of the Justice League, but it's silly to expect them to. The fact remains that various characters on this team have appeared in other series beforehand and that, since Titans Hunt, the creative team has been steadily rebuilding the relationships between each character, which naturally adds more to Dick Grayson as a character, since he is at the core of a number of these relationships. This series, as any team series should be, is just as good and important for Dick as it is for everyone else on the team, except perhaps for people like Wally, who weren't around at all before Rebirth.

Just call it what it is

"Without the Titans and the rest of his friends in the DC world. Hes empty as a shell."

Your initial post was wrong and makes no sense.

I've never really cared for the character outside of the Knightfall event and this introduction, which I read after Knightfall (Since DC didn't see fit to collect this in the Knightfall volumes they released a few years back for some reason), didn't really warm me up to him either. When it comes to Batman stories dealing with the occult I find myself gravitating more towards stories like Gothic, The Cult, and The Mad Monk. Dark Knight, Dark City also comes to mind.

Pretty much this. It happens in other media too. See Ethan Bennet in The Batman.

Yeah, i'd say this seems to be doing exactly the opposite of Grayson. It's actually giving Dick a life outside of the costume. It's not instantaneous, but you realistically couldn't expect it to be and obviously none of the new additions to the cast are going to be Barbara Gordon or Lucious Fox overnight. He IS a member of the Titans, which is the book that his relationship to the majority of his superhero friends should be explored in in my opinion. His close relationship to Barbara and Damian has been noted and displayed within his own series, along with the series those two characters are appearing in. All that really needs to be done is some solid work on giving him notable Rogues in my opinion.

Easily one of my favorite Batman stories and the collected edition with all 3 Ra's tales is one of the best graphic novels DC has ever released.

Yep, I see it on the UK site. Thanks for the heads up! This isn't the first time that an item has shown up on the UK site before the US one. The same thing happened with the 2nd Wonder Woman by George Perez Omnibus, which was available for pre-order on Amazon UK months before it showed up on Amazon US. I'll have to keep an eye out for that. I own all the trades for Batman and Robin under Morrison, but the Omnibus format is my preferred method for reading comics. Looks like it's not going to be too expensive and the listing says its only 200 pages, so i'll probably end up picking it up and switching out my trades.

I also see that they're releasing another version of the Aquaman by Geoff Johns Omnibus.

But yeah, get both Batman and Robin Omnibuses and you'll be good as far as Rebirth goes.

Agreed with the suggestion that all of these be read and at this point it's very easy to do so, because DC is just finishing up the process of re-releasing them all in new trades. I believe that the only stories left out of the entire mega-arc is the second part of Legacy.

Is there? I know that the New 52 Batman and Robin by Tomasi is getting an omnibus, but I didn't hear about Morrison getting one as well.

Battle of the Cowl is right before Morrison's Batman & Robin, with the conclusion being that Dick Grayson takes on the role of Batman. So, you could just read Battle for the Cowl as a lead-in to that.