Batman is an icon. There’s really no other way to look at the character. One night, in Crime Alley, Bruce Wayne closed his eyes as his parents were shot. When he opened his eyes, Batman was the one looking out of them. Batman has decades of stories under his belt, and when people think of the Dark Knight, they think of Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne’s life has made him uniquely suited to being Batman, and helped mold the mantle of Batman into what it is today. Because this is superhero comics, Bruce Wayne hasn’t been the only Batman, with several others taking the mantle, including the first sidekick in the history of comics — Dick Grayson. Grayson actually has had two stints as Batman, but it’s his second one that gets the most attention because it lasted the longest.
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Grayson became Batman after the “death” of Batman in Final Crisis. He took to the role immediately and in the nearly three years he wore the cowl, readers got some of the greatest Batman stories of all time, like “The Black Mirror”. Personally, I’ve always had a connection to Dick Grayson and getting to see him on the biggest stage of them all was amazing. Dick Grayson is the superior Batman and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
Dick Grayson’s Time as Batman Proved Why He Is the Better Batman
Bruce Wayne as Batman is a very particular kind of hero. Batman is the hardcase; he’s the dark cloud of every room he’s in. Batman doesn’t play nice, because the world he usually lives in isn’t nice. Batman is darkness; he’s spent so long in the shadows, battling against the greatest monsters in a city built by monsters that he’s become one. This has given Batman the kind of attitude and reputation that has made it easy for most heroes to dislike him. Sure, Superman and Wonder Woman like Batman, but they know more about the tragedies of Batman than anyone else dos. Batman doesn’t trust easily, and this makes it so it’s hard for anyone to trust him.
Dick Grayson doesn’t have any of these problems. Dick and Bruce’s young lives have a lot of parallels, but the main constant between the two of them is the loss of loving parents. Bruce went inward when his parents were killed, creating an entire persona so he could not only get revenge, but also so that he’d never actually have to deal with the loss. Dick Grayson was given a replacement for his parents almost immediately, taken in by Bruce and Alfred. He never spent years stewing in his pain, using it as fuel for his mission of vengeance. Young Dick grew up with two people that loved him very much, two people who knew how to deal with the kind of tragedy that he had just been put through, two people who gave him outlet for his pain. His new life was built on trust — the trust in Bruce and Alfred and their love — in a way that Bruce never had, even with Alfred. Dick quickly became the light in Batman’s life, but it didn’t stop there.
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Bruce Wayne as Batman didn’t have anyone to talk about his secret life until he met Superman. However, Dick had him and then the Teen Titans, an entire support system that allowed him to become a much better person. Dick had Superman always there, teaching him things about being a hero that Batman wouldn’t and also lessons that Batman could never teach. Dick Grayson grew into a hero as Nightwing that had all of the skills of Batman, but none of the problems. Nightwing trusted people and people trusted him. He never allowed the darkness to bog him down. No one avoided Nightwing when he walked into a room. No one was afraid of Nightwing in the same way as they were Batman.
Dick Grayson becoming Batman allowed Batman to become something that he could never be as Bruce Wayne. He was able to take Damian Wayne, a wild child looking for love, and mold him into something that Bruce never could have. He started his own Justice League, his teammates trusting him in a way that the League never trusted Bruce. Dick Grayson as Batman was able to become Batman in a way Bruce never could, and that feeling was all through every Dick Grayson Batman story. Dick’s Batman stories were still dark — one needs look no further than the aforementioned “The Black Mirror” to see that — but there’s a sense of fun and energy to his stories that is missing when Bruce is wearing the cowl.
Dick Grayson’s Batman Was a Revolutionary View of the Character
I love Bruce Wayne as Batman. Creators can say things about trauma and mental health with Batman that you can’t say with other characters. I have read some amazing Bruce Wayne Batman stories, as have basically every Batman fan ever. However, as much as I enjoy those stories, if you drop “Batman Reborn”, from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s Batman and Robin #1, in my lap, I will thank you profusely. There’s something about Dick Grayson as Batman that has always appealed to me and his stories as Batman felt different from any other Batman stories out there.
Superheroes are an exercise in status quo, something I’ve said several times lately. That’s why anything that can change that status quo has so much novelty. Most of the time, people will like someone else takes up a heroic mantle, then they’ll get tired of it. That wasn’t really the case with Dick Grayson’s Batman. At the time of Bruce’s return, people loved Dick Grayson as Batman, and many were excited with the prospect of Dick and Bruce as separate Batmen until the New 52 ended those hopes. He was a very different kind of Batman, which made seeing him battle Gotham’s greatest threats so fresh, despite having decades of Grayson as Robin fighting alongside Batman. This freshness, this energy, these differences are what makes Dick Grayson the greatest Batman.
