While Batman has grown an extensive collection of allies over the years, one of his closest is indisputably Dick Grayson, better known as Teen Titans. While there are many instances that illustrate just how much he changed since he abandoned the Robin persona, Nightwing mourning his parents shows exactly how the Teen Titans changed him forever.
Dick Grayson began his superhero career as Batman’s first sidekick, Robin. As a young boy, Nightwing’s parents were brutally murdered, which led to Bruce Wayne adopting the young orphan to raise and train him as a potential successor for the cape and cowl. As Grayson matured, he ed the Teen Titans team and eventually outgrew the Robin persona, adopting the Nightwing identity. Over the years, Nightwing has become a symbol for a kinder approach to Batman’s war on crime, with a large emphasis on empathy and more recently, urban renewal and charity.
In Nightwing: Secret Files and Origins, DC provides a lot of insight into the former Boy Wonder, and how his life’s trajectory led him to become Nightwing, avoiding some of the pitfalls Bruce Wayne encountered in his life. The issue features lost pages from the Teen Titans series by Devin Grayson and Phil Jimenez. The pages show the Titans in the aftermath of a pyrrhic victory, where Dick storms off to the site of his parents’ murder, compelled to honor the occasion much like how Batman does annually. While Nightwing attempts to have a melancholic remembrance of his parents’ death, the Teen Titans recover him, showing overwhelming and reminding him that while he may have lost a family, he gained a new one.
In many ways, The Teen Titans were a key part of Nightwing working through his issues, by receiving the genuine love and of a family he built.
As one of Batman’s longest-running allies, Dick Grayson has had a lot of time to grow over his comic book history. While he was initially set up to follow a very similar development track as Batman, through the unfaltering of the Teen Titans and Bruce’s mentorship, Nightwing changed forever to be one of DC’s most empathetic and effective crimefighters.
