This is the thing about that... they DID move to the second generation. IN the mid 90s... Oliver Queen, Barry Allen, and Hal Jordan were dead, and Connor Hawke, Wally West, and Kyle Rayner were all well established in their roles. They removed Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent too (but of course not for long). Had they just simply stuck with it, all would have been well.

Bring the Silver Age heroes back to pander to long time fans is what doomed DC to constantly have to re-jigger things. If they stopped after Zero Hour, I have no doubt I'd care alot more, and we'd have a healthier, more vibrant main DCU. One where the JLA and the JSA are merged as the old guard, and the Titans are the premier super team, lead by Dick Grayson.

Because it's so crowded, instead of just giving the 2nd generation heroes their time, we constantly get stories were their prior character development is dropped so we can do the 'student gets out of the shadow of his mentor' story for the 20th time.

How many of them go re-de-aged so they could make sense as kids/teens/sidekicks again? It's just silly. I know a very small vocal minority SAYS that's what they want, but it wasn't good creatively, and ultimately made it harder and hard for not just new fans, but casual ones (like, say someone who saw a great movie) to get invested.

Instead, we have had what, 6 reboots since then? IS there even a main DCU now? Or just a bunch of elseworlds.

I might even argue late twenties.

Making sense of the Pre-Crisis Earth-1's timeline is simply madness, but according this hypothesis, what was Dick's Age when Batman and Superman met for the first time?

In my personal DCU.. The Silver age heroes are in their late-40s NOW, and the Titans are 32-35. That would keep with the pattern.. if Dick was 11(the 8 thing is nonsense) in 1940 and 22 in 1984 then 33 in 2028.

To make any sense, Superman's age right before Crisis should have been somewhere between 35 and 40. For example, when he (and he is already an established reporter for at least a few years) finds Supergirl she's about 15 and right before Crisis she's at least 22-24. But I guess DC didn't want to show Superman as a middle-aged bachelor with no romantic relationship of any kind, so "29" was the age limit not to be considered an invert or any other non-pc word that it was used at the time for anyone other than a married heterosexual male with 2.4 children

Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-12 (April 1985 thru March 1986)


Script: Marv Wolfman; Len Wein (co-plot); Robert Greenberger (co-plot), George Pérez (co-plot)
Pencils: George Pérez, Mike DeCarlo
Inks: Dick Giordano; George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Mike Machlan,
Colors: Anthony Tollin, Carl Gafford
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: n/a (just looking at the development of Dick Grayson and Babs Gordon in these issues)


While neither Dick Grayson nor Babs Gordon are inherently important to the central plot of Crisis on Infinite Earths, CoIE is most certainly important to them. Of course, the entire purpose of Crisis was to reset the DC Universe in order to simplify things. In some cases, this resulted in hard reboots (Wonder Woman), in others there were hard reboots with firm footing in past continuity (Superman), softer reboots where things changed, but not at one clear point (Batman), and finally there were properties that seemed almost entirely untouched by The Crisis alltogether (New Teen Titans).

Further complicating things is the fact that the reset caused by The Crisis doesn't begin to take effect until the end of the Legends crossover a full year later.

Nevertheless, I think every character's appearance in Crisis matters because it is, essentially, DC's final take on who each character was before the reset. And, as this maxi series was intended to gauge new interest in DC, there was also an explicit intention to introduce these characters and establish who they are to new audiences.

So, for all of these reasons, let's look at how Crisis on Infinite Earths depicts our two ex-Batman Family members...


Dick Grayson/Nightwing is depicted as the perfect team leader he was first really established to be in New Teen Titans #37 two years earlier. In issue #3, he is first introduced commanding both his team AND Batman's team at the same time without skipping a beat:



Meanwhile, though alternate versions of him resembling the Earth 2 Robin appear alongside Batman numerous times throughout these issues (Can't be the Earth 2 Robin if Batman is still alive, right?), Nightwing and Batman of Earth 1 do appear alongside each other on several occasions, but they are never actually shown interacting:





For those in the know, looking to see a bond between these two, it's implied. For any newcomer, though, there is nothing across these twelve issues to suggest Nightwing used to be Robin nor that there is any specific relationship between these two characters. DC now has its cake and is eating it too: Batman and Robin exist in prominent focus across multiple realities, but Nightwing is his own hero and associated entirely with the Titans.

...even if he has the weirdest bulging eyes I've ever seen on a serious comics page:




It's interesting that former colleague Wally West finally moves up to the big leagues as of the end of this series:



and yet there is no need for Dick to do the same because he is already established as his own adult hero, no longer implied to be younger/less experienced than any other adult hero in the DCU (including Batman).



Babs Gordon, on the other hand, gets utterly sh** on in this story. If everything that had already been done to knock her down several dozen pegs since Paul Levitz first began trying to minimize her importance five years earlier (see here for a brief summary) hadn't been enough, these final appearances of the Pre-Crisis Babs Gordon Batgirl (and really, some of the final appearances of the Babs Gordon Batgirl even after The Crisis, at least until 2011) really finish the job.

Instead of explaining, I'll just show them to you and let you get angry on your own:



Wolfman: Let's see, what other heroes do we still need to work into Crisis?

Someone else: How about Batgirl?

Wolfman: Oh yeah, her. What does she do, anyway? Let's make her the most useless hero in the entire DC universe.

Someone else: Sounds good, but shouldn't you rub that in the reader's face just a little more?

Wolfman:



And, by the way, that "I've faced death before but never truly believed I could die" line is utter BS. In fact, because of the constant efforts to minimize her, Batgirl is the DC hero who understands fearing her own death better than probably any of her peers.





both from Detective Comics #492

This encounter becomes the very centerpiece of Carey Burkett's run on the Batgirl B stories that ended only four years earlier. Isn't Wolfman supposed to be the continuity freak who obsesses to make details fit/connect?

Apparently, Batgirl wasn't even worth the effort to him.


Batgirl gets one more moment in the spotlight during Crisis, at which point she delivers Supergirl's eulogy:



But this moment isn't about Batgirl; it's about showing how Supergirl was everything that Batgirl is not.



So that's the energy we're heading into the Post-Crisis with, and this is the Batgirl that new readers are being introduced to. Long gone are the golden days of Batgirl taking charge and calling the shots in the A feature of DC's second best selling Bat title. Long gone are her days of dominating on Capital Hill by day, and putting Robin in his place by night. Long before anything else gets reset, Batgirl's past history and characterization had already been swept clean.

History of the DC Universe #2 (February 1987)


Script: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: George Pérez
Inks: Karl Kesel
Colors: Bill Wray; Tom Ziuko; Bob LeRose
Letters: typeset

Grade: n/a (just exploring Dick Grayson's progression in this work)


Along with the rebooted DC Universe came three different guides for understanding all the changes. The first was Who's Who in the DC Universe, a resource that carefully chronicled what had been depicted on the comic book page, but which (at least in the cases of Dick Grayson and Babs Gordon) never attempted to introduce new information before it had seen print elsewhere. Thus, some entries are distinctly Pre-Crisis, some distinctly Post-Crisis, and most lie somewhere in between.

The second is Secret Origins (vol. 2), which introduces newly revised Post-Crisis origins for many characters. We'll be getting to those shortly.

The third is this curious two-volume set, depicting the entire Post-Crisis history of the DCU a bit like a storybook. Published after the Whose Who books but before most of the Secret Origins issues, it's our first real sampling of what has changed for our characters. From it, we learn two very important things:

1. Batgirl isn't in it at all. Not even for one throw-away panel. Much as with Batman #404-407 (beginning this month), Babs Gordon doesn't seem to exist in the Post-Crisis yet.

2. Almost nothing has changed for Dick Grayson. Inevitably, some of his adventures with Batman didn't happen anymore, but he was still Batman's first sidekick:



Note that no age is given for when he became Robin


The original Teen Titans formed pretty much the same way that they did before:



Even though Wolfman will soon need to revisit his explanation of where Wonder Girl came from.


and the only difference when discussing the complicated history of all three Titans teams is the timeline:




For the sake of simplicity, let's take a look at the Pre-Crisis Dick Grayson Timeline I recently established and determine what's changed thus far (more changes are still coming):

The Pre-Crisis Dick Grayson Timeline
painfully extrapolated from all time references made in regard to Dick and the Titans between 1964 and February 1984 and revised as per The History of the DC Universe #2 (1987)


Age 8: Becomes Robin (as per New Teen Titans #37) we do not yet know if this is still true Post-Crisis

Age 11 or 12: meets Wonder Girl for the first time (this issue indicates that almost eight years have passed between this moment and NTT #38, where they are almost certainly both at the very tail-end of their teens) we do not yet know if this is still true Post-Crisis


Age 12 or 13: forms the Teen Titans Assuming Dick is 18 in New Teen Titans #1, then he would have formed the Teen Titans at age 13 or 14 now.


Sometime between Age 13 and 16 (likely Age 15): The original Teen Titans disband (Teen Titans #44 establishes that two years pass before the team reunites) Between ages 16 and 17 now.


Shortly thereafter (likely age 15 or 16): Dick leaves Gotham to attend Hudson University. It's odd that Dick's age discrepancy in contrast to other students on campus never ever gets mentioned, but it's also the only way this timetable works, and he presumably would have been smart enough to graduate high school a few years early. we do not yet know if this is still true Post-Crisis


Sometime between Ages 15 and 18 (likely Age 17): The original Teen Titans reform. They then have at least eight adventures together before disbanding, and months go by before The New Teen Titans form (according to The New Teen Titans Insert Preview in DC Comics Presents #26) This is suspiciously absent in the History of the DCU retelling. As this was the incarnation of the team that Jeanette Kahn apparently abhorred, it stands to reason that it would now be out of continuity. This also explains why Dick now has to be 13 or 14 instead of 12 or 13 while forming the Titans. We've just deleted a year of Titans history.


Sometime between Ages 15 and 18 (likely Age 18): Dick drops out of Hudson University and The New Teen Titans are formed. Dick seems to be at least 18 in those first stories, and they've now had over 40 adventures together, so it's unlikely he was 19 at the time. Additionally, Donna has always been presented as being about the same age, and she was living independently in those first issues and is now engaged to be married, also suggesting a minimum of 18-19 years of age. Dick is likely still 18 when this happens. Not clear if Hudson University is still in continuity.


Age 18 or 19: Dick passes on the Robin costume to Jason Todd and becomes Nightwing shortly after. He clearly stopped being Robin and became Nightwing at some point, but the details may not be the same.


Age 19: Crisis on Infinite Earths happens and resets some aspects of Dick's life, as well as major aspects of the DCU as a whole (Dick has to be 19 because it's still Tales of the TEEN Titans at this point).