Interesting little bit there... Dick's flying Graysons outfit is awful close to the original Nightwing costume.... on purpose, I wonder?

Batman #408-412 (June thru October 1987)

Scripts: Max Allan Collins
Pencils: Chris Warner, ross Andru, Dave Cockrum
Inks: Mike DeCarlo, Dick Giordano, Don Heck
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: Todd Klein, John Costanza, Agustin Más

Grade: n/a (just exploring the progression of Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and The Batman Family in these issues)


Even for someone who has spent as much time writing about these issues as I have, it's always a little surprising to be reminded just how brief the Max Allan Collins Batman run really was. Five issues. And yet he manages to accomplish a lot in that brief stretch. For the sake of this review thread, let's start by exploring new information we learn about Dick Grayson's past.

1. Whereas Secret Origins #13 heavily implied that Dick and Bruce parting ways was a mutual decision, or possibly even mostly Dick's decision:





Both images from Secret Origins #13


this issue makes the decision entirely Bruce's. And it doesn't happen because they have grown apart; it happens because Robin is nearly killed in the line of duty:






I still remember the ads they ran for that first issue. So damn powerful:



I suppose you can attribute the misalignment to a difference of perspective--Dick sees things the way he wants/needs to see them so that they are inevitable steps towards his destiny--but it reeks of editorial misalignment, something Denny O'Neil will become notorious for while managing the Post-Crisis Batman office.


2. It's important to note that, while Dick is hurt by the idea that he is being forced to retire, he ultimately sees the wisdom in it and willingly agrees:



That's going to stay in-continuity for exactly eight issues. Once again, Denny O'Neil is watching sales numbers, not overseeing continuity.


All of this connects to the central idea running throughout Collins' Post-Crisis reboot of Batman: kid sidekicks are dangerous and raise serious ethical questions:




That brings us to Collins' drastic revision of Jason Todd in these issues, changing virtually everything about the character but the name. As much as I personally adore Pre-Crisis Jason Todd, I think Collins' decision is brilliant and necessary. Obviously, most readers at the time (as well as Warner licensing) wanted to see a Robin by Batman's side, but a kid sidekick needed to be rationalized to the readers in 1987.

As zaku argued earlier in this thread:


An orphaned kid in 1940 was probably safer and happier by Batman's side than in an orphanage, but things had changed in the nearly five decades since. Thus, Collins works hard to create a kid sidekick who was in greater danger without Batman as a means of justifying Bruce taking him in. This Jason Todd lives alone:



steals for a living, smokes, and swears never to allow himself to be put into the foster system. He's not going to make it to fifteen without Batman's intervention. In fact, Batman's first decision is to put Jason in a reputable foster home, but it ends up being a front for a criminal organization. There is truly nowhere safe for Jason Todd other than by Batman's side, working through his aggression and discovering his inner hero as Robin.



It's a common misperception of this run that Collins intended for Jason to be a jaded antihero. In fact, under Bruce's guidance, he softens up pretty darn quickly:



The one inevitable obstacle comes when Jason learns who killed his father (Two-Face) and has to decide to choose justice over revenge, but he does it easily, removing any doubt that he has the makings of a true hero:



After that moment, Jason is a perfect boy sidekick. If anything, his years of living a hardened life just cause him to come off unreasonably mature for his age. This kid is never going to say, "Golly gee, Batman!" and functions more like an equal partner to Batman than a far older Dick Grayson usually got to be in the Bronze Age:



This kid is cool, but he's no jerk.


Once Starlin comes aboard with issue #414, he makes a lot of changes and, by the time of #426, he has totally revised this Post-Crisis origin of Jason so that he never does lose the chip on his shoulder that Collins gave him only at the very start. If you ask me, both Max Allan Collins and the Post-Crisis Jason Todd get a bad wrap.


Anyway, this detour in discussing Jason Todd is only relevant to this thread because, with issue #416, we'll see Starlin begin to shape a Post-Crisis version of the Batman Family, and Jason Todd will (at least initially) be the core of it.


Oh, the final difference between this issue and the origin Dick gives us in Secret Origins #13:

3. Whereas Dick portrays himself handing Jason the costume in exactly the same way that he did in the Pre-Crisis Batman #368



from Secret Origins #13

Dick isn't even involved in the passing of the torch this time around:



In fact, Jim Starlin will go on to decide that Bruce never even bothered to inform Dick that he'd been replaced.

I love Max Allan Collins, but his Batman is among the worst ever.

On the other hand, I don’t like Jim Starlin and his Batman is almost equally as bad.

Incidentally, this gets me thinking: The easy solution in rebooting Batman would be to make Jason Todd begin as a teen Wonder, but the existence of Nightwing screws that up. If Dick Grayson began as a teen, then he only would have had maybe three years with Bruce before moving on, which undercuts so much of who Marv Wolfman had made him over the past decade. Collins needed to justify Robin as an idea-not just Jason Todd-so having a kid clearly at risk without Batman implies the same was true in some form for young Dick Grayson, that Batman doesn't just casually pick up boy sidekicks without a second thought.

You couldn't be more right.

Yes, it does summarize his life prior to the beginning of this thread, but I don't recall it contributing anything worthwhile beyond that. I did go back and read a detailed synopsis of it myself after your previous comment, and that offered no suggestion that any new information was added that would be of value to this thread. I remember it a beautiful synthesis of all the past bits of history we already had for Batman and Robin, but that's pretty much it.