Batman and Nightwing Have a Moment While Jason Todd Trains in the Use of High Caliber Firearms

Let's take things a little out of order and jump ahead to Batman #416.  There was some shifting in the creative team, and after a couple of issues that were clearly "fill-ins," the title seemed ready to try and salvage something out of all this.

The first order of business was to explain why Dick Grayson was fired as Robin:

I KNOW, RIGHT?  I said the same thing.

Yeah.  He's not getting away with that one.  And that doesn't even make sense.  So, you have someone that is a fully trained partner and you give him unemployment for a graduation gift?  Where I work, we tend to try and hang on to people after we've shown them the ropes.  Shenanigans.

After some hemming and hawing... because you rarely get a straight answer out of Batman, we get this:

Hmmmmph.  I guess I'll accept that answer if I have to.  I mean, it's still nonsense because I think Dick would have worked with Bruce to the bitter end so he was really only a phone call away.  But that would have required Bruce to actually admit he made a mistake, and we sure aren't going to see that happen.  And, of course, it explains why Bruce took on Jason but it still gives no satisfactory answer as to why he severed ties with Dick and kept them severed.

But we had to clean things up, so here's Dick giving Jason Todd his costume yet again:

To be fair, this is the start of an upswing in overall quality for the book.  But as we'll see, you just can't have a Jason Todd Robin and not have it self-destruct on you sooner or later.  And what was the deal with Nightwing's collar?

For instance, one issue earlier:

Remember that whole no guns rule for Batman?  It doesn't seem to apply these days.

And just in case you think this is something Jason Todd came up with on his own:

Yup.  Batman is teaching children to use shotguns.  It was an interesting time.  Not a particularly good time.  Just an interesting time.

See you tomorrow!