What is so hard to understand about Dick Grayson
He was born into a world class acrobat family and trained directly under Batman to become one of the top martial artists in DCU. He grew up leading the Teen Titans from when he was 12-13, led several teams since then, including the Justice League, and cemented himself as one of the hero community’s most trusted and dependable strategists. He’s the social version of Bruce Wayne. He’s just as lethal and skilled but also approachable and willing to be a friend, brother, etc.
He is not walking comic relief or constantly in a happy, bubbly mood. Dick takes being a hero seriously and approaches everything with a plan (even when it doesn’t seem like he is). He’s a very serious and also troubled guy who has a reputation for being uptight and upfront with people, but he’ll also crack jokes because he’s not a stale piece of bread. When something serious is going on, Dick is serious. When he’s on his downtime, he’ll ease back and laugh.
I’m just baffled at why this is so hard to understand and why writers constantly treat Dick as if he’s too busy not taking things seriously, or having too much of an inferiority complex to Bruce to function. Dick has the same skillset as Bruce, and in some ways, he’s even more skilled. Bruce pointed out multiple times during Dick’s Robin days that Dick had an edge on him, and this was while Dick was still just a kid.
When Dick was Robin, Bruce was already treating him like an equal
Except for in the New 52, when Dick was suddenly delegated to computers and treated dismissively by Bruce and not even allowed to fight people. That was the first time Batman and Robin really had an unequal power dynamic in comics. In the New 52, Dick was suddenly stripped of all his history as DC’s leader and even seemed to lose his more serious, strategic persona in order to be pushed more as the Happy Family Guy™ (which would be fine if they were actually offsetting this by highlighting Dick’s deadly serious side and emotional struggles in addition to his ability to plan ahead and lead and just in general BE A DETECTIVE)
and it just seems to be getting worse in terms of new media/movies being put out by DC, because the concept of Batman and Robin is completely lost (they act like Bruce owns Robin) and the Batkids themselves have dropped skillwise and lack meaningful relationships, and I’m so angry AHGHGHGHHHH, why is DC allowed to touch their own characters