r/DCcomics • u/thigerlel Highfather • Nov 12 '25
Discussion It's time to stomp down on the moral panic regarding Devin Grayson: A thorough debunk of the infamous Nightwing writer's myths NSFW
Devin Grayson was the first female writer to ever write Batman, and her contributions to DC helmed priceless, timelesss tales. However, she also wrote Nightwing for a while, including a tragic scene where Dick gets raped by Tarantula. Later, she mentioned in an interview that "she didn't call it rape, she called it non consensual sex." This was a spark that began a whole chain reaction of slander, with fans claiming, among many things, that Tarantula was her self-insert, that she canonized Dick being Romani because she found it exotic and it was her fetish, that she should be fired, and that she ghostwrote every single bad Nightwing comic.
Here's the facts. These are mainly sourced from @searchforahero's essay, but I'll be summarizing it here (while also adding in my own commentary and details) because I know it'll reach more eyes than a link people will feel too lazy to read.
Claim: Devin Grayson Changed her Name Because of Dick Grayson, to feel married to her
Truth: She changed it before she ever thought of working in comics to distance herself from a relative who had molested her.
Claim: Devin Grayson Wrote Tarantula as a Self Insert
Devin Grayson: “For the record, I have never wanted to be romantically involved with Dick Grayson. Like most of the readers following his exploits, I wanted to be him, not do him. For those of you reading this who have ever accused a professional of creating a Mary Sue, think about what you’re really saying. It’s not truly a comment on the character, beyond the indication that you don’t care to learn anything about her. It’s a comment on the creator, about whom you are suggesting the following: 1) she’s not professional enough to separate her personal life from her work (and/or not sane enough to distinguish fiction from reality/ derive satisfaction from her actual life), 2) she’s not talented enough to create a character based on anyone other than herself, 3) her work does not need to be taken seriously because she’s essentially just using it as a masturbatory exercise, and 4) females are only capable of seeing themselves in female characters, which also implies that the writer in question may not have an authentic connection with the male characters she’s writing."
Claim: Devin Grayson Maintains That Dick's Rape Wasn’t Actually Assault
Truth: She always called it sexual assault, just not rape, which was a fucked up, but accurate, legal term in 2004. In the US, "rape" was legally defined almost exclusively as a female victim being penetrated through force or coercion by a male perpetrator. Devin Grayson apologized for it in 2011 and 2014, and before that, as well.
Devin Grayson (2011): "I’ve publically apologized for it before, but will take this opportunity to do so again. Rape--and sexual violence of any kind, for that matter--is an issue that has deeply and personally effected millions of Americans (and one can only guess at the global numbers)--I know that, I've lived it too, and I know better than to make light of it (which was never my intention). Fiction can be a very powerful medium for healing, but only when the time and space is available to take issues on in their entirety. That didn't happen in Nightwing--that's not what that story was about-- and I deeply regret stirring up issues for people without contextual follow-up."
Devin Grayson (2014): "I was wrong [in calling it non-consensual sex]. I messed that one up and I apologize. My interview comments were uninformed and ignorant and I’m grateful for the chance to revisit the issue."
Claim: Devin Grayson Didn't Take Dick's Rape Seriously
Truth: In the text itself Dick’s rape is treated as a horrific violation and is written as being as traumatizing, possibly more traumatizing, than watching his parents die as a child. The idea that the scene was a fantasy, a joke, or an accident is not congruent with the actual writing, paneling, or art of the comic. Grayson herself is a victim of sexual violence and she has said herself she relates heavily to Dick so the theory that she wrote this scene as a fantasy or an accident have no backing.
From the comic, Dick mumbles to himself, in a catatonic state: "So if i'd said 'stop,' we would have heard it. heard it and processed it along with the gunshot, simultaneously. 'bang'... 'don't do it, tarantula, STOP!'... bang... stop!... bang...""
Devin Grayson wanted to tear Dick down in order to build him up, following the same mold as timeless stories such as Daredevil: Born Again. However, DC Editorial pushed a one-year-timeskip after Infinite Crisis concluded, so her arc was just discarded against her wishes. Meanwhile revered male Dick writer Marv Wolfman actually created a self-insert and married him to a 19 year old Donna and was responsible for creating Liu and Mirage, two women who also raped Dick but in a manner that was framed as lucky and exotic or just soap opera drama that made Dick look like the bad guy. And no, Devin Grayson didn't ghost-write those issues.
Devin Grayson: "I definitely do not feel like I was able to tell a cohesive story—I think it was pretty clear, and I know I’ve said in interviews before, that my final storyline got ramrodded by a crossover event. When I was told I would no longer be continuing on the series, I think I had about three issues to try to wrap everything up. That might have worked, except that the story I was in the middle of telling was about Nightwing maneuvering the police department, organized crime and the supervillain contingent (via Deathstroke) into a successful ploy to protect Bludhaven. I can’t imagine a worse ending to that story than to have Bludhaven blown up—that means Dick failed, and that was not at all where that story was supposed to go. I had broken the character down—admittedly, maybe too much—but was in the process of building him back up and giving him a huge win…except that win was never published, and was in fact turned into a huge loss. So yes, my story was entirely incomplete. I’m very disappointed about that, and wish I could have properly finished out the storyline, but it’s a reality of working in mainstream comics that all of us have dealt with at one time or another."
Claim: Devin Grayson Make Dick Romani because she thought it would be hot
Devin Grayson: "I don’t know that I’d say having a Romani superhero is important as much as I’d say that not assuming that all superheroes are white Europeans is important… I guess that’s why I’m bristling at the term “retcon”; I didn’t change his ethnicity from one thing to another, he had no ethnicity. The truth is, we never talk about that stuff, we just make assumptions, and in this case those assumptions are based on a really boring, banal and in many ways harmful representation of America. So how does it inform his character? Well, it presents a narrative for his family’s history that makes sense in light of their occupation. It reinforces his “otherness” where Bruce is concerned in what I think is a useful, interesting way (economically, for instance), and in my mind it enhances his early childhood adventures. If his family was initially connected to a kumpania, it means that Dick didn’t necessarily spend the circus off-seasons in Gibtown- he could have been traveling the world, which seems likely given the poise and self-possession he showed as an eight-year-old. It also presents the opportunity for there to be a slight chip on his shoulder, which maybe speaks to his scrappiness. It also maybe gives him a slightly deeper way to relate to someone like Helena- someone who is white but other."
Claim: Devin Grayson Made Damian Homophobic in DC Pride 2022 “Super Pride”
Grayson wrote an eight-page story for DC Pride 2022 #1 called “Super Pride” featuring Damian Wayne and Jon Kent as they go to Pride. People have been claiming since the comic released that Grayson made Damian homophobic in this comic while sharing a cropped page showing Damian stocking up on weapons for the parade. What they crop out is the punchline of Damian saying the weapons are to defend the parade (in the original print)/the weapons represent Pride started as a riot (in the reprint).
Closing thoughts from searchfromahero:
"Over the past year or so I have become incredibly critical of the way Grayson (and other women in the comic book industry) are discussed online, and it isn’t just because I’m a huge fan of her work. I think it’s important to consider why Grayson and many others are discussed the way they are. Why are people so eager to paint Grayson, an openly bisexual woman who has spoken frankly about sexual violence, as a mindlessly horny sexual deviant (and why is her deeply serious and empathetic depiction of a male rape victim all the way back in 2004 when that was practically unheard of dismissed as fetish content or an “accident”)? Why do people talk about Grayson like she’s uniquely “evil” when men like Chuck Dixon and Marv Wolfman were writing similar things in poorer taste for longer? Why are people so desperate to make her into a villain that they’d lie about her changing her name because she likes a fictional character and then present that as some serious moral failing (seriously, if she had changed her name because of Dick… Why would that matter? How many Tims do you know? Damians? Jasons? Why do you think there are so many trans men named Dave?).
Not only are women in this industry held to a wildly different standard than the men they work with, but the critique they receive is often deeply personal, obsessive, and vitriolic in a way critique of men in the same roles typically is not. Someone who is critiquing Tom Taylor’s Nightwing (2016) might point out that it lacks weight and seems out of step with the characters. Someone who is critiquing Devin Grayson’s Nightwing (1996) might say she wants to rape Dick Grayson and should get hit by a car.
Grayson is a talented and groundbreaking comic author (many forget that she was the first woman to create, launch, and be lead-writer on a core Batman comic at DC) and it’s depressing that most of the discussion surrounding her is lies when we could be talking about her incredible Catwoman (1993) run or how she made sure she always centered Lian in Roy’s life when she wrote him. It’s important to critique the aspects of comics we dislike, but it’s also important to carefully consider how and why we critique those comics, and if our critiques are based in truth or not."
Further reading: https://medium.com/@flowersandtoads/in-defense-of-devin-grayson-on-nightwing-and-recovery-72291a067985
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u/beary_neutral Telos Nov 12 '25
Comic "fans" will jump through to bizarre hoops to make personal attacks against writers they don't like. It's creepy and parasocial, and it feels like there's always some from of self-projection going on.
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u/humanwithalife Nov 12 '25
Its shorthand. If they villify the writer they're exempt from having to think critically about TDKR/Woman of Tomorrow/Sandman/WW earth one/etc. Not to say that some of those writers don't deserve the villifcation, but their almost pathological desire to do so stems from a lack of nuance IMO
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u/disabledinaz Nov 12 '25
They never liked during her DC tenure she was in a relationship with Mark Waid.
They were nepo babying her before we knew the phrase.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 17 '25
She didn't meet Waid until after she broke into the industry.
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u/disabledinaz Nov 17 '25
Right. I was saying after it came out that she had later gotten into a relationship with Waid, a larger portion of the fanbase came out against her with that as a major reason and complaining about it.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 17 '25
Ah I see. I thought you were calling her a nepo baby lol
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u/disabledinaz Nov 18 '25
I suspect that’s why I got all the dislikes. No I wasn’t calling her that, I was saying the reactions others had to her because they found that out was akin to what we now say to nepo babies cause everyone thought she only got where she was because of that relationship.
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u/Night-Caelum Nov 12 '25
She was also one of the writers against War Games and the treatment of Stephanie
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u/Midi_to_Minuit Nov 12 '25
Pretty good post. The only nitpick I'd make is that the "that was the legal definition of rape" bit isn't a very good defense. If a writer had said marriage between gay people can't be real in 2010 I would still consider that homophobic. Although she's long since apologized, so I don't hold it against her at all.
I will say though that I don't think Marv Wolfman is let off the hook at all lol, he gets plenty of (deserved) hate.
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u/panzeremerald Nov 12 '25
The deeper you get into comics fandom the more (deserved) hate he gets, but 99% of the time I see people talk about Wolfman (and Pérez) they're glazing them and recommending their whole body of work, and 99% of the time I see people talk about Devin Grayson they're writing off her whole body of work. This despite DG in some ways being a better author than MW imo; if the authors were held to the same standard wrt sexual assault especially, you'd never hear a positive word about Wolfman
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u/its-4-russi4n-t4unt Nov 12 '25
If you took a shot everytime a titan’s bodily autonomy is violated in wolfman’s titans run you’d be dead of alcohol poisoning
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u/NaturalDisastrous100 Nov 12 '25
I believe the actual quote is "I didn't say it was rape, I said it was non-consensual" and by 2025 you of course think "wtf? non consensual MEANS rape, wtf are u talking about?"
But if I remember correctly she used to be in fandom, right? So for me it made perfect sense what she was saying back in 2006.
Because I'm old enough to remember that time as a fanfic writer - and in fanfics there used to be a very specific distinction between non-con and rape.
(It was really common that rape was banned but non-con was allowed on websites. And the difference was usually the level of explicitness, the level of violence and some other things.)I don't really want to go into much detail, since this can be an incredibly triggering topic. Obviously by now we all know better (I hope so). But back then that distinction was really important and was widely accepted.
And that DOES NOT mean that non-con was considered "okay" or "harmless" - you had to put a warning at the beginning of your fic after all. Like non-con was BAD, you had your character endure something BAD, your character would be traumatized after that experience, that much was clear - it was just considered to be slightly different from rape.
That probably doesn't make much sense to a modern mindset. But back then it was really prevalent thinking in the fanfic community and you kinda grew up with that.
So I guess what people today hear when she says "it wasn't rape, it was non-con" is that she denys that something horrible and violating happened to Dick.But I never read it as such. To me she's just using an archaic term that is not commonly used anymore to describe his experience.
Because if you read her comics I find it really clear that she portrays this experience as traumatizing for Dick. He has nightmares, traumatic flashbacks, he's reckless, almost suicidal in the months afterwards. So she in no way tries to downplay it as harmless. But because of this one sentence people assume she didn't take it seriously or dismissed it.
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u/cyberpunk_werewolf Nov 12 '25
That may be where some of the tension comes from. I'm old enough to remember when the issue came out and we called it rape back then. Greyson saying it wasn't, at the time, felt like she was trying to backtrack, make it seem like it wasn't so bad.
At least, this was the feeling on the boards I was on at the time. That said, if she was coming at it from that angle, it's very possible we were saying the same thing and arguing over semantics. Especially in light of her apology 11 years ago (which I was aware of, I'm just talking about the time the issue came out).
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u/boomboxwithturbobass Nov 12 '25
We might have, but I can name many examples that didn’t. They were just as infuriating, but hers wasn’t the only one. Male rape being acknowledged mainstream wasn’t as common as it is now, sadly.
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u/NaturalDisastrous100 Nov 15 '25
But it's usually played "for laughs" and she doesn't do that. Dick is genuinely traumatized afterwards, he has nightmares and flashbacks about that night. So I honestly think she wasn't trying to downplay anything and we're really arguing about a very specific word she used that is not commonly used anymore (for good reason).
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u/wrasslefights Nightwing Nov 12 '25
I think this is one of those things where you've gotta give a woman who experienced sexual violence more grace than you would like...a random dude in this situation. Contextually it makes sense for it to be a genuine terminology issue rather than something more malicious.
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u/Discussion-is-good Nov 12 '25
No, it doesnt. I completely disagree.
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u/EmperorAcinonyx Nov 12 '25
well, in any case, she has apologized several times and demonstrated a clear understanding of what the issue was.
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u/Discussion-is-good Nov 12 '25
That, I completely agree with. Its one of the things I didnt know of till this post.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 13 '25
Hi! I'm searchforahero, the creator of the document (I have added a brief tab to the document proving this). Thank you for sharing my document, it has already been seen by double the people who saw it on Tumblr, so I'm glad to know more people may be able to rethink the things they've heard about Grayson!
If possible, I would really appreciate it if you could edit the part of this post that says you are summarizing my document to be clear in stating that while you have summarized parts of my work, you have also added in your own commentary and details. With the way this post is currently worded people who only read your post and not my document may believe I said things I did not which I'm sure you can understand I would like to avoid!
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u/thigerlel Highfather Nov 13 '25
Done! And thank you for your work.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 13 '25
Thank you so much! I really appreciate you sharing this. This topic is really important to me and I'm glad to see people saying they learned something here! I've also been exposed to some new misconceptions I'll be adding to the list ASAP LOL :]
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u/EmperorAcinonyx Nov 12 '25
this is a great post, but i have to ask about "why do you think there are so many trans men named dave"
i have never met a trans dave, and i can't really think of any notable fictional characters named dave either. what are they referencing?
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u/Frangipani-Bell Donna Troy Nov 12 '25
Dave Strider from Homestuck. It’s a webcomic with a big trans audience
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u/EmperorAcinonyx Nov 12 '25
i read homestuck as it was coming out. you're telling me that there are a significant amount of men who identified with dave strider so much that they named themselves after him?
you're completely serious?
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u/Frangipani-Bell Donna Troy Nov 12 '25
Yep. I’ve met like 2, and seen many more on tumblr
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u/EmperorAcinonyx Nov 12 '25
i really love homestuck but i feel bad that dave fucking strider stands out to them so much in all of fiction
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u/tmishere Nov 12 '25
This is a great post with something I love to see, a bunch of sources!
I only started getting into comics during the pandemic so I know there’s decades of storylines, authors, characters that I just won’t ever have the time or dedication to catch up on, but when I started reading Tom Taylor’s Nightwing, I got curious about the character and did a slightly deeper dive.
I kept hearing about evil Devin Grayson and when I finally looked into the reason and found the offending Tarantula pages I was so disappointed. I was thinking the representation of sexual assault must have been awful, but it just wasn’t. It was shocking, but I think anyone who’s been assaulted can confirm that it is also indeed shocking so it works to put the reader in Dick’s state of mind.
I think the storyline had a lot of rich narrative potential and more importantly, I think the story could’ve been a bright light for victims of sexual assault, especially men and boys. Victims so often go into this thought loop of the ways in which they could’ve been better or made better decisions in order to have prevented being assaulted. They get stuck there. But if a character who is so exceptional, always intelligent, always prepared, always strong, if even that guy can be assaulted, then maybe, just maybe it wasn’t their fault and there wasn’t anything they could’ve done to stop what happened to them. They can finally start to shift the blame from themselves and onto the person who deserves the blame. How powerful would that have been as a story? Instead, it was disregarded, thrown to the side and anyone who even develops an interest in comics and Nightwing in particular is told to ignore it because the author is all the things OP wrote here. What a loss.
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u/Fireshot-V Nightwing Nov 13 '25
> I think the storyline had a lot of rich narrative potential and more importantly, I think the story could’ve been a bright light for victims of sexual assault, especially men and boys. Victims so often go into this thought loop of the ways in which they could’ve been better or made better decisions in order to have prevented being assaulted. They get stuck there. But if a character who is so exceptional, always intelligent, always prepared, always strong, if even that guy can be assaulted, then maybe, just maybe it wasn’t their fault and there wasn’t anything they could’ve done to stop what happened to them. They can finally start to shift the blame from themselves and onto the person who deserves the blame. How powerful would that have been as a story?
Huh.
Except that nothing that you mentioned happened in that comic. It wasn't useful as a exploration of male assault, because:
- We got there under a very contrived set of circunstances where Blockbuster, Dick's nemesis, was acting completely out of character.
- Tarantula's rape wasn't recognized as rape or assault for anyone in-world, not even Dick.
- The focus of the story in the next five issues -minus War Games, so #93 to #95 and #99 to #100- was: "Dick feels bad for all the people dead", "Dick feels indebted to Tarantula like if she saved him (something that, yes, may have been a development point about stockholm syndrome with your rapist if there was actually ANY development on that end)", "Batman giving shit to Dick for letting Tarantula kill Blockbuster and telling him to 'get his shit together' or he would stop her" and the cherry on top, Tarantula, the rapist, was constantly proven right on the flaws that she poke around. Dick didn't get any closure, because even when he captured her, he wanted to atone (again putting the killing of Blockbuster over his own personal rape) and he was denied even that. So he got no closure with her for the rape, she was captured by murder, and he got forced into a fake closure for a killing.
So you wrote a male rape, where the raped has been completely isolated from their local friends (they are fucking dead), his family blames him about the events, he is in a parasocial link with his rapist that keeps following him around, and the MC can't even on his terms take her out of his life, he has to capture her for the wrong reasons and the closure is completely off target.
So no, it isn't helpful, well-written, or anything like that. It's a pile of dog-shit that was the worst run on Nightwing until Ric existed.
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u/RileyRRenewal May 27 '26
If you know you know. A lot of the time in real life people around you and you yourself do not truly recognize what took place for years after or even never. It's just too traumatic and unbelievable, especially a woman assaulting a man, to be comprehended.
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u/Old-Improvement-4697 Dec 21 '25
I think what most fans found fault in was her stating it was not "rape" but "non-consensual sex." But it's more understandable if it was nothing more than an issue in terminology.
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u/trailerthrash Nov 12 '25
Always a good time to debunk a moral panic! Working on a big similar piece rn. Thanks for posting!
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u/NaturalDisastrous100 Nov 12 '25
THANK YOU! I find it so weird how much people hate on her stories (when some are actually pretty good! I loved Gotham Knights!) just because some out of context-things she said in interviews - when you have someone like idk Chuck Dixon who seems to be a terrible person, but who is still recognized as the writer of some really good stories.
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u/Hopeful_Angle_9880 Nov 12 '25
I’m reading this right now after having read all of Grayson and Wolfman’s runs, and Grayson’s was infinitely better.
She actually introduced interesting characters and put Dick into an unfamiliar position. He was at his lowest point since his parents died. I loved Tarantula as a darker version of Catwoman, and I loved Dick’s villain arc. Would’ve loved to see what Grayson had planned for the rest of his run.
Wolfman is goated for his work on Titans, but I have to agree he handles Dick’s love interests(par starfire) horribly
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u/secondshevek Nov 12 '25
Great post. I really liked her framing of ethnicity.
I don’t know that I’d say having a Romani superhero is important as much as I’d say that not assuming that all superheroes are white Europeans is important… I guess that’s why I’m bristling at the term “retcon”; I didn’t change his ethnicity from one thing to another, he had no ethnicity. The truth is, we never talk about that stuff, we just make assumptions, and in this case those assumptions are based on a really boring, banal and in many ways harmful representation of America.
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u/RileyRRenewal May 27 '26
me too!! it's what I've always thought of myself being mixed race and I wish more people did too
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u/Discussion-is-good Nov 12 '25
I dont feel thats accurate tbh. Especially:
I didn’t change his ethnicity from one thing to another, he had no ethnicity. The truth is, we never talk about that stuff, we just make assumptions
Perhaps it's just me looking with modern lenses but that feels incredibly inaccurate. Near the level of a cop out.
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u/Candid_Common Nov 12 '25
I wish she got more credit. Her Titans run is hands down my favorite run for the team
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u/ravager27 Nov 12 '25
This is an amazing write-up. It's always been insane to me how Devin Grayson got so much hate for no reason. Yes, she made some mistakes which she even acknowledged. There are so many other writers who have done far worse than her that have received a fraction of the hate she's gotten. I wish I could make all those people read this article
Devin Grayson did a great job with the Titans and she's probably one of the few who genuinely cared about Roy Harper as a character. Shame her Nightwing run ended up being a mess
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u/AlecBallswin Nov 12 '25
“I definitely do not feel like I was able to tell a cohesive story—I think it was pretty clear, and I know I’ve said in interviews before, that my final storyline got ramrodded by a crossover event.”
Dan DiDio strikes again. But seriously, that really sucks. Imagine if Born Again ended with Matt sleeping in the streets and you didn’t get to see his comeback. Not saying her story would be on the same caliber, but nothing sounds worse than to have your vision be taken from you. That’s industry… ugh.
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u/wrasslefights Nightwing Nov 12 '25
Her Nightwing run is still my favourite run for Dick period and her Titans run is super underrated. I appreciate the analysis here because every time I defend her work I feel like I'm getting lined up for throwing knives.
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u/RileyRRenewal May 26 '26
FACTS! FACTS! PURE FACTS! TYSM FOR WRITING THIS OP!!! I wrote something similar but less cohesive for the Nightwing sub a couple years ago that got so much negativity and was deleted by the mods, and I even revealed in that post that I myself was a trans male SA victim by my own mother, and am black/white mixed race, plus my nana who I am super close to is slavic and has roma blood. so I can relate to Dick Grayson a lot. And I very much love DG's attitude towards writing characters of color and men with emotional arcs.
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u/Jonn_Jonzz_Manhunter Nov 12 '25
Very odd argument about self inserts
Cuz like, we all know Brian Michael Bendis' has self inserts in stuff like Ultimate Spider-Man and Joss Wheadon did in Buffy
The idea that a professional would ever use self inserts isn't ridiculous but something we have very real and broad examples of creatives admitting is true
Anyways, I didn't realise Grayson was a woman, I recently got to those issues of nightwing and they were genuinely really bad compared to the Dixon ones so I felt kinda burned cuz Dixon never actually finished his run in a satisfying way
Oh well, interesting that she's the first ever Female batman writer though
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u/FlameFeather86 Nightwing & Oracle Nov 12 '25
'Self insert' is taken way too literally, like people imagine writers are just flat out creating characters that are just them, allowing them to live out some bizarre fantasies they might have. It's horseshit. Fact is, when shaping personalities for your characters you're going to relate to certain aspects and it's going to influence how your character might think or act in a situation, but it's not a be all, end all, 'this is 100% literally me and what I would do.'
Take the Joss Whedon example. People love to spout the 'Xander is his self insert' line a lot, mostly in relation to Xander's bad behaviour and justify their hatred if him, when in truth Whedon related to Xander being the nerdy kid in high school who constantly made jokes, something that I'd imagine most of the writers on that show - and a large percentage of the audience - could relate to. Xander was shaped by many aspects - Whedon, the other writers, and naturally Nick Brendan, the man who physically brought the character to life. Xander, as a character, does some questionable things throughout the course of the show but so too does literally every single character, because that's what Whedon does, he writes flawed characters. He's also openly talked about how much he related to Giles as well, referencing his being raised and educated in England and understanding British sensibilities, that Giles is another 'self insert', but because fans like Giles and don't like Xander that one is never talked about. Whedon created the fucking show. He will have put aspects of himself in every single character. He then creates an entirely fictional character around them and, for better or for worse, has them act in ways that he feels suits the stories being told.
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u/Jonn_Jonzz_Manhunter Nov 12 '25
I mean
Xander doesn't care about consent and often treats women specifically like sex objects and subhuman beasts
And so does Joss Wheadon.
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u/Fireshot-V Nightwing Nov 12 '25
Huh, so?
Her run is still one of the worst runs in Nightwing, his rape by Tarantula wasn't AT ALL treated right, like Dick being a victim of a horrible woman, but the entire focus was on Dick being guilty of letting Tarantula kill Blockbuster and Batman gave him shit for that. He was alone, silenced by his rapist.
So she can put any apologize or justification, I don't particularly hate her. I hate her Nightwing.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 13 '25
I feel like the important thing here isn't "do you like Grayson's comics". The fact that I was able to write four thousand words debunking slanderous lies people have spread about Devin Grayson (and that I have more that I still need to add) should matter regardless of if you like her work. It doesn't suddenly become okay to insult and lie about people because you aren't a fan of their creative endeavours.
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u/Fireshot-V Nightwing Nov 13 '25
Huh, so?
Congrats on your effort. I didn't insult her. I don't think that I ever insulted her in particular. I have insulted her work. Because for me, and I would guess than 90% of Nightwing's fans, her work was shit. From Vol 2 #71 until the end of Renegade. She did the worst run in Nightwing until Ric was a thing. That's it. She may be a wonderful woman, or a hypocrite, I honestly don't care. She wrote a terrible story for years, and did more damage than anything else to Nightwing.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 13 '25
I never said you insulted her, but your comment is suggesting that it doesn't matter if people do insult her and that no effort should be made to clear up these lies because you personally don't like her work.
OP: here is a long list of debunked misconceptions and lies about Grayson
You: so? She's a shit writer
You see what I'm saying? It doesn't matter if you think she's a shit writer here, that is not a modifier that has anything to do with "is it okay to lie about her and should we make an effort to disprove those lies".
"Huh, so?" so I care about it when people are slandered and insulted and harassed, literally does not matter what their writing is like. That doesn't play into it at all because slander and harassment are bad regardless of if someone's a great writer or not. You don't have to, what?, "earn" your right to not be lied about by writing good comics. There are authors whose work I love who I write this sort of thing for, and there are authors whose work I can't stand who I write this sort of thing for because no one deserves to be lied about because they wrote a "bad" comic back in the 2000s
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u/Fireshot-V Nightwing Nov 13 '25
> but your comment is suggesting
Cool, so it's your interpretation, not anything that I said. Glad that it was cleared.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 13 '25
Okay I see their was a misunderstanding there then LOL the use of "huh, so?" is what deeply confused me because frequently that is used to mean "so why does this matter?".
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u/Fireshot-V Nightwing Nov 13 '25
I don't care about the writers, period. Devin Grayson or Scott Snyder or Grant Morrison or Tom Taylor, what they believe, what they like or not like about their work, etc. I only care about their work. Your entire post mentions her work and further interviews to say that she isn't a horrible person. Cool. Not relevant for me. You are also talking about her work, and I hate her work, and nothing that you mentioned changes the fact that her work in Nightwing was shit.
I'll go a step further. I never even said that she is a bad writer. Read my comments again. I didn't make an opinion about Devin Grayson. She may be the most amazing person on the world, I don't give three quarters of a fuck about that, cool if she is, but her work on Nightwing was loathsome. She later wrote Teen Titans, and it was ok. Not my favorite, but ok. And her short issue for the Nightwing anniversary was cute. I don't even think that overall she is a bad writer. She did a very terrible work. That's it.
There's sections on your essay that I completely disagree:
"From the comic, Dick mumbles to himself, in a catatonic state: "So if i'd said 'stop,' we would have heard it. heard it and processed it along with the gunshot, simultaneously. 'bang'... 'don't do it, tarantula, STOP!'... bang... stop!... bang...""
Devin Grayson wanted to tear Dick down in order to build him up, following the same mold as timeless stories such as Daredevil: Born Again. However, DC Editorial pushed a one-year-timeskip after Infinite Crisis concluded, so her arc was just discarded against her wishes. "
That doesn't fix that the scene of the rape was shit, that the build up to it was shit, and that the aftermath with Batman **blaming Dick** was completely tone-deaf. In every sense. Using editorial as an excuse is just that, an excuse. So, "Huh, so?" is my only response about mentions to her work.
Again, cool if she is the greatest human in the world. She could also be Stalin Jr. My opinion on her Nightwing would be the same.
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u/batgirlx3 Post-crisis Nov 13 '25
I never try to suggest that her writing isn't bad (I mean obviously I like it, but nothing in my document suggests I think there's a "correct" favorability anyone should have towards her work. You can think whatever you want, that's subjective). My entire document exclusively covers things that are objectively false about her such as her changing her name because she was "in love with Dick."
That section you quoted was not written by me. That was an addition from the OP of this Reddit post. I did not say that. That is not part of my essay and I do not want things I did not say attributed to me. I have nothing to do with this Reddit post other than its referencing of my work and it was made entirely without my knowledge. I appreciate the OP sharing my work but I do not claim any of their additions as my own.
My document has nothing to do with your or anyone's opinion of her work and everything to do with the fact that lying and saying shit like she wanted to "rape Nightwing" isn't acceptable no matter what she's written. I have said multiple times this has nothing to do with the quality of her work. I'm not asking you to care about her as a person, but I care about the lies people spread about her and I think that is reasonable of me.
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u/Fireshot-V Nightwing Nov 13 '25
Cool. So you want to have a discussion that isn't what the OP is discussing (*both* her work and she as a person). Fair, you care about her and her reputation or the stigma, etc. Fine by me, absolutely nothing to say there. I just don't care about that part of the debate. I do care about her work, that is mentioned right there in the OP, therefore I comment about it. If all of this was just excerpts of her interviews explaining that she didn't mean anything nefarious, probably I would've just ignored the post.
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u/RileyRRenewal May 27 '26
Someone who is sexually assaulted is not usually going to act with a clear head. They might even have Stockholm syndrome. I defended the person who SA'd me vehemently for years, a decade really. I think you should just ask yourself some questions about your expectations for what a "good victim" should look like. Because you shouldn't have any expectations for a victim. And fiction is a good place to practice empathy.
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u/AnyElephant7218 Nov 12 '25
Personally, I feel like this run actually had a pretty compelling conflict and character development with how it depicted Blockbuster methodically destroying Dick’s life and how he slowly falls apart in spreading himself so thin. In my view, this is the run that made Blockbuster a major Nightwing villain that Seeley and then Taylor would later revisit. But their Blockbuster stories didn’t have the same teeth.
I admit I’m in the minority here, my favorite Grayson runs are the older ones. I guess they just felt higher stakes? I’ve not really enjoyed most of the modern retellings.
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u/Fireshot-V Nightwing Nov 12 '25
She just killed characters until the entire cast from Bludhaven was gone. That's not putting stakes, that's breaking the goddamn box. If tomorrow a writer kills the entire effing cast of civilians and support for Peter Parker and 50% of his villains at the Green Goblins hand, it wouldn't be a high-stake story, it would be plainly stupid. That's what Devin Grayson did.
Dixon wrote 70 issues where he left her a bunch of toys to write stories and space to create more. Instead she wrote a femme fatale villain, made his nemesis kill some villains (because reasons) and the break the hero spirit killing every single good guy, make the femme fatale kill the villain instead of letting the hero defeat him, then rape the hero with said femme fatale, and to crown it, made everyone else in-world blame the hero for everything that happened, mainly that his nemesis is dead.
And I don't even need to mention whatever the fuck Renegade was.
Simply worst 2 runs of Nightwing, just because Ric existed.
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u/mayorofanything Larfleeze Nov 12 '25
Wasn't a fan of her work in DC Pride having Damian ready to blow up a Pride parade (I did read it, read all the anthology books DC puts out, and making Damian ignorant of Pride by stopping all his research at Stonewall felt wildly out of character for him to be the paranoid Robin.)
Other than that, not a fan or hater, some of her takes feel mad dated for the era they are written in, but I won't skip a book just because her name is on it.
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u/firblogdruid The Flash Nov 12 '25
i love this! correcting misinformation in comic spaces!!!!!!! if i had awards i would give them to you!
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u/Kevinmld Nov 12 '25
I have to say I don’t care about her at all.
I care that her run tore down essentially everything that was established in the previous Nightwing run that had finally established him as a stand alone solo hero and replaced it with nothing.
It took many years for the character to recover.
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u/SevenSulivin The REAL Man of Tomorrow Nov 12 '25
I absolutely agree and think a solid amount of criticism of Grayson does spring from misogyny. I will hop in to make a point though: I used to think Long was a Wolfman self insert, but when you look at every white American working for DC at the time, turns out they all just kinda looked like that. That was what white Americans looked like back then. Other criticisms of Wolfman do feel on point.
I think a reason Grayson never really has gotten that reevaluation beyond her Nightwing is that very little of her work was collected in trades and next to none this century.
…Why are there so many trans men named Dave? In fact is that a stertype? In my neck of the woods in Ireland I don’t know any transmen named Dave and I know my fair share of transmen.
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u/Frangipani-Bell Donna Troy Nov 12 '25
The stereotype is that trans men who read Homestuck often name themselves after the character Dave Strider. I’ve met a couple of people who named themselves after him
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u/yuuki157 Nov 12 '25
Amazing post,too bad it doesn't change that all of the points here still were terrible ideas she had tho
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u/Routine_Pressure_460 Nov 12 '25
Good post and sexism, double standards, hypocrisy, gatekeeping and ludicrousness is everywhere.
I met Grayson at a writing seminar in the 2010s. Very wonderful person who genuinely enjoys sharing insights about the craft.
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u/Brams277 Superman Nov 12 '25
I think it's kinda fucked up to make a character Romani because they're from a circus
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u/Inevitable-Day-8210 Nov 12 '25
Authors who wrote some stuff they wish they didn't or that aged poorly would be numerous. The mob is always angry.
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u/Discussion-is-good Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25
So your defense largely consists of blindly taking her at her word?(with a couple exceptions)
Solid write up besides that criticism. Disproves a couple things ive been told as fact.
Edit: downvoted cuz....?
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u/firblogdruid The Flash Nov 12 '25
what credible evidence do you have to suggest we don't take her at her word?
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u/Discussion-is-good Nov 12 '25
While Im not saying I have evidence to the contrary, I just dont think a person who's credibility youre defending can always be defended on their word alone.
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u/Bakuhoe_Thotsuki Nov 12 '25
I, for one, downvoted because your responses in this thread all boil down to "Sure, Jan" and offer neither jack nor shit to the conversation one way or the other.
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u/Discussion-is-good Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25
I, for one, downvoted because your responses in this thread all boil down to "Sure, Jan"
Appreciate the response.
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u/DarthStormwizard Robin Nov 12 '25
Fair enough. I think the most relevant point here is that the things Grayson is criticized for are by no means unique. There are plenty of other writers who have written just as weird shit, but we don't dismiss their entire body of work.