YMMV / Nightwing

• Arc Fatigue: The Ric Grayson storyline. General consensus is that even if there was a good story to be told there, it's been dragged on for so long that many fans have dropped the book entirely and aren't interested in picking it back up again until the arc is over. That fact that Scott Lobdell pushed heavily to make this last didn't help.
• Audience-Alienating Era: In Rebirth, Dick is shot in the head and suffers from amnesia while retaining his fighting skills. He ditches all his previous Character Development (even a marriage proposal to Barbara Gordon) and becomes a taxi driver while changing his nickname to "Ric". For obvious reasons, this arc was critically panned and significantly damaged the franchise's popularity.
• Awesome Art: The one thing that fans seem to agree on in regards to Kyle Higgins' run is that Russell Dauterman's art was amazing. Of course, not only was the run cancelled shortly after Dauterman got on, but he would've likely left anyway to work on the much higher profile Thor (2014). Similarly, despite the widespread distaste for Lobdell and "Ric", the issues illustrated by Travis Moore are stunning.
• Broken Base:
  • Regarding Devin Grayson, one of the main writers of his long run. She's either the cause of several majorly terrible story arcs and a massive Audience-Alienating Era, a decent writer who just wasn't writing at her best at the time, or a great writer whose run was unfortunately hijacked by Infinite Crisis, which prevented her from finishing off the story.
  • The New 52 red suit. Brett Booth reintroducing the fingerstripes (and adding hip and neck stripes) has been universally accepted as a welcome olive branch, but you fall into one of two categories here: either you think red/black is a dark, edgy look and appreciate the fact that most of the Batman characters now match, or you think the idea of Nightwing needing to be dark and edgy or match the other Batman characters is ridiculous and goes against the point of his character.
  • Dick being retconned as being part Romani in Devin Grayson's run. Some are okay with it and enjoy the diversity of the Batfamily being upped a bit, some find it completely absurd and having absolutely no prior basis (on top of Grayson inserting some lines that don't quite make sense, like Dick commenting that he knows what it's like to be white but not TRULY white, considering he's pale as hell) and some don't mind him being Romani but find Devin Grayson's portrayal of Romani to be insultingly inaccurate. Surprisingly, considering how little it was mentioned and how quickly later writers dropped it after Grayson's run, it was in fact carried over into DC Rebirth.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Wrench Wench Bridget Clancy, Action Mom cop Amy Rohrbach, and Good-Guy Bar owner Hank Hogan tend to be the most nostalgically remembered supporting characters from the Chuck Dixon run.
• Growing the Beard: Regarding Kyle Higgins' run, many readers feel it got better when it stopped having to tie into the stories in Batman (the first three arcs were essentially extensions of whatever Batman arc was running).
• He's Just Hiding: A lot of fans like to hope that several of the minor and supporting characters who get blown up in the apartment building bombing in #89 of the 1996 series survived offscreen, especially Johnny Law, whose Wikipedia page even notes how his body was never shown.
• Iconic Sequel Outfit: Dick's classic black tights with a blue bird emblem with a domino mask was his third costume and is his most popular costume.
• Mainstream Obscurity: Dick Grayson himself is an extremely famous and popular character, best known for being the original Robin and although Robin is what Dick is best known for, his Nightwing persona still plenty popular enough and is a major Trope Codifier for Side Kick Graduations Stick. Beyond that, most of the general public, despite having familiarity with Dick as Robin, don't really have too much knowledge of Dick's solo adventures as Nightwing and likely couldn't name a single one of his supporting characters aside from Barbara or any given Robin showing up in his stories. And Nightwing's homegrown Rogues Gallery simply hasn't been able to get to that same level of recognition as Batman's Arkham rogues either, with guys like Blockbuster, Brutale, Shrike, Raptor, or Lady Vic being largely unfamiliar to a mainstream public. It also doesn't help that in the rare cases a major Nightwing villain has some sort of media appearance, they're typically portrayed as fighting other heroes instead of Nightwing.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • A running joke among comic fans is that Nightwing's greatest foe is editor Dan DiDio, since Dan has a history of screwing over Dick. DC is aware of this, and writers frequently joke about it, even Dan himself.
  • Nightwing's ass, both out-of-universe and in-universe. It even trended on Twitter.
• Memetic Loser: In his less-than-stellar portrayal in the DC Animated Movie Universe, poor Dick loses every major fight that he's ever been in, even getting thrashed by characters that he should logically have beaten such as The Scarecrow of all people. As a result, fans see Nightwing as the Jobber whose only purpose is to get worfed in order to make other characters like Damian look more competent in comparison.
• Moe: Kessia Toussant, the little girl who writes to Santa in the Christmas Episode while calling herself by her favorite doll's name and asking him to find a way to keep her dad from committing crimes before the two become residents of the apartment Dick lives in, is a real heart-melter for many fans.
• My Real Daddy: Bill Finger is credited with creating Dick Grayson, with some credit also going to Bob Kane... but Nightwing was created by Marv Wolfman, who had exclusive rights to the character throughout his entire run on New Teen Titans. Chuck Dixon is then credited with developing Dick's solo career in the 1996 Nightwing title.
  • Acknowledged by adaptations. Whenever Batman and Robin appear in an adaptation, the credits include a line to the tune of "Batman created by Bob Kane." Robin doesn't get his own credit. Nightwing, however, if he appears, will get his own "Nightwing created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez" credit.
• Never Live It Down: His first costume, the disco suit. It’s a regular source of mockery in the fandom, if they got past the green shortpants and pixie boots.
  • On a more serious level, Nightwing Annual #2, the infamous retcon where he slept with the newly-paralyzed Barbara Gordon the night before his wedding to Kory and then invited Babs to the wedding, in a blatant attempt to tear down the legitimacy of Dick/Kory in favor of Dick/Babs. While DC never officially struck it from pre-n52 canon, most fans (both Dick/Kory and Dick/Babs shippers alike) reject it from canon, and even most writers won't acknowledge it. Nevertheless, there are several people whose opinions of Dick were soured irreversibly by the story, especially in light of Dick's more recent portrayal as a bit of a playboy.
• One-Scene Wonder: Detective Karen Patitz only appears for four pages of a single issue during the infamous Blockbuster/Tarantula arc, but her cute and humorous Shrinking Violet nervousness around Rohrbach and formidable detective skills made an impression on some fans.
• The Scrappy:
  • While she's acquired a bit of a cult fanbase in the years since who attribute her flaws to the overall shoddy quality of the OYL arc, Cheyenne Freemont was very hated when she debuted in Bruce Jones' arc. It mostly had to do with her being abruptly introduced, coming off incredibly flat, suddenly being revealed to be a metahuman, and other fans feeling that she was made to spite those who shipped Dick with either Barbara or Kory. Cheyenne was swiftly Put on a Bus by the end of the arc.
  • Tarantula, aka Catalina Flores. She's absolutely hated among the DC fanbase for being a petty, spiteful Woman Scorned who caused the break-up of Dick and Babs, and for the controversial raping of Nightwing, which she never faced any consequences for. Made worse in that Devin Grayson tried to downplay the rape by claiming "[she] never said it was rape, just non-consensual". Though to the relief of fans, she was arrested for Blockbuster's murder and killed off by Gail Simone in her Secret Six run.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: The development of new love interest Shawn Tsang in Nightwing complicates an already contentious shipping war with both Starfire and Barbara Gordon, both of whom have shared Ship Tease with Nightwing. This is somewhat alleviated by Nightwing writer Tim Seeley writing both women as being understanding as opposed to petty, taking an Amicable Exes approach with the former, and an I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy approach with the latter.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • "One Year Later". Jason Todd dressing up as Nightwing isn't a bad idea. And this was Jason's first appearance after the "Under the Red Hood" storyline. Instead of Dick trying to reason with his little brother we have the Girl of the Week save the day after Jason is turned into a tentacle monster. Executive Meddling plays a role in this. Jason Todd really was supposed to be the new Nightwing, with Dick being Killed Off for Real in Infinite Crisis. Geoff Johns lobbied to spare Dick of this fate though, resulting in Devin Grayson scrambling with the story, along with Bruce Jones (the writer of the OYL arc).
  • The Chicago era, after having to tie-in to Batman so often, was finally able to tell its own stories. It built up a supporting cast for Dick, including a Secret-Keeper little girl and potential conflicts with one of his roommate's. Tony Zucco was also established as a potential Wild Card, and his daughter Sonia was sort of brought back as a potential love interest. It also lightly touched upon the idea of Dick being someone more willing to give villains second chances. All of this would be for nought, as the series was cancelled in the aftermath of Forever Evil and spun off into Grayson. While most of it was never touched on again, the theme of Dick and second chances was later used by Tim Seeley in the Rebirth series.
• The Woobie: Not on par with Jason, but still very much a Woobie. He lost his parents at a young age, and his Parental Substitute doesn't respect him (or so he thinks).
  • As of the New 52, the guy can't catch a break. He inherited Haley's Circus, but it's destroyed by his Evil Former Friend Raymond for the stupidest of reasons. Then, after he's getting it rebuilt, The Joker then decides to blow it up and poison everyone, the result being a lot of people hating Dick, and him not being able to rebuild it because he put all his money into it. Then, he finds out Tony Zucco, the man who had his parents killed, is still alive. His attempts to track him down, however, just result in a psychopath getting wind of incriminating info on the mayor of Chicago (where Dick has moved to find Zucco), which is promptly used to motivate said psycho into taking over Chicago and causing tons of death, all of which Dick blames himself for. Then Forever Evil (2013) happened...
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Nightwing's first costume included a disco collar, despite its debut being in 1984, well after disco had fallen out of fashion in the United States. That being said, it’s not too difficult to find those who consider it Narm Charm.

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