Character Bio
character name: Richard “Dick” John Grayson/Nightwing/Robin I
Fandom: Batman the Animated Series with canon sprinklings integrated from the other DCAU series and the Teen Titans cartoon (because otherwise we have to believe Dick’s never met another non-Bat cape in his life, and that’s terrible).
Timeline: The New Adventures of Batman and Robin, early mullet Nightwing-era, he’s still trying to establish himself as His Own Man while still unintentionally riding Batman’s coattails and trying to get used to calling someone else “Robin.”
character's age: 23. -ish.
Powers, skills, pets and equipment: Bats don’t need no stinkin’ powers. Abilities Dick has a plethora of, though. He’s a professionally trained acrobat whose training has only intensified as he’s gotten older, pushing himself to the peak of physical fitness. He’s widely considered to be the greatest acrobat in the world (in his own canon), the only living person able to perform the quadruple somersault, and could easily have turned those daydreams of Olympic gold into a reality if he wasn’t so busy fighting crime. Speaking of which, he’s also mastered or at least been heavily trained in about a half a dozen or so martial arts including, but certainly not limited to Capoeira, Judo, Eskrima, Aikido, and Savate. Not to mention, of course, his training in fencing, escape artistry, and stealth. As a gauge, his fighting skills rival Batman’s, his acrobatic ability outclasses Batman’s, and his stealth could still use a little work.
As far as the other aspects of crime-fighting go, Dick’s learned just about everything he knows from Batman (and on-the-job training). If Batman’s the World’s Greatest Detective, then Dick is the World’s Second Greatest Detective (though probably only because Tim’s still got a lot of training to do yet). He’s a master criminologist, master of disguise, and fluent in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, knows enough Russian and Latin to get by, and can basically swear in Greek and Navajo.
Of course unless you’re The Question, you can’t fight crime on the power of paranoia alone, and coming from a multi-million dollar company-funded operation to a trust-fund-funded operation, he hasn’t actually had to scale down that much. Along with the Kevlar-reinforced-spandex duds and steel-lined boots, Nightwing, on his person, always carries an arsenal of smoke bombs, small explosives, wingdings (his own speshul version of batarangs), spare grapple guns, handcuffs, tracer devices, binoculars, night-vision lenses built into his mask, a small flashlight, an acetylene torch, lock picks, evidence bags, and electronic bugs. He also has retractable glider wings built into his suit.
Dick’s never had any pets, though. Not unless you include the performing animals at Haly’s Circus, but those really belonged to the Kane Family Animal Act. Or there’s Silky, the giant mutant moth larva. But he more belongs to Titans West as a whole than any one person. And if he did belong to any one person it would be Starfire. So.
Canon history: Dick Grayson was born to a famous circus trapeze act, The Flying Graysons, and raised in the famous traveling Haly’s Circus. By the time little Dickie started walking, his parents knew that it was time to start training him to join them in the spotlight over the center ring. Dick likes to joke that he learned how to walk on the high wire, but in fact, by the age of eight, he was impressing even the most jaded cirky up on the trapeze with his parents. The Flying Graysons were the headliners for Haly’s Circus for years, but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in notorious Gotham City change that forever.
Invited by the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Haly’s Circus set up shop on the fair grounds just outside of Gotham City proper preparing to put on a benefit performance for Wayne Charities. Going to wash up after rehearsal while his parents cleaned up their practice gear, little Dickie overheard Mr. Haly shouting at someone and stuck around to find out what was going on. He saw Haly throw a man he would later find out was named Tony Zucco out of his wagon, refusing to pay the “protection money” Zucco was demanding. Dickie got a good look at him as Zucco retreated from the grounds, warning Haly that he’d regret not paying when an “accident” happened. The incident bothered Dickie -- even moreso when he saw Zucco leaving the big top dressed as a rigger that night before The Flying Graysons took to the ring, but he didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation until after he saw that the wire on his father’s trapeze was cut and ready to snap after his mother had already flown out to be caught.
The rest of the show was canceled, the police were called, but Zucco was already long gone by the time anyone started looking for him. After hearing Dickie’s story, though, then-Lieutenant Jim Gordon decided it wouldn’t be the last that they’d see of him and decided they needed to put little Dickie in a safe house in case Zucco came back to shut him up. But Bruce Wayne opened up Wayne Manor to him instead of seeing the kid end up a ward of the state.
The transition from famous, traveling circus trapeze artist to youthful ward of a multi-millionaire playboy living in a mansion with only two other people wasn’t always an easy one, especially since those first few months Dick was mostly kept at the mansion in fear of Zucco. It was boring and, even worse, lonely, with Bruce gone to “meetings” every night and his only companion the certainly kindly and indulgent but elderly and quite proper butler, Alfred Pennyworth who taught him more than he’d ever need to know about British tea service and polishing silver. Until he finally convinced Bruce to spend a little less time hunting Zucco as Batman and a little more time with the little boy he’d taken in in an effort to give him something Bruce hadn’t when his parents had been murdered.
After less than a month of bonding over that and finally getting to spend some time teaching Bruce how to be a father figure, Dick overheard he and Gordon talking about Zucco getting ready to skip town before Batman got to him. Less worried about whether Bruce would kick him out after the threat was gone and more worried about the man that had killed his parents getting away, little Dickie snuck out of the Manor that night with a picture of Zucco he’d clipped from the newspaper and as much loose change as he could swipe from Bruce’s suit pants and hopped on a bus to the bad side of town to do his own detective-ing. Now, he was only going to call the police when he found out where Zucco was hiding (with the help of a grifter with a heart of gold and a no-nonsense waitress); but Zucco found him before he could get to the payphone and was about to finish the job he started with Dick’s parents. When Batman showed up. In the scuffle, little Dickie fell, jeans and oversized sweater and all, into Gotham reservoir and Batman chose to save him rather than take chase.
Batman took Dick back to the Batcave and made him the offer of a lifetime and, before he knew it, he was training to become the very first superhero sidekick, Robin, taking an oath by candlelight to uphold justice and do everything in his power to save lives, no matter what. Which was just what he did, alongside his newest idol, Batman. Life was pretty awesome.
Then, the rebellious teenage years hit. Sick of being treated like a kid and like he didn’t know what he was doing, Dick moved his dog-and-pony-show out to Jump City, California at the ripe old age of fourteen, where he was determined to work alone. That only lasted long enough to happen upon a group of unique teenagers also feeling a little lost, and also with a strong desire to save the world. And after saving an alien princess from an evil race of slaver aliens, Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven built a new headquarters on the remains of the ship and became the Teen Titans. Over the course of Dick’s high school career, the Teen Titans saved the world countless times and, in doing so, expanded their ranks until there was an international Titans network and a Titans Tower in key cities across the globe.
Trusting that his team could handle anything that came their way without him needing to be there 24/7 and realizing with some distance and time apart that maybe Batman wasn’t evil after all and maybe he actually had Robin’s best interests at heart, Dick moved back to Gotham City after graduating high school to attend Gotham University under their Criminology program. He was spread a little thin between college, his new girlfriend, Barbara Gordon, his responsibilities as a Titan, his responsibilities to Batman, and being the occasional hostage, but things seemed to be going well.
Or, at least, he thought they were. But the stress of maintaining all of his separate lives, seeing the way Batman treated him as compared to other capes they worked with and only getting out of it that Batman didn’t trust him anymore; especially when he compared that to how his own team, the Titans, treated him with respect and trust -- it all built up and came to a head after his college graduation. Aside from the fact that Bruce never even showed up to the graduation ceremony, Batman called Dick away from a dinner with Barbara just as he was about to propose to stop one of The Joker’s plots. They didn’t catch the clown then, but did track one of his henchmen to the man’s apartment, where Batman proceeded to Bat-interrogate him in front of his wife and young son. Robin couldn’t stand to make them watch the Batman intimidate him, so when Batman refused to let up, Robin left. He initially made his way to Barbara’s apartment, but after realizing he couldn’t actually tell her anything, he left to wander the streets of Gotham instead, while she went to Bruce to find out what was going on.
Once Dick thought he’d worked off most of his anger, he came back to the Manor only to find Barbara’s car there, but her, Bruce, and the Batmobile gone. Alfred filled him in that Bruce had told her about Batman and Robin and had known that she was Batgirl, then the both of them had left to take care of the Joker situation being played out atop Gotham City’s tallest building before his radar scrambler could down any planes. Well, the three of them defeated The Joker, but it was the after party that would change the stakes forever. Robin was furious to find out both his girlfriend and Batman had kept her Batgirl identity from him and it became the proof he needed that Batman didn’t care about anyone but himself, that he would do or say anything to manipulate people into doing what he wanted, and, with a final sock to the jaw, Dick quit.
With Robin laid to rest, as far as he was concerned, Dick packed a bag of essentials, tapped into the trust fund Haly’s Circus set up with the insurance money from his parents’ murder, and went in search of himself. For nearly two years he traveled across Asia and South America, training under martial arts masters the world over, learning the secrets of stealth from indigenous tribes in the rainforests of Santo de la Rosa, flight from the flying monks in the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet. He ran into a few old “friends” along the way, thwarting a drug deal and the heist of a priceless statue, and finally decided it was about time he returned to Gotham.
It’s only been a few months since Nightwing officially hit the scene and it’s been kind of a rollercoaster ride between finding a new Robin had taken his place, being reminded vividly why he quit in the first place, then having that new Robin remind him why Batman wasn’t the badguy. His relationship with Barbara was tenuous at best, his reputation as Nightwing was nonexistent and the cracks about being “Batman-lite” grated on his nerves more than he’d ever admit. But he was trying to work through it with as little help from Batman as possible (which is hard when he’s also trying to keep the new Robin as sane as possible) and, all told, he was doing pretty well for himself.
Until he got dragged through that Door.
Personality: Dick Grayson is a product of his environment, as insanely varied as it is.
Growing up in the circus gave him, of course, that all important showmanship that even the Titans call him out on sometimes. He likes being the center of attention, he likes showing off, and he likes getting praised for doing a good job and saving the day (with style), which is one of the many reasons his relationship with Batman gets so strained, since “praise” from Bats usually comes in the form of criticism of minor details. For example, when Batman chastises someone for killing a tank full of piranhas by breaking it open, leaving the aquarium to have to replace their entire piranha exhibit, what he really means is, “Way to go, not letting those innocent civilians get eaten alive by piranhas. But next time maybe you could find another way to save them without costing people more money.” Of course it’s easy to forget that, though.
Spending so long in the circus also left Dick with an ease for creating a family wherever he goes, and he loves to network; be it the Bat-family or the Titans, Dick knows better than a lot of people that “family” doesn’t always mean by-blood. The thing of it is, though, he doesn’t even always consciously recognize that, with the Titans for example, he’s got dozens and dozens of siblings; sometimes he just needs someone to point it out to him before he can admit it to himself. He’s fiercely loyal to his family, though, even if it means standing up to another part of his family, and he’s got a lot of love to share. This isn’t to necessarily say he falls in love easily (though he does have a particular weakness for redheads that can kick his ass), but he doesn’t get involved with anyone unless he feels there’s something there.
Now the negative -- you didn’t really think he went through Batman’s tutelage unscathed, did you? Dick has all of the basic Bat-personality quirks -- the tendency to analyze situations to death, a sometimes unhealthy sense of paranoia, obsession, and, of course, always thinking he knows best. Everyone can tell when something is stressing Dick out because that’s when he tends to go into his Batman impression -- locking himself away to investigate on his own, shutting himself off from everyone around him, the attitude, the Bat-glares, just generally forgetting that he’s a human being and not a living boogeyman. See, while Dick knows he’s not perfect, he tends to hold himself up to a standard that (he won’t admit) he believes Batman holds him up to; he knows he’ll never reach the level of perfection he believes Batman expects of him, but he’s usually content to at least come close to it. It’s when he doesn’t even come within sight of that goal that the trouble comes in; when he has a case that continuously thwarts him no matter what he does or how hard he tries, driving him sometimes to do things he’ll end up being more ashamed of than he would have been if he’d just kept on the straight path and never closed the case.
It’s usually the Titans who drag him back to sanity; Robin when their schedules coincide long enough; rarely ever Batman, but once in a while he manages to surprise everyone. Which really just brings us right back full circle to the beginning and the real heart of who Dick is: People. Friends. Family. And the desire to protect them and make them happy, those are the things that drive his entire life.
Oh, he’s also the biggest superhero fanboy you’ll find over the age of twenty. Not counting Control Freak. Because. Ew.
Fandom: Batman the Animated Series with canon sprinklings integrated from the other DCAU series and the Teen Titans cartoon (because otherwise we have to believe Dick’s never met another non-Bat cape in his life, and that’s terrible).
Timeline: The New Adventures of Batman and Robin, early mullet Nightwing-era, he’s still trying to establish himself as His Own Man while still unintentionally riding Batman’s coattails and trying to get used to calling someone else “Robin.”
character's age: 23. -ish.
Powers, skills, pets and equipment: Bats don’t need no stinkin’ powers. Abilities Dick has a plethora of, though. He’s a professionally trained acrobat whose training has only intensified as he’s gotten older, pushing himself to the peak of physical fitness. He’s widely considered to be the greatest acrobat in the world (in his own canon), the only living person able to perform the quadruple somersault, and could easily have turned those daydreams of Olympic gold into a reality if he wasn’t so busy fighting crime. Speaking of which, he’s also mastered or at least been heavily trained in about a half a dozen or so martial arts including, but certainly not limited to Capoeira, Judo, Eskrima, Aikido, and Savate. Not to mention, of course, his training in fencing, escape artistry, and stealth. As a gauge, his fighting skills rival Batman’s, his acrobatic ability outclasses Batman’s, and his stealth could still use a little work.
As far as the other aspects of crime-fighting go, Dick’s learned just about everything he knows from Batman (and on-the-job training). If Batman’s the World’s Greatest Detective, then Dick is the World’s Second Greatest Detective (though probably only because Tim’s still got a lot of training to do yet). He’s a master criminologist, master of disguise, and fluent in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, knows enough Russian and Latin to get by, and can basically swear in Greek and Navajo.
Of course unless you’re The Question, you can’t fight crime on the power of paranoia alone, and coming from a multi-million dollar company-funded operation to a trust-fund-funded operation, he hasn’t actually had to scale down that much. Along with the Kevlar-reinforced-spandex duds and steel-lined boots, Nightwing, on his person, always carries an arsenal of smoke bombs, small explosives, wingdings (his own speshul version of batarangs), spare grapple guns, handcuffs, tracer devices, binoculars, night-vision lenses built into his mask, a small flashlight, an acetylene torch, lock picks, evidence bags, and electronic bugs. He also has retractable glider wings built into his suit.
Dick’s never had any pets, though. Not unless you include the performing animals at Haly’s Circus, but those really belonged to the Kane Family Animal Act. Or there’s Silky, the giant mutant moth larva. But he more belongs to Titans West as a whole than any one person. And if he did belong to any one person it would be Starfire. So.
Canon history: Dick Grayson was born to a famous circus trapeze act, The Flying Graysons, and raised in the famous traveling Haly’s Circus. By the time little Dickie started walking, his parents knew that it was time to start training him to join them in the spotlight over the center ring. Dick likes to joke that he learned how to walk on the high wire, but in fact, by the age of eight, he was impressing even the most jaded cirky up on the trapeze with his parents. The Flying Graysons were the headliners for Haly’s Circus for years, but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in notorious Gotham City change that forever.
Invited by the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Haly’s Circus set up shop on the fair grounds just outside of Gotham City proper preparing to put on a benefit performance for Wayne Charities. Going to wash up after rehearsal while his parents cleaned up their practice gear, little Dickie overheard Mr. Haly shouting at someone and stuck around to find out what was going on. He saw Haly throw a man he would later find out was named Tony Zucco out of his wagon, refusing to pay the “protection money” Zucco was demanding. Dickie got a good look at him as Zucco retreated from the grounds, warning Haly that he’d regret not paying when an “accident” happened. The incident bothered Dickie -- even moreso when he saw Zucco leaving the big top dressed as a rigger that night before The Flying Graysons took to the ring, but he didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation until after he saw that the wire on his father’s trapeze was cut and ready to snap after his mother had already flown out to be caught.
The rest of the show was canceled, the police were called, but Zucco was already long gone by the time anyone started looking for him. After hearing Dickie’s story, though, then-Lieutenant Jim Gordon decided it wouldn’t be the last that they’d see of him and decided they needed to put little Dickie in a safe house in case Zucco came back to shut him up. But Bruce Wayne opened up Wayne Manor to him instead of seeing the kid end up a ward of the state.
The transition from famous, traveling circus trapeze artist to youthful ward of a multi-millionaire playboy living in a mansion with only two other people wasn’t always an easy one, especially since those first few months Dick was mostly kept at the mansion in fear of Zucco. It was boring and, even worse, lonely, with Bruce gone to “meetings” every night and his only companion the certainly kindly and indulgent but elderly and quite proper butler, Alfred Pennyworth who taught him more than he’d ever need to know about British tea service and polishing silver. Until he finally convinced Bruce to spend a little less time hunting Zucco as Batman and a little more time with the little boy he’d taken in in an effort to give him something Bruce hadn’t when his parents had been murdered.
After less than a month of bonding over that and finally getting to spend some time teaching Bruce how to be a father figure, Dick overheard he and Gordon talking about Zucco getting ready to skip town before Batman got to him. Less worried about whether Bruce would kick him out after the threat was gone and more worried about the man that had killed his parents getting away, little Dickie snuck out of the Manor that night with a picture of Zucco he’d clipped from the newspaper and as much loose change as he could swipe from Bruce’s suit pants and hopped on a bus to the bad side of town to do his own detective-ing. Now, he was only going to call the police when he found out where Zucco was hiding (with the help of a grifter with a heart of gold and a no-nonsense waitress); but Zucco found him before he could get to the payphone and was about to finish the job he started with Dick’s parents. When Batman showed up. In the scuffle, little Dickie fell, jeans and oversized sweater and all, into Gotham reservoir and Batman chose to save him rather than take chase.
Batman took Dick back to the Batcave and made him the offer of a lifetime and, before he knew it, he was training to become the very first superhero sidekick, Robin, taking an oath by candlelight to uphold justice and do everything in his power to save lives, no matter what. Which was just what he did, alongside his newest idol, Batman. Life was pretty awesome.
Then, the rebellious teenage years hit. Sick of being treated like a kid and like he didn’t know what he was doing, Dick moved his dog-and-pony-show out to Jump City, California at the ripe old age of fourteen, where he was determined to work alone. That only lasted long enough to happen upon a group of unique teenagers also feeling a little lost, and also with a strong desire to save the world. And after saving an alien princess from an evil race of slaver aliens, Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven built a new headquarters on the remains of the ship and became the Teen Titans. Over the course of Dick’s high school career, the Teen Titans saved the world countless times and, in doing so, expanded their ranks until there was an international Titans network and a Titans Tower in key cities across the globe.
Trusting that his team could handle anything that came their way without him needing to be there 24/7 and realizing with some distance and time apart that maybe Batman wasn’t evil after all and maybe he actually had Robin’s best interests at heart, Dick moved back to Gotham City after graduating high school to attend Gotham University under their Criminology program. He was spread a little thin between college, his new girlfriend, Barbara Gordon, his responsibilities as a Titan, his responsibilities to Batman, and being the occasional hostage, but things seemed to be going well.
Or, at least, he thought they were. But the stress of maintaining all of his separate lives, seeing the way Batman treated him as compared to other capes they worked with and only getting out of it that Batman didn’t trust him anymore; especially when he compared that to how his own team, the Titans, treated him with respect and trust -- it all built up and came to a head after his college graduation. Aside from the fact that Bruce never even showed up to the graduation ceremony, Batman called Dick away from a dinner with Barbara just as he was about to propose to stop one of The Joker’s plots. They didn’t catch the clown then, but did track one of his henchmen to the man’s apartment, where Batman proceeded to Bat-interrogate him in front of his wife and young son. Robin couldn’t stand to make them watch the Batman intimidate him, so when Batman refused to let up, Robin left. He initially made his way to Barbara’s apartment, but after realizing he couldn’t actually tell her anything, he left to wander the streets of Gotham instead, while she went to Bruce to find out what was going on.
Once Dick thought he’d worked off most of his anger, he came back to the Manor only to find Barbara’s car there, but her, Bruce, and the Batmobile gone. Alfred filled him in that Bruce had told her about Batman and Robin and had known that she was Batgirl, then the both of them had left to take care of the Joker situation being played out atop Gotham City’s tallest building before his radar scrambler could down any planes. Well, the three of them defeated The Joker, but it was the after party that would change the stakes forever. Robin was furious to find out both his girlfriend and Batman had kept her Batgirl identity from him and it became the proof he needed that Batman didn’t care about anyone but himself, that he would do or say anything to manipulate people into doing what he wanted, and, with a final sock to the jaw, Dick quit.
With Robin laid to rest, as far as he was concerned, Dick packed a bag of essentials, tapped into the trust fund Haly’s Circus set up with the insurance money from his parents’ murder, and went in search of himself. For nearly two years he traveled across Asia and South America, training under martial arts masters the world over, learning the secrets of stealth from indigenous tribes in the rainforests of Santo de la Rosa, flight from the flying monks in the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet. He ran into a few old “friends” along the way, thwarting a drug deal and the heist of a priceless statue, and finally decided it was about time he returned to Gotham.
It’s only been a few months since Nightwing officially hit the scene and it’s been kind of a rollercoaster ride between finding a new Robin had taken his place, being reminded vividly why he quit in the first place, then having that new Robin remind him why Batman wasn’t the badguy. His relationship with Barbara was tenuous at best, his reputation as Nightwing was nonexistent and the cracks about being “Batman-lite” grated on his nerves more than he’d ever admit. But he was trying to work through it with as little help from Batman as possible (which is hard when he’s also trying to keep the new Robin as sane as possible) and, all told, he was doing pretty well for himself.
Until he got dragged through that Door.
Personality: Dick Grayson is a product of his environment, as insanely varied as it is.
Growing up in the circus gave him, of course, that all important showmanship that even the Titans call him out on sometimes. He likes being the center of attention, he likes showing off, and he likes getting praised for doing a good job and saving the day (with style), which is one of the many reasons his relationship with Batman gets so strained, since “praise” from Bats usually comes in the form of criticism of minor details. For example, when Batman chastises someone for killing a tank full of piranhas by breaking it open, leaving the aquarium to have to replace their entire piranha exhibit, what he really means is, “Way to go, not letting those innocent civilians get eaten alive by piranhas. But next time maybe you could find another way to save them without costing people more money.” Of course it’s easy to forget that, though.
Spending so long in the circus also left Dick with an ease for creating a family wherever he goes, and he loves to network; be it the Bat-family or the Titans, Dick knows better than a lot of people that “family” doesn’t always mean by-blood. The thing of it is, though, he doesn’t even always consciously recognize that, with the Titans for example, he’s got dozens and dozens of siblings; sometimes he just needs someone to point it out to him before he can admit it to himself. He’s fiercely loyal to his family, though, even if it means standing up to another part of his family, and he’s got a lot of love to share. This isn’t to necessarily say he falls in love easily (though he does have a particular weakness for redheads that can kick his ass), but he doesn’t get involved with anyone unless he feels there’s something there.
Now the negative -- you didn’t really think he went through Batman’s tutelage unscathed, did you? Dick has all of the basic Bat-personality quirks -- the tendency to analyze situations to death, a sometimes unhealthy sense of paranoia, obsession, and, of course, always thinking he knows best. Everyone can tell when something is stressing Dick out because that’s when he tends to go into his Batman impression -- locking himself away to investigate on his own, shutting himself off from everyone around him, the attitude, the Bat-glares, just generally forgetting that he’s a human being and not a living boogeyman. See, while Dick knows he’s not perfect, he tends to hold himself up to a standard that (he won’t admit) he believes Batman holds him up to; he knows he’ll never reach the level of perfection he believes Batman expects of him, but he’s usually content to at least come close to it. It’s when he doesn’t even come within sight of that goal that the trouble comes in; when he has a case that continuously thwarts him no matter what he does or how hard he tries, driving him sometimes to do things he’ll end up being more ashamed of than he would have been if he’d just kept on the straight path and never closed the case.
It’s usually the Titans who drag him back to sanity; Robin when their schedules coincide long enough; rarely ever Batman, but once in a while he manages to surprise everyone. Which really just brings us right back full circle to the beginning and the real heart of who Dick is: People. Friends. Family. And the desire to protect them and make them happy, those are the things that drive his entire life.
Oh, he’s also the biggest superhero fanboy you’ll find over the age of twenty. Not counting Control Freak. Because. Ew.