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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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This is a post about Boone aka Shrike.

I am making this post about Boone aka Shrike from Robin: Year One and later stories, solely so that reading this post on mobile will bring up “other posts like this” and show all the other posts I have made about Boone aka Shrike from Robin: Year One and other stories. LOL.

Because I’m back on my ‘people should make Boone aka Shrike and his archrivalry with Dick more of a thing’ bus.

Look, I will maintain until the day I die that Shrike has literally EVERYTHING needed to deliver on the same thematic elements people cite interest in JayDick and Sladin for....with the added bonus of....a Dick/Boone ship wouldn’t be incestuous or rely on a huge predatory age gap.

I mean, granted, it still won’t do anything for people who are into those ships purely BECAUSE of the incest or the huge predatory age gap, but I mean like, I work with what I can work with. Like I’m not even trying to change peoples’ minds there so much as just point out alternatives for anyone who just comes to those ships looking for the specific dynamic that personally I think is more real and evident with Dick and Boone than it ever will be with him and anyone else.

But really, the ONLY thing Boone needs to be serve the same narrative function is like...a higher profile, and more use of the character. I mean, some more infamy and slots in his win column wouldn’t hurt either, but you know. Whatever.

Anyway, point is, so Robin: Year One.

That was the story where Dick got hurt badly by Two-Face when he was still new to being Robin, and Bruce freaked out and fired him for the first time, also making the blunderhead move, in his freak out and new to being a parent thing, of saying it was Dick’s fault the judge had died, when Dick had literally just been trying to save Bruce’s life.

So Dick figures if he can’t be Robin, there’s no point to him being there, since Bruce doesn’t want or need a son (take that stories that act like Dick even at age 10 or 11 wasn’t already secretly hoping to be adopted). So Dick ran away and stayed on the streets where he took down Mr. Freeze all on his own, and in doing so drew the attention of something called The Vengeance Academy.

This was run by a guy named Shrike, who had some of his men snatch Dick off the streets after he caught their eye by taking on Mr. Freeze, and brought to the Vengeance Academy. It was a front for the League of Assassins, a place in Gotham where they trained kids as assassins and vetted their potential for being taken to the League itself for training.

Attendance was not elective, lol, it wasn’t like they asked Dick or any of these kids if they wanted to join, but most of them had nowhere else to go, so like Dick, they stayed and trained and went on missions Shrike assigned them as part of their training.

One of these other kids was named Boone, and he had something of a leadership role among the other kids, and was at times almost friendly with Dick and at other times saw him as a rival because of Dick’s own skills. And when they went out on missions, like, Dick stopped the other kids from killing some guards after they’d knocked them out, which pissed off Boone because it was Dick undermining his position as leader in the other kids’ eyes, especially when Shrike validated Dick’s decision when they returned to the Academy, by saying they should never kill people they aren’t getting paid to kill, as its a waste of their skills.

So like, point being, the two of them had HUGE potential for the kind of dynamic Dick and Jason are often characterized with, where they have mutual respect but are mutually vying for the approval of the same figures.

Anyway, after a few months (R:Y1 was vague on the timelines but was clear about the fact that Dick was at the VA for at least a few months, with captions like ‘weeks passed’ etc)....Dick eventually manages to sneak off long enough to sneak into the Batcave and leave a note for Bruce about the Vengeance Academy, what its up to, where to find it, etc. But Dick still goes back, rather than wait for Bruce himself, because he still doesn’t think Bruce wants him anymore.

Eventually, Shrike happens to get hired to take out Two-Face, and of course happens to assign Boone and Dick as the leads to conduct that assassination. They and the other boys break into Two-Face’s mansion, Dick’s literally holding a gun on Harvey and having flashbacks to Two-Face beating him almost to death and Bruce firing him in the aftermath and everything that’s happened since then....but at the last minute, Dick decides he won’t do it, throws the gun away instead, and as Two-Face’s guards all burst in, the boys all run.

But then back at Vengeance Academy, they of course all tell Shrike what happened, and Shrike just starts beating on Dick, shouting how ungrateful he is, etc, etc, what a waste of time and effort he’s turned out to be....and that’s when Bruce arrives, takes on Shrike’s men, etc.

In the confusion, Shrike slips away, and then at some point, he and Dick end up facing across from each other on a rafter high up by the ceiling...where Shrike figures out that Dick is the one who alerted Batman and starts in on him again, but Dick defends himself....and that’s when Two-Face and his men burst in, having tracked them somehow, and in that ensuing commotion, someone shoots Shrike, he falls from the rafter and ends up impaled on some rebar on the floor or something like that.

Which is where Boone finds him, as he lays there dying, and Boone’s shown being considerably distressed, because he’d been there a lot longer than Dick and had been shown to be significantly attached to Shrike and viewing him as a father figure he was desperate to prove himself to, unlike Dick who was there because he felt he didn’t have a choice or anywhere else to go.

And of course Dick goes back with Bruce, who tells him how much he’s missed him and of course he wants him and is sorry for everything he said and did, they reconcile, Dick becomes Robin again, etc. The very last two pages of the mini end with Dick being introduced to Barbara for the first time by the Commissioner, when she’s on the roof with him while he’s talking with Batman and Robin....but also, Talia comes to survey the remains of Vengeance Academy, since it was League-affiliated...and takes Boone with her back to the League for further training.

Eventually, Boone grows up to take the name Shrike for himself, in honor of his former teacher, and he’s OBSESSED with avenging the original Shrike by killing Nightwing, who he knows is his former classmate, due to Robin then Nightwing’s style of fighting, and his penchant for using escrima sticks.

(Interestingly, Dick only started using escrima sticks as his signature weapon in his first solo Nightwing title, with this stemming from Chuck Dixon’s writing him doing so....and Dixon also wrote R:Y1, which is where he then established that Vengeance Academy is where Dick first learned to use escrima sticks and gained a preference for them. So its always been kinda fascinating to me that Dick’s had his skills with those since literally his very first year as Robin....BUT then never used them as Robin, while Batman’s partner....but after becoming Nightwing and moving to Bludhaven, for whatever reason returned to using those particular weapons and making them his signature).

Anyway, point is, Boone calls Dick Freddy, because that was what he knew him as when they were kids....after he ran away, Dick started using the alias Freddy Lloyd. Lloyd was his mother’s maiden name, and I used to think Freddy was a reference to Alfred, but only recently realized that its actually Dick’s dad’s middle name.

So Shrike was brought back in the Nightwing solo title as a recurring enemy of Dick’s, with varying degrees of effectiveness. In later years, he was kinda made into a joke and not treated as much of a threat, but for awhile there, he was characterized as very much being a threat to Dick, and at a similar level skill wise, thanks to his own extensive League training. He captured Dick in their first encounter in Bludhaven, where he then tried to figure out Dick’s real identity by running his fingerprints and DNA (though Babs was able to intercept his attempt to run those through the system and replace the findings with a fake profile). He also even managed to defeat Dinah, though as much by trickery as straight out and out fighting...but still, Dinah’s one of THE top hand to hand combatants in the DC universe so, not exactly a small feat. He also faced off with Tim and Cass at one point, while they were Batgirl and Robin, and though he defeated Tim relatively easily (this was still fairly early in Tim’s career as Robin though), he ultimately lost to Cass. But again, who doesn’t lose to Cass, y’know?

So I mean, he definitely has skills and is a credible threat. Dick beat him after Dinah and Babs rescued him from Boone that first time, and Boone ended up in Bludhaven’s prison.....but then escaped and was later hired by Blockbuster as one of the assassins gunning for Dick. He and Dick had one more epic fight as one of the final elements of the Blockbuster arc, but by this time Dick was channeling so much rage when he went after Blockbuster at his mansion, where Shrike was lying in wait, that Dick pretty much just kicked Boone’s ass up and down the street and around the corner and left him chained up to a flagpole.

Like, I’m pretty sure that fight is what’s made later writers deem him not as high caliber a fight or threat as he later was referenced as being, but that wasn’t really the point of that fight, lol. How handily Dick kicked his ass there was in context clearly meant to read as just how fucking enraged Dick was at this point, due to Blockbuster’s campaign against him, and how much Dick’s OWN threat level went through the roof when he allowed himself to use that degree of anger while fighting Boone, rather than repress it. It was very much a “you’re only in my league when I’m afraid to go full throttle, when I take the safeties off though its no contest” kinda thing.

But anyway, he didn’t get used much again pre-Flashpoint, and hasn’t made an appearance since, to my knowledge, but using pre-Flashpoint based settings or continuities....Boone’s very much a credible threat to Dick, has a ton of history with him, and a huge ax to grind with their last encounter having him vow that this wasn’t over between them.

And like the thing is, its not just about getting revenge against Dick because he blames him for the original Shrike’s death. Like, its very much a rivalry that stems back to before the first Shrike died. Boone has pretty much always been shown to desperately want, need to be better than Dick, that’s what keeps him coming back and that’s what he really holds against Dick and always has...and its not just their skills, its that Dick’s a hero, that they ultimately came from the same place but Dick’s loved and revered for his skills and choices while Boone has nothing and no one, and insists its because Dick took away the only person Boone ever had....though the reality that both of them are probably perfectly aware of is that Shrike never actually gave a damn for any of the kids he trained, even if he showed favor to Dick and Boone in particular. But Shrike for a time made Boone feel special, made him feel like he had a place and a purpose, and its clear he’s never really found anything like that ever again....and really, he never had it at Vengeance Academy either, but he’s been able to romanticize it in his own mind and memories as being otherwise.

Whereas for Dick....this relationship always had so much more potential than anyone ever truly delved into, but the basic material and hints were always there. My read of them was always that for Dick, Boone kind of embodied the idea of being his own dark mirror....he was an example of what Dick could have been, if he’d embraced VA and Shrike the way Boone had, out of a lack of options, instead of returning with Bruce and giving him another chance, and Bruce taking another chance on Dick.

In a lot of ways, R:Y1 - even though its events only happened because of shit Bruce never should have laid on Dick, driving him away in the first place....looked at through the eyes of a ten year old Dick Grayson who’d in the span of a couple years gone from losing his former circus home and parents, to juvie (Dixon wrote both R:Y1 and the Robin origin that had Dick go to juvie, so that was the specific context for all stories related to Shrike), to Wayne Manor, where he ultimately became Robin....and after not even a full year as Robin.....Dick then ended up on the streets and then spending months training at a facility for orphans and street kids to be made assassins....before ultimately returning to Wayne Manor, Bruce and being Robin.....

Like, its easy to see how to Dick, all of this probably looked almost like Bruce had saved him from worse circumstances and his own worse nature not once, but twice....even if the second time could have been avoided. The point is though, I don’t think Dick ever forgot his time there, his own desperate need for Shrike’s approval (and he did very much want it while he was there....he was hurting, he’d gotten used to having an adult who cared about him again, and with him feeling like Bruce had rejected him and in doing so taken away all the approval he’d given him previously, make no mistake, Dick very much DID desperately want an authority figure’s approval, and his rivalry with Boone WAS a two-way street.

Dick perhaps wanted Boone’s friendship a little more than the other way around, I’d wager, given that Dick’s a more social, friendly person by nature, he wants to get along with people....but VA was a very definitively dog eat dog kind of place and Dick did not seem above reveling in the scraps of approval Shrike threw him at times like the mission he and Boone fought about, even though he knew how much it dug at Boone to see himself knocked down a peg by their teacher with the latter then praising Dick at the same time.

So my point being...I don’t think Dick’s ever forgotten his time at VA, or what he felt like while living there.....how close he came to shooting Two-Face in revenge for all that he blamed Two-Face for costing him....as well as remembering that for awhile, he and Boone very much were a kind of friends, even if they never were like say, he was with the Titans (who he’d yet to meet at this point in the timeline). Like, I’d characterize the two of them as one of those things where they probably wouldn’t have been friends under other circumstances, or even call themselves friends, but it was more they were the only ones who displayed having any kind of connection to each other, at a time and place in their lives where they didn’t really have anyone else.

So all of that added up, yeah, to me, Boone in Dick’s eyes is a kind of regret, and road not taken. He’s what Dick could have been if Dick didn’t have Bruce in his corner...if he, like Boone, hadn’t had anyone BUT Shrike. Dick likely can easily look at Boone and see what his life might have turned out like if he HAD shot Two-Face that night, because I don’t think Dick would ever believe there’s any way Bruce would have taken him back after that....meaning that he really WOULD have had nowhere else to go at that point...and thus easily could have ended up continuing at VA or even going to the League with Boone and Talia.

And because of all of that, my read on Dick’s attitude towards Boone was always that....its a blend of defensive antagonism and also some guilt and romanticized nostalgia. Dick’s defensive in response to Boone’s antagonism, because he isn’t to blame for Shrike’s death and knows it, just as he knows he’s not really worth mourning and didn’t care about either of them....but Dick’s ALSO defensive because every time Boone hurls an accusation at him about how Dick’s not any better than him - not skill wise, but as people - Dick, IMO, ABSOLUTELY AGREES AND BELIEVES THE SAME. The flip side of the coin that is seeing Boone as what he could have been....is that he himself then, is perhaps what BOONE could have been, if Boone had been the one to get the opportunities that Dick had.

And THAT, I think, is the source of the weird almost guilt that Dick has occasionally had in regards to Boone...this belief that he isn’t innately any better than his one-time sorta friend, and that he’s not any innately more deserving of the opportunities he got via Bruce, and that Boone never was afforded. That with someone in his corner, rather than just seeking to exploit him, Boone could have been every bit the hero Dick grew up to be. That he really did have someone who loved and cared for him, in Bruce, while Boone only has his desperate, misguided belief that Shrike felt the same about him, because there was nobody else to even point to as a possibility for that. I think when Dick thinks of Boone, there’s always this kinda hazy ‘what if’ where he idly wonders what if he could have convinced Boone that Shrike’s death wasn’t his fault, or that Shrike didn’t care about them...and got Boone to come with him, or got Bruce to find Boone. What if he’d tried reaching out to Bruce about VA earlier, or not avoided him so long, and Bruce had been able to come earlier, when there was a chance that other boys besides just Dick could have been ‘saved’ from the life Shrike tried to convince them was the ONLY life path where they’d have any power or influence, where they’d ever matter, at all.

So...I just think there’s so so so so many possibilities with this largely untouched little corner of Dick’s history, and this one specific character it intersected with, and hardly has ever been followed up on. Boone and Dick have just soooooooo much potential to have the intense, emotionally charge love/hate kind of rivalry between a hero and villain or even just mercenary or antihero, that Dick’s so often characterized as having with Slade or Jason.....

But the thing is, here? There’s no need to invent or embellish antagonism between Dick and someone else, the way fandom’s largely made up the iconic antagonism between Dick and Jay. The antagonism is very much real, between Dick and Boone, very much understandable, and most importantly, very much MUTUAL. It exists on Dick’s part every bit as much as Boone’s....Dick was almost kinda gleeful about kicking Boone’s ass that first time in Bludhaven and coming out on top, in a way that he rarely is in his victories....because its very easy to see how these two could easily slip back into a familiar rivalry and desire to one-up each other, the way they had as desperate, emotionally neglected children. Dick has the potential to be PETTY with Boone in a way that people WANT to write him being with others where he’s just NOT and likely never would be, because Dick’s someone who’s aware of how others perceive him, and privileges he has that others don’t, and stuff like that....all of that plays into why Dick so often tries so hard and intently to be his best self with people even when he’d rather not be.

But with Boone, you can potentially throw all that out the window, due to the very precise nature of when and where in their lives that Boone and Dick had their short term but very emotionally impactful pseudo-friendship and early rivalry. Because even if Dick feels a little guilty for getting the life he did and that Boone didn’t - that’s not his FAULT, and he does know that too, just as he knows he’s not to blame for the things Boone resents him for.....and even if part of Dick probably feels a little sorry for Boone, he also knows that doesn’t mean that Boone hasn’t made his own choices and there comes a point where its put up or shut up time, and you can keep blaming anyone and everyone for your life or you can look around and acknowledge that here and now, nobody is holding a gun to Boone’s head and saying you have to kill people, you have to fight Dick for this and this reason....and so on that front, Dick can more willingly and without guilt push back against his own feelings of guilt and pity and let out his own pettiness and resentments for Boone having made him into this scapegoat.

All of which makes for a perfect storm of emotionally charged interactions any and every encounter between these two highly skilled individuals with equally extensive lifetimes of training under their belts....all against a backdrop of mingled resentment, nostalgia, and squandered potential brotherhood thanks to this bubble in time from both their childhoods where they were briefly friends, brothers in arms, rivals, and both everything the other had and everything the other never became or ever wanted to be.

With the cherry on top being that Boone is literally the ONLY LIVING PERSON IN THE WORLD....who has knowledge or awareness of the ten or eleven year old Dick Grayson was at one of the darkest periods of his life, where he believed himself completely alone and unloved and with NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE. Meaning that when Boone - and Boone alone - says he knows Dick in a way that nobody else does or ever could, even BRUCE, that he knows a side of Dick that nobody else will ever be privy to, that tiny sliver of Dick Grayson that stood over Two-Face’s trembling body with a gun and had the POTENTIAL to pull the trigger.....

He is absolutely and one hundred percent correct.

Like...you can’t TELL me that’s not good stuff.

Also, I’ve just always loved that trope where one person refers to someone by a name NOBODY else knows them as....with that name having meaning to the two of them alone.

Like to Boone....Dick is Freddy Lloyd. He knows that’s not Dick’s name, he always knew that, just like Boone probably isn’t his.....but the person Boone knew was named Freddy Lloyd, and that person was real, even if nobody else has ever truly known “Freddy” because that’s not who Dick has ever been to them, or who he’s been AROUND them. Boone might not know Dick’s actual real name and where to find him in the phone book, but he’s known from day one that Nightwing’s secret identity is Freddy Lloyd, like he knew instantly from seeing Nightwing fight with a pair of escrima sticks that the person under the mask was his old friend Freddy, and that Nightwing used to be the first Robin which means Robin was Freddy too. He lived with him for months, neither of them wearing masks, he would recognize him if they passed on the street.

(Although with this point, its why I’ve personally always been kind of dubious about the plot point of having Boone try so hard to figure out Dick’s real identity....like, honestly, that story point doesn’t really hold up. Boone SHOULD be able to identify Dick as easily as he identified Nightwing. Dick Grayson, ward and eventual adopted son of Bruce Wayne, has been a HIGHLY visible individual at various points in his life.

I can easily believe that Bruce invested considerable effort in keeping Dick out of the public eye when Dick first came to live with him and was still adjusting and recovering - in fact, given that all of this is in context with the juvie origin, I’ve always headcanoned that Bruce probably spared no expense in covering up Dick’s time there as much as possible, so he wouldn’t be bombarded with additional stigma from people misconstruing that, and with more than enough evidence against the state for fucking up so badly with Dick there, he could have slapped any official evidence of Dick’s time there with so many gag orders nobody felt safe breathing a word about it.

All of which is to say, its very plausible to me that Dick wasn’t publicly recognizable by the time he ran away during Robin: Year One, and Bruce certainly wouldn’t have advertised that, and who knows what strings he had to pull or things he had to fake to keep CPS off his back until he found Dick, out of fear that otherwise, people would take Dick away once he did get him back. So I can imagine Freddy not being recognized by Shrike or Boone while he was with them. What I can’t imagine is Boone never turning on the TV or reading an article about Bruce Wayne and family in years after that, and ever once thinking to himself that Dick looks JUST like his old friend Freddy...and once you have that thought as a starting point, it SHOULD definitely be possible to dig a little deeper and find out stuff that confirms it, like the timelines of Dick coming to live with Bruce versus being mysteriously unavailable or out of sight anywhere, until just after the fall of Vengeance Academy, etc. But yeah. My point is, I maintain that Boone absolutely knows that Nightwing is Freddy is Dick and that particular plot point is dumb.)

Anyway, my point with that tangent is like....imagine Boone and Dick tangling at various points over the years, both equally determined and invested in coming out on top....with many of these encounters happening at times Dick is away from his family, like when he was living in Bludhaven....

But inevitably, they’re bound to clash in full view of the Batfamily, who bear witness for the first time to this unleashed side of Dick NONE of them have ever seen, never even imagined him acting like this, holding this....grudge against someone with a seemingly equivalent grudge and none of them can really account for why. Imagine their reactions to hearing Boone casually call Dick “Freddy” and like...this means something to Dick, he’s not surprised by it, but he’s not treating it like its some alias from a random undercover op, like, its like he IS Freddy, like its his own name, but at the same time...who the fuck is Freddy? They all want to know. Even Bruce might have trouble placing Boone or his connection to Dick at first, because there’s no reason he would have ever found out the alias Dick went by at the time, if Dick never felt a reason to tell him.

Imagine the truth of where and when and how Boone and Dick are connected slowly unfolding (to my recollection, in the comics I don’t think he ever even told Babs the full story, even after she and Dinah saved him from Boone....just a few terse references, from what I remember, and again....according to the same writer to write all of these various connected stories....Boone actually knew Dick BEFORE Babs even met him for the first time as either Dick Grayson OR Robin).

Its entirely possible the rest of the family doesn’t even know any of R:Y1 happened. Sure, I think they all know the basics of Two-Face beating Dick almost to death when he’d only been Robin a short time, but do they know that Bruce fired him then? That Dick ran away to live on the streets and then ended up being trained as an assassin for months by a League-affiliated supervillain? I’d doubt it, because who would tell them? I can’t imagine its a time or a part of his life Dick wants to volunteer to anyone, and Bruce probably still feels guilty so I doubt he’d ever volunteer that information. And Alfred I imagine would feel its not his place to be the one to drop that info on any of the others without Bruce or Dick’s say-so.

Like sure, Bruce has files on all of that time, probably, but even with their hacking prowess, would even Babs or Tim have had time to hunt down and go through every single file Bruce has ever created....especially ones he might have tucked away for being particularly sensitive or private, and how do even the best hackers guarantee hunting down files they don’t even know they’re looking for? For that matter, it strikes me that as much as we tend to make a fanon trope out of Babs or Tim knowing everything about everyone because they can access any file, even hidden or locked ones...that IS intrusive and there’s plenty of old files about Bruce or Dick they probably never looked at because there’s a point where that’s none of their business, like if its not an official case they need info for, they should be asking directly, not snooping behind closed doors.

So....its entirely likely, the more I think about it, that all of this would be a family secret that would be an utter revelation to most of them in its entirety.

And you think there’s potential for resentment between Dick and Boone.....imagine throwing the family into it, and how Dick’s brothers and sister feel about this mercenary and assassin who claims to know more about their brother than they do, know him better than any of them ever have....and think, from a certain angle....oh fuck, he’s actually not entirely wrong?

Just.

More Boone. More Shrike. More Vengeance Academy.

THERE IS SO MUCH UNTAPPED POTENTIAL THERE, UGGGGGGGH.

Also also also: I present to you - in context of all of the above - the possibility of magical body or life swapping stories a la Freaky Friday??? Like....UMMM COULD YOU IMAGINE??!!!

#boone aka shrike

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