Superman and Batman by Rafael Albuquerque

Nightwing interrupting the gay cheating hookup

*gives warm fluffy towel*

habbbibirthday my silly riddling freak <3

Dick Grayson aka Nightwing style

DC Database’s guide to helping you keep track of retcons and changes is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

The original batkid age differences still work in the current comic era, and I'm gonna keep assuming they're canon unless they tell me otherwise. (sequel to this post)

Damian is canonically 14 (as of 2021).

This makes Tim about 21, which fits with his recent 'college dropout who lives alone on a houseboat' character arc (also 2021). A comic in 2015 said Tim was 16 when Damian was at least 10, but since it's a minor difference I'm gonna stick with the ~7 year gap they had pre-n52.

So Jason must be 23 — as far as I know, no canon contradicts this.

And Dick is about 29. This causes some minor issues, actually — in 2014 he was supposedly 21 when he should have been about 24, and in 2018 he's described as 'mid-20s,' which could be a stretch depending on how much in-universe time passed between 2018 and 2021. Overall though, not too messy.

So that makes Cass 24, Steph 21-22, and Babs around 30.

Honestly I have no idea how old Duke is beyond 'high school age" — from at least 2015 to present. Which actually kinda screws things up, if we assume that all the other characters aged 4 years in that time. Like, in 2015 he was closer to Tim's age, and now he seems to be closer to Damian's. For what it's worth tho, I think of him as ~17.

Anyway, point is DC DOES let their characters age (at least since the Rebirth era started in 2016. pretty sure n52 was like, a stasis bubble or something). I'm sure the timeline will continue to get wonkier as the youngest generation of heroes grows up, but for now the Bats seem to be doing alright.

Detective Comics: A Lonely Place of Living

Batman: Dark Prisons

I like Bruce as much as the next person but he is really stupid sometimes with his moral code. (Really love the Rebirth Comics so far)

DC Rebirth Birds of Prey by Kamome Shirahama.

Starfire by Dan Mora

I’m putting all these together because they’re all from the same special team up issue. I literally loved this issue though, I didn’t realize how much I missed Dick and Roy interacting with each other after DC made Roy and Jason best friends. Very refreshing to see Dick refer to Roy as “one of his best friends in the world” :( I miss them

ALSO DAMIAN IS SO CUTE 😭 why did they let Damian age but not Tim they should have reversed it and kept Damian as a child forever and let Tim mature (/mostly joking)

This is a child

He is a lovely child

He just needs to work on people skills

I MEAN LOOK AT HIS LITTLE FACE!!!

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman (Vol. 5) #70

Art by Jenny Frison

Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl aka Oracle style

I am so freaking angry about how DC has treated disabled characters in recent years.

Many people have pointed out all the negatives of making Babs into Batgirl again — taking away her character development, de-aging her, casting aside two other Batgirls, using comic book science to “”cure”” her, etc, all for the sake of nostalgia. Oracle was an icon and an inspiration to many, and that was taken from us. Some great meta on this here and here.

But what I don’t hear anyone talking about is how this was also done with Joey Wilson/Jericho of the Teen Titans, albeit in a slightly different way.

In the post-52 DCU, he doesn’t use sign language anymore (he’s mute) and instead uses technology to speak.

First of all, artists drawing Joey signing shows loving detail and care toward representation for that form of communication (which is frequently overlooked by able-bodied people). Joey using ASL is such incredibly important representation for everyone, and taking that away from him feels like an easy way out so artists don’t have to draw ASL and writers can give him typical dialogue. It reminds me of stories about deaf people (especially kids) who were disappointed when Hawkeye didn’t experience hearing loss in the MCU. There’s a lot of people who see themselves in different kinds of characters, and when you take that diversity away, you lose something important. I hate these cop-outs to fit differently abled characters into the cookie cutter superhero mold. Superheroes aren’t defined by their abilities — they’re defined by their heroism! Characters like Oracle and Jericho, among others, have reminded all kinds of people that anyone can be a hero so long as you care about helping others. That’s literally the point of superheroes. The superhero genre should always have room for diversity and representation of all kinds. Minimizing or erasing disability does a massive disservice to that legacy.