The “Battle of the Cowl” is over, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, Dick Grayson has won the twin thankless tasks of being Batman until Bruce Wayne inevitably returns and being partnered with the awful Damian Wayne as the new Robin.

Meanwhile, Dick’s other identity, Nightwing–the one he created himself and grew into, eschewing the idea that he inevitably had to inherit the Bat-mantle–is gone, and now Chris Kent, General Zod and Ursa’s son, is running around using the name.

Everyone knows Bruce will be back. You can’t take Bruce Wayne out of the equation for twenty years like Barry Allen. The question is, when he comes back, what happens to Dick? Does he go back to being Nightwing?

Look, I’m interested–I won’t go so far as to say excited–to read what Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely do with Batman and Robin. But part of me wishes they’d just done it in non-continuity, like All-Star Superman. Maybe they’ve sort of made an ersatz non-continuity with this twelve-issue run (which sounds like it’ll end with Bruce coming back), but the whole thing still seems odd.

What I’m most excited about from this whole thing are the two new Paul Dini-scripted titles, Streets of Gotham and Gotham City Sirens. Both Dr. Mrs. Ghostal and I are big Dini fans, and Dini’s run on Detective Comics is one of the best I’ve read, on par with Batman: Strange Apparitions.