and the two Dynamic Duos team up. Van-Zee In Superman Family #183 (May/June 1977), Superman's look-alike second cousin Van-Zee and his niece's husband Ak-Var take up the Nightwing and Flamebird identities. The vigilantes take on crime in their city as had Superman and Olsen before them. Dick Grayson After Dick Grayson gives up his Robin mantle, he wonders for a while about his new role. When the Titans are threatened with a new foe, he takes on the mantle of Nightwing, in a homage to the Graysons, Batman, and Superman. This is the storyline that also introduces Slade Wilson A.K.A. Deathstroke the Terminator. Post-Crisis Kryptonian mythological figure Post-Crisis, there is a different originator of the Nightwing identity. Several hundred years before the birth of Kal-El, there was a Kryptonian man who was cast out from his family and decided to take on crime as the vigilante Nightwing. When Superman tells Dick Grayson of this story, Dick takes the name for himself. Dick Grayson Dick Grayson became Nightwing after Batman fired him from his own mantle of Robin for getting shot by Joker. Grayson's Flamebird was Bette Kane. After The New Teen Titans, Nightwing teamed up with old friend Speedy in Action Comics #613-618 & #627-634 later collected in New Friends Old Enemies. He featured in his own solo Nightwing series from 1995 to 2009; after Wayne's apparent death, Dick became the new Batman, retiring his Nightwing mantle temporarily. Grayson's Nightwing costume was a high-tech suit specially designed for his high-flying acrobatic style. His gauntlets and boots each contained eight compartments in which he could store items. They had a self-destruct feature built into them, similar to the ones in Batman's utility belt, and, as another security measure, the suit contained a one-use-only taser charge, which automatically emitted a high-voltage electrical shock when someone attempted to tamper with either the boots or gauntlets. Each gauntlet's sections could contain a wide array of equipment, such as sonic or smoke pellets, modified batarangs ("Wing-Dings"), knockout gas capsules, throwable tracers, and a sedative-tipped dart launcher. The right gauntlet was also equipped with a 100,000-volt stun gun. Like the gauntlets, his boot compartments could carry vital equipment such as flares, a rebreather as protection against any airborne non-contact toxins, a mini-computer equipped with fax, modem, GPS, and a minidisk re-writable drive. Other items were lock picks, a first-aid kit, a mini-cellphone, flexi-cuffs, antitoxin assortment, wireless