Tim Seeley Responds To Grayson #13 Outrage

These two pages of the upcoming Grayson #13 previewed by ComicVine have caused considerable commentary by the commentariat. Some of which has seen writer Tim Seeley responds on Twitter.

The sexual objectification of Dick Grayson has been a central running gag of this series (and others) but it may have reached an apogee this week.

In which Grayson is given a through going over.

 A very thorough one.

I believe "anal probe" is the suggestion. And some are not really happy about this, given the context. But Tim Seeley has been giving his rationale.

There's a continued discussion scross Tumblr, where one post here,…

But you know what makes me feel disgusted? When things like that are written in the narrative as being okay. When it's just a joke. When it's really not that bad. When it's treated as fanservice. Man, Dick is so sexy. I love when he gets touched in ways that make him uncomfortable! I love when his supposed friends watch this happen! I love when he can't do anything to stop this behavior because she's in a position of power over him!

…is replied to be another reader here…

I would also appreciate it if people stopped speaking in the name of others who have been sexually harassed. I have been sexually harassed (hello, I am a woman), and I'm not uncomfortable with the sexual content in Grayson. (I think it's too on the nose sometimes, but I never really found it all that distracting, tbh.) And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. People have different ways of dealing with these things, and it's indeed something that a writer actually cannot anticipate. I would talk differently if Seeley was actually penning raunchy rape comedy or something equally terrible, but he's not.

Now Bleeding Cool has long championed creative freedom and expression, and when it comes to Grayson I've always read this as a reversal of tropes. It's the the wider context of decades of action adventure pulp storytelling, which might not always be present on each and every page.

Except for a nagging aspect I find hard to shake, that Dick Grayson was a character created to appeal to child readers. And although hardly any children read comics like this anymore, some read it to reconnect to their inner child. Which is why this kind of story may sting more…

Grayson #13 by Tom King, Tim Seeley and Mikel Janin is published this coming Wednesday by DC Comics.

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