I have always loved Barbara and Dick’s relationship. They’re who I feel belong together. I just finished reading Batgirl: Year One and their relationship is just the sweetest. I also love how their relationship has been going in the New 52 and Rebirth comics.
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In a huge fan of the Dynamite Duo, so I have to go with Babs. Not that I don’t love Starfire, she’s awesome. It would be nice to see TITANS TV show address this love triangle. A Batgirl guest visit would be terrific!
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Starfire! Putting aside superhero and comic book characteristics. I find in every rendition of Babs she comes off super whiny and insecure about her relationship with Dick. Their relationship is way too teen drama for my liking. At least with Starfire it’s different because she’s an alien and not the same cliche storytelling that you can find in every romance novel.
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Babs and it’s not even close.
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The Robin/Batgirl relationship always seemed like the powerful, first love, high school relationship. With Starfire, they had a mature relationship. She challenged him, made him look at his beliefs, and he matured and became a better man. To often Dick seems to regress as a character in the Bat-books, in Titans book he is becoming the person he aspires to be. For me it is Starfire.
That said, probably the most romantic moment in comic is Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon on the trapeze, not long after she became wheelchair bound. It is them not on a date.
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I recommend Nightwing annual 2, it’s called “Till Death Do Us Part”, it’s really what made me fell in love with the relationship between Dick and Babs, and it shows the flaws Dick makes as a person, how he’s not really the most loyal person, and can be kind of dumb sometimes, but it’s absolutely fantastic.
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My vote is for Kory aka Starfire
Dick and Kory were each other’s love interests from 1980 to 1994.
Kory helped Dick with growth and maturity. They were opposites that complemented one another.
Their connection in the 1980s,1990s comics was profound and meaningful.
They were one of the most popular and iconic couples in DC at the time
Kory was quite the supportive,caring,and loyal girlfriend to Dick.
She opened him up.
She helped him take off his red tunic when he gave up being Robin.
Right before he became Nightwing, he was grateful for Kory standing by him while he almost alienated everybody and that he loved her for that.
Dick and Kory had intimacy, tenderness, sweetness, and romance in their relationship.
Kory can put her foot down with Dick. She told him what he needed to hear and not what he wanted to hear.
DC Comics give her this description:
A princess who became a slave. A slave who became a warrior. A warrior who became one of the world’s greatest super heroes.
https://www.dccomics.com/characters/starfire
Dick thought this about Kory:
"A life filled with such hardships would have reduced others to despair, but not you. You fought back, looking at life as a challenge.
You’re teaching me a lot, Kory.
I spent my first eighteen years living with Batman, learning how to contain my feelings. Three years with Kory’s changing all that."
Kory told Dick
“If you love someone on Tamaran, you live for them and they for you.”
Kory took that to heart. As a Tamaranean, she lived through her passions and emotions.
Nobody has to take my word for it.
This can be confirmed
a lot of comic pictures showing that Dick and Kory’s relationship was based on love and caring with Kory being very supportive of Dick which helped him change for the better and be his own man.
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/teen-titans/4060-19081/forums/dick-graysonnight wing-and-koriandrstarfire-1975639/
I was actually Dick/Barbara fan until I learned about Kory.
After reading many Teen Titan,Titan issues, I am totally a fan of Dick/Kory now.
I believe that Dick and Kory belong together, and I hope that they reunite in the future.
They are cute couple in the Teen Titan cartoon series.
They are a couple with great chemistry in the DC Animated Movies.
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“I recommend Nightwing annual 2, it’s called “Till Death Do Us Part”, it’s really what made me fell in love with the relationship between Dick and Babs, and it shows the flaws Dick makes as a person, how he’s not really the most loyal person, and can be kind of dumb sometimes, but it’s absolutely fantastic.”
Nightwing annual 2 is a retcon that was made to diminish the greatness of the pairing of Dick and Kory as well as to downgrade the importance that Kory had in Dick’s life.
All three people were written out of character. Dick was totally one woman-man that wouldn’t cheat on Kory the night before their wedding. Kory was the type that was honest and upfront about things of the heart. She wouldn’t have lied to Dick about Barbara coming to see her. Barbara wouldn’t have gone and had sex with another woman’s man before the wedding.
Dick and Barbara never shown any interest in each other when Dick and Kory were each other’s love interests from 1980 to 1994. While Dick was in a relationship with Kory, Barbara was in a relationship with Ted Kord aka Blue Beetle.
Before the Batman animated series, Barbara was 7 years older than Dick before they made them around the same age. Barbara was actually congress woman, and Dick worked as an intern for her.
If a pairing was a true love relationship, no retcons to diminish the greatness of another pairing should be needed. Therefore, Dick/Barbara is not a true love relationship. If anything, Dick/Kory is.
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Kory
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Nightwing annual 2 Till Death Do Us Part was published in 2007 which was 13 years after Dick and Kory were broken up after being each other’s love interests for 14 years (1980-1994). Dick and Kory were broken up because Batman office took Dick back from the Titans office, and Batman office didn’t have Kory. The Batman office starting pushing Barbara as Dick’s one true love even though they never appeared that way before Dick was sent to the Titans office. Dick became one of the popular comic book characters while he was in the New Teen Titans in the 1980s.
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Thanks for the response, I’m a much bigger fan of Dickbabs, but I have respect for Dick and Kori too. I just feel as if it makes more sense in the current continuity. After reading a lot of Nightwing comics, I think Oracle just fits in his world better, and Dick being the emotionally open person, and Babs being the more emotionally suppressive person just provide a good contrast. Plus, them being Bruce’s greatest successes is a plus too. It’s just a personal thing, and I’ve had experiences with my longtime girlfriend in life which mirror that of Dick and Barbara.
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My girl said Starfire would never choose Batman over Nightwing so there ya go
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But Batgirl x Batman isn’t canon and there’s like a 15 year age difference.
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Batgirl and Batman is only canon in the Timmverse
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I wanted to defend Kory and how she has been screwed over to pump up Barbara as Dick’s one true love.
It was about defending Dick/Kory as well as Kory as a character by clearing up misconconceptions about their relationship being about just attraction,lust,and a meaningless romance. I even posted a link to the comic vine thread that I made about them that has a lot of comic book pictures showing that their relationship was based on love and caring.
I put in a lot of time and work to copy pictures from many comic book pages and insert them in my thread. I wanted to provide visual proof to support my defense of Dick/Kory ship and Kory. There is a lot of it. I even inserted youtube videos that showed their relationship in depth. https://comicvine.gamespot.com/teen-titans/4060-19081/forums/dick-graysonnightwing-and-koriandrstarfire-1975639/
I believe that Kory needed defending due to the damage that has been done to her reputation as a character and to her romantic relationship history with Dick. She’s not the heartless alien slut that got in Barbara’s way to get with Dick. She is a super-powered alien warrior princess who overcome her past as a slave and still had a big heart and wanted to help others not go through what she went through, and that was one of things that made Dick fall in love with her. She opened him up and helped him express his emotions better. He helped her with restraint and to live on earth.
All one has to do is read the New Teen Titans,Tales of the Teen Titans, and The New Titans from 1980 to 1994 to see that all this is true. All one has to do is look at the comic pictures at my thread to see that I am not lying.
Unlike Dick/Barbara, Dick/Kory didn’t have any retcons to develop their relationship as a true love pairing,let alone at another pairing’s expense. Their relationship was developed slowly and gradually. It took a little over 2 years in real time for them to get together, and they became one of the most popular and iconic couples in DC comics. They were each other’s love interest for 14 years. No retcons are going to erase that type of history.
If a pairing is true love, then retcons to diminish the greatness of another pairing is not needed.
Great explanation of how Barbara (Batgirl,Oracle) got elevated as Dick’s (Robin,Nightwing) main love interest at the expense of Kory (Starfire).
Dick ‘chose’ Babs since most of his writers either are more familiar with that relationship, prefer that relationship, put them together because DC editorial wanted them to, think that Babs is his default love interest or just don’t know much about Dick and Kory and assume that the DickKory relationship is pure lust (which for the record, it isn’t).
This is a fairly complicated reply, mainly because the answer relies on a combination of canon, characterisation and the comics/editing outside (aka in the real world). Also I’m admitting it now that I’m much more biased towards Dick and Kory (The New Teen Titans was the first comic series I fully completed and I prefer their relationship to Dick and Barbara).
Pre-flashpoint Real World: Nightwing and Starfire were originally going to get married. When that plan failed, Nightwing’s character was put into limbo for a year or so, with a couple of guest appearances, before he was finally given a mini-series and then his own proper series. Since his botched wedding was a pretty big failure and the New Titansseries had declined in popularity and general writing quality, DC and Dixon basically tried to separate the idea of Nightwing and the Titans. That’s why Kory (Starfire) is rarely mentioned in that series, despite the fact that she was his canon girlfriend (and eventual fiancé) for something like five years in canon, and the fact that he was 100% fully in love with her and seemed pretty comfortable with the idea of spending the rest of his life with her. Anyway, Dixon needed to lessen the DickKory relationship, and so he did that through a series of (poor) retcons, rarely mentioning her, or belittling her in order to boost up Babs/whatever other love interest.
The writers wanted to push for the whole ‘Dick and Babs were soulmates from the moment they met’ and so the result of that was a bunch of retcons, slowly erasing a big portion of the DickKory relationship and also making characters like Bruce and Babs hate Kory/make snide comments about her, despite it being really out of character for them.
Pre-flashpoint Canon: That’s why it suddenly felt like he ‘fell out of love with Starfire’, because Dick went from wanting to marry her and spend the rest of his life with her (although the actual marriage was impulsive, but that’s a can of worms for another day) to suddenly declaring that Barbara Gordon had always been ‘the one’ and was ‘above the others’ and barely mentioning Kory (and if she was mentioned, it was some sort of belittling comment about their relationship). Dick was retconned as always holding out some sort of hope for Babs to love him, and Kory became ‘slutty alien who got in the way of DickBabs’ 
Post-flashpoint Real World: Dick and Kory’s history was mentioned, but since they were on different teams and the Titans had been retconned out, their relationship has barely been explored and so I can’t really help you much with that. Their relationship still had fans (mainly due to Robin/Starfire in the animated show) and so DC mentioned Nightwing and Starfire dating, but that was mainly it since most of what Scott Lobdell wrote is currently/has been retconned. Nightwing and Babs are popular, too, and since the pre-flashpoint universe ended with Babs and Dick almost getting married, it makes sense that DC would keep on pushing for Dick and Babs.
Post-flashpoint Canon: Dick and Kory presumably didn’t date that long, and their relationship has been mentioned like four times (with most of them being from Kory’s side of things; Tim Seeley has only mentioned DickKory when he needs something to compare Dick and Shawn with). Dick and Babs connection has been much stronger since they crossed a lot more in the Batfamily books. However Dick and Babs (as far as I’m aware) have romantic tension, but haven’t actually dated before (yet) so he’s presumably ‘chosen’ Babs since his relationship with Kory has currently been written as something that was one-sided and Babs has been seen as his ‘soulmate/ultimate love interest.’
(also if you got this far, props to you! personally I find Dick and Babs too similar in the fact that they both repress their emotions too much, and so I think their relationship wouldn’t work out/would suffer as a result of that. Babs always struck me as the kind of person who didn’t like needing people emotionally and enjoys her independence, whereas Dick has always been the kind of character who at heart, needs people and a strong emotional connection, and therefore after a while they’d be stuck in a situation where one of them would have to sacrifice their emotional needs to make the relationship work).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nightwing/comments/5zz3jr/why_did_nightwing_choose_babs_over_starfire/
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Starfire! Hands down
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@Astynaz Thanks for your respectfulness and I very much do appreciate your effort in your replies.
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I personally chose Barbara over Kori just because Batgirl/Oracle is one of my favorite characters without her attachment to Dick. Like how a lot of people were introduced to Dick and Kori in the Teen Titans show, I was first introduced to the relationship between Nightwing and Batgirl in the animated series, where they did have a relationship until Bruce Timm tried to force his self inserting fan fiction. So when I started reading comics they were focusing on the relationship between Oracle and Nightwing, I liked it a lot so it just stuck with me. I also feel as if it makes more sense, and the whole “It’s incest” argument is dumb in my opinion, because Barbara didn’t operate much with the Batfamily until she became Oracle, and just because they’re childhood friends doesn’t mean they see each other as siblings. I like Starfire, I just haven’t been as exposed to her as other characters.
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Kory. I’m not a fan of Babs as a character already so…lol. DickKory is great in New Teen Titans, I felt like their relationship was healthy and both of them helped one another. Also loved them in the Teen Titans show! Can’t wait for Titans and to see DickKory evolve in live action! <3
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I believe that Barbara has a big advantage over Kory as Dick’s love interest in one way that is fundamental. Barbara is a human like Dick, and she doesn’t stand out. She can easily blend in with other humans. She has a secret identity. The public doesn’t know that Barbara and Batgirl are one and same. When she hangs out with Dick Grayson, nobody would able to know that Batgirl is hanging out with Dick Grayson leading to people figure out Dick Grayson is Nightwing.
Kory is an alien, and she stands out with her orange skin and 6’4 height. She cannot blend in with humans like Barbara does. She has no secret identity.Dick hanging out with her would lead others to figuring out that he is Nightwing.
Instead of creating the “Dick never loved Kory and that it was always Barbara that he loved” which strongly contradicts what’s been shown between them from 1980 to 1994, what could have been written and shown was:
Dick believed that he couldn’t be with Kory because being with her would jeopardize his secret identity as well as Batman’s identity. How he comes to the decision is Bruce confronting him about the problem which leads to him heavily pressured to make a choice. He would sacrifice his happiness with the woman he loves to protect the man who has been a father to him. It would be about sacrificing his desires and needs for the greater good. Furthermore, it would also emphasize the Bat-life overshadowing him no matter how much he resists which mirrors how Bat office had taken him away from the Titan office.
If I was editorial that wanted and planned for Dick and Kory to get back together, I would have it that Starfire goes back to having a secret identity as Kory Sanders.
The things that I would change to do that is:
Change her orange skin back to the original golden skin which was chalked up as being a Mediterranean tan by her brief boyfriend Franklin and her being referred to as Tawny Vixen by Roy. This way, her skin has a natural human skin color.
Make her shorter. Her official height says 6’4. I’d change it to 6’0. In The New Teen Titans, Volume 1,issue #2, she has appeared shorter than Dick Grayson who is listed as 5’10 when they met up at the swimming pool in Garfield’s mansion. There were early comic issues that had her around the same height or a little taller like when she was standing next to him on her first date on panel shown in The New Teen Titans Volume 1, issue #26.
Change her hair back to the thick,wavy auburn hair but make it less bushy,thick,and less long than in the original so it still looks normal. Leave out the hair looking like it flames up. It’s unnecessary.
Keep her light green alien eyes, but have her wear contacts lenses that give her normal looking eyes when she is disguised as human. She could get them from Star Labs. Hiding her eyes behind sunglasses like she did before doesn’t seem practical. If she’s back to having a career as a model, her eyes should be shown most of the time. When she is going to social events and meeting people, it’s better for her eyes to be shown for eye contact is important in socializing and communicating with others.
This would be away to not tell that Starfire and Kory Anders are one and the same and enable her to be with Dick without jeoparding his secret identity and Batman’s secret identity.
When I was reading the old comics, I felt the writer and artist did a lousy job of separating her Starfire identity from her Kory Anders identity with the extreme thick,bushy wavy hair that makes her stand out very much. Her hiding her alien eyes behind sunglasses did not seem effective to keep others from knowing that she’s Starfire.
Then they just said…the hell with it, the public knows she’s Starfire. Then later on, they just made her skin color orange so it’s all the way impossible for her to blend in with humans.
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