Nicola Scott's illustration may have opened the floodgates for Nightwing fans to go feral over a fictional man's two-dimensional tushy, but DC writers like Devin Grayson — no relation, although it is a neat coincidence — paved the way for Scott's work by placing the hero's sexuality at the forefront of his character. During an interview with Shameless, Grayson said, "The way I think about [Nightwing], he likes everyone, he's ... just this incredibly physical (and attractive) person who lives wholly in the corporeal plane and responds with ... his body before his head or heart." Combine that with his demeanor, which is often depicted as light-hearted and flirtatious, and it's little wonder that Dick Grayson's journey led where it did.
In Tom King and Tim Seely's 2014 comic "Grayson #6," a villain who struggles to identify faces clocks Nightwing when he sees the hero bent over, saying, "I'd know that a** anywhere." More recently, the animated series "Harley Quinn," as well as its noncanonical comic adaptation "Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: The Eat. Bang! Kill Tour," locked in enough jokes about Nightwing's butt to guarantee at least another decade of DeviantArt posts. In Season 4 of the animated series, Nightwing is featured in the "Gotham's Hottest Hotties" tabloid. In Volume 3 of the comic, Harley Quinn nicknames him "Tushwing" and Poison Ivy says, "Objectification is wrong and women are better than that ... but, I mean, have you seen your a**?"
