Dick Grayson is trading his superhero suit for secret-agent cool.

Batman's former sidekick embarks on a new life as an undercover superspy in the comic book Grayson, an action-adventure series premiering July 2 from DC Comics. It's written by Tim Seeley (Revival) and Tom King, a former CIA counterterrorism operations officer.

After a career of being overshadowed by his cape-and-cowled father figure, this is a chance for Grayson "to take off the mask and step out on his own in a world where he's not simply being another hero like the hero he grew up with," King says.

For many readers, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was their introduction not only to the ethereal world of Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, but the medium of comics itself. Long celebrated as a “gateway” drug for new readers—including many female readers—Sandman remains one of the few comics ever to make its way onto the New York Times bestseller list. This October, the series is returning to comic book shops with a brand-new story–or rather, an old one, called Sandman: Overture.

“There is one Sandman story that I never got to tell… what happened just before [the first bound collection] Preludes and Nocturnes began,” said Gaiman at Comic-Con International last weekend. In the very first issue of the series, we learned that Morpheus—aka

It’s official: Robin is dead.

This Robin is, anyway. He’s Damian Wayne, the elementary-school-aged son of Batman and his recently minted arch-enemy/ex-girlfriend, Talia al-Ghul. He’d only ever been seen as an infant in a forgotten graphic novel Batman: Son of the Demon by Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham, before writer Grant Morrison and artist Andy Kubert brought him kicking and screaming into continuity when they launched the writer’s long-standing tenure on the Batman titles.

Neil Gaiman and J.H. Williams III will tell the "one tale still untold" from the Sandman Library.

When it comes to modern comic books, the conversation will inevitably turn to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, which stands alongside Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns in terms of literary and critical acclaim. Largely considered to be Vertigo Comics' first flagship title, the series introduced readers to Morpheus, the living personification of dreams, as he interacted with ordinary humans, faeries, angels,

Alan Moore is angry about DC Comics’ Watchmen prequels. He’s right.

Even by the wretched standards of the entertainment industry, superhero comics are known for their dreadful labor practices. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, famously sold the rights to the character to DC Comics for $130, and spent the latter part of their lives, and virtually all their money, fighting unsuccessfully to regain control of him. Similarly, Jack Kirby, the artist who co-created almost the entire roster of Marvel characters, was systematically stiffed by the company whose fortunes he made. Though most of the heroes in the Avengers film were Kirby creations, for example, his estate won’t receive a dime of the film’s $1 billion (and counting) in box office earnings.

Mourning in Gotham City, and across all of fanboy nation: Legendary comic book artist Jerry Robinson has died at the age of 89. Robinson, who was born in Trenton, N.J., on Jan. 1, 1922, was recruited to DC Comics by Batman creator Bob Kane and made key contributions to the character’s mythos.

After recently undertaking a journey to walk -- not fly -- across the United States in the "Grounded" storyline and reconnect with the country and everyday Americans, Superman appears to be taking another step that could have major implications for his national identity: in Action Comics #900...

...Superman announces that he is going to give up his U.S. citizenship. Despite very literally being an alien immigrant, Superman has long been seen as a patriotic symbol of "truth, justice, and the American way," from his embrace of traditional American ideals to the iconic red and blue of his costume. What it means to stand for the "American way" is an increasingly complicated thing, however, both in the real world and in superhero comics, whose storylines have increasingly seemed to mirror current events and deal with moral and political complexities rather than simple black and white morality.