In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively retconning away the previous story. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

This is an odd one because it's really not so much an abandoned plot so much as, well, an abandoned ponytail, but it was SO pointed of a removal that I am still going to count it.

For years, Dick Grayson rocked the most basic haircut possible. In the 1930s it looked the same as it did in the 1940s as it did in the 1950s as it did in the 1970s, you get the picture. Even when Dick graduated to becoming Nightwing, the haircut remained the same. The first time we saw some real change in his hairstyle was during the classic New Titans event, "Titans Hunt," where Dick is on the go for so long that he never really gets a chance to cut his hair so by the end of the storyline, his hair is much longer than it had ever been before. Of course, by "much longer," I just mean it was kind of shaggy, really (during that storyline, we briefly saw Dick as Nightwing in the year 2001 and he was wearing a ponytail by that point in time). It was long enough, though, that when Mirage of the Team Titans (while impersonating Dick's girlfriend, Starfire) gave him a haircut along with a new costume, he basically had a mullet. Dick rocked that mullet for the next year or so, but then, during his wedding to Starfire (after she was freed from Mirage keeping her captive...and Mirage somehow got away with that, which is super weird, right?), some bad guys attacked and Starfire had her mind/soul messed with and eventually she and Dick parted ways, but Dick kept trying to find her.

During this period, Dick was even briefly living in a remote village where Starfire had been and his hair was getting pretty darn long. By the time that he officially left the New Titans in New Titans #114 (by Marv Wolfman, Rick Mays, Karl Story, Jason Martin and Keith Champagne), it was pretty darn long.

Nightwing then moved over to the Batman titles, where he helped Bruce Wayne regain the title of Batman after Bruce previously entrusted it to the unstable former assassin, Jean-Paul Valley (Bruce was wearing his Bad Idea Jeans at the time, I assume). Once Bruce regained the mantle of the bat, he wanted a break and he asked if Dick could fill in for him. Dick agreed and for a time, he and Tim Drake served as Batman and Robin. During this period, Dick's hair had grown past mullet and it was now into ponytail territory (how that worked with a cowl is beyond me). Even after he returned to the Nightwing identity, he continued to rock the ponytail, although it was at least a somewhat restrained ponytail.

What was even weirder looking, though, was when Dick decided to NOT put his hair into a ponytail, like at the start of the 1995 Nightwing miniseries by Denny O'Neil, Greg Land and Mike Sellers.

Look at all of that hair! Dude practically had a lion's mane! During that first issue, Dick oddly decides that he wants to stop being a superhero. His logic is not particularly convincing (a lot of it boils down to "I'll never be as good as Batman, so what's the point?") and, obviously, by the second issue of the series, he wants to return to being Nightwing. The problem is that he got rid of his superhero costume in the first issue, so Alfred and Harold (Batman's former tech guy) put together a sleek new costume (designed by the great Brian Stelfreeze) and Dick decided to put his freakishly long hair into a ponytail along with this new costume and, well, holy crap, look at this dude's ponytail!

It was like Dick had a whip attached to the back of his head more than having an actual ponytail! Dick then brought this look to the various other Batman books, as he continued as a supporting character in the Bat-books for a while. He had a sparring session with Jean-Paul (who had taken back the name Azrael and was trying to be a superhero) where his ponytail was whipping ALL over the place.

Finally, in 1996, Nightwing received his very first ongoing solo series. The creative team on the series was Chuck Dixon, Scott McDaniel and Karl Story and it was clear that they were not fans of Dick's hairstyle. However, it had been established for a year at this point so they couldn't really just have him show up with a new hairstyle out of nowhere, so instead, they actually wrote it into the series!

The concept of the opening arc of Nightwing is that Gotham City suddenly got a whole pile of bodies washing up from Gotham's sister city, Bludhaven, known for being even more dangerous of a town than Gotham. Batman enlists Nightwing's help in investigating what's up with Bludhaven and Dick heads to the city, with his ponytail still intact...

However, during a fight in the issue between Nightwing and some gang members, one of the gang members misses Nightwing with his blade, but instead chops off Nightwing's ponytail! Dick is initially outraged over losing the ponytail that took him so long to grow, but the bad guy then tells him that it looked stupid and Dick basically had to agree.

Clearly, this was Dixon and McDaniel sneaking their own views of the ponytail into the comic while still giving fans of the ponytail an explanation in the comic as to why the hairstyle was gone. Nightwing then decided to remain in Bludhaven after the case was over, as he felt it gave him his own Gotham City to watch over. He continued to go ponytail-less for the rest of that series.

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future (presumably non-ponytail related) Abandoned Love, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!