I used to have time to read my comics in a coffee shop. Now I have to read them in the bathroom. Then I write reviews of them. I wash my hands in between.
NIGHTWING #29
This is my first time reviewing an issue of Nightwing. Weird. Not consciously or on purpose. I guess maybe there were always more interesting or more ‘important’ books that required my attention. I mean, it’s not because it’s a bad book. Far from it. It’s a solid, month in month out, peripheral Bat-title.
So why are they cancelling it?
DC has already announced that the next issue will be the
last. ‘Fallout from Forever Evil’ blah blah blah. They ALSO announced that this
would be longtime writer Kyle Higgins last issue. So what we have here is a
rarity in comics. The opportunity for a writer to spend an issue saying
farewell to a character he has just spent multiple years writing. And it’s
really quite beautiful.
Wait, what? Is that…sentiment I’m showing there? Something
other than hard hearted cynicism? This can’t be right.
But it is. If you like Nightwing as a character, you’re
probably already getting this series. If you haven’t checked in with him since
the New 52 began, here’s a really spectacular issue that encapsulates all
Nightwing is and all that he has encountered and survived since the relaunch.
Ostensibly this is, on the surface, the wrap-up to a couple
issues worth of storyline. Mr. Zsasz,
low level Bat-villain, serial killer and self-mutilator has found his way to
Chicago (where Nightwing has taken up residence). I don’t recall the exact
circumstances, but a young girl whose parents were murdered by Zsasz has been
staying with Dick and his roommates since the killing. She’s plucky and
resourceful so NATURALLY she (almost immediately) figures out Dick is Nightwing.
So what does she do? After discovering his costume and equipment storage hidey
hole, she steals his escrima sticks and sets off on a quest to deliver some
justice to Zsasz. OF COURSE Zsasz gets the drop on her, and just before adding
another hash mark to his body, Nightwing bursts in (tracking devices in the
sticks, natch) and rescues her by taking out Zsasz with one well-placed
roundhouse kick.
As a superhero adventure, it’s adequate. But it’s what
happens between the lines that makes this book so special. Without feeling
hokey or forced, Higgins manages to revisit all his major plot points and
storylines from his run. From the return of his childhood circus friends,
through his reveal as an intended target for Talon-izing, to the fallout from
the Joker’s campaign against the Bat Family and beyond, with the deft hand of
his artist, he delivers a fantastic coda to this chapter of Dick’s life. And,
perhaps, the last.
Along the way, and perhaps what’s most poignant, is Dick’s
narrative voice as he recollects on his choices, these things that affected his
life, his doubts and fears, primary of which is ‘whether his parents would be
proud of him’. Now this is a sentiment I
think we all can relate to. And, from the mouths of babes (ie the little girl
he saves), he is reassured that yes, they would be.
There’s so much more, but I would do it a disservice trying
to recap it here. Suffice it to say, if you want to give someone a book that
completely sums up the essence of this character and the things that make him a
hero, look no further.
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