THIS WEEK: Nightwing #116, the latest chapter in a celebrated and award-winning run, continues to make life awful for one Dick Grayson. Plus, we have our usual round-up of blurbs about other DC books hitting shops!
Nightwing #116
Writer: Tom Taylor
Artist: Bruno Redondo
Colorist: Adriano Lucas
Letterer: Wes Abbott
We are currently in the endgame of one of the most successful Nightwing runs in a good long while, capturing as it did an Eisner Award last year. In fact, this week’s Nightwing #116 is the third to last issue of this run, which is slated to end with #118 this fall. And while the tone of this run has generally been lighter, things are getting pretty heavy for old Dick Grayson during this last arc, subtitled Fallen Grayson.
It’s the type of ending arc that circles back in many ways to the start of the run, incorporating most of the main story beats seeded throughout as it heads toward the finish. In this arc, Dick Grayson is being publicly framed as the murderous super villain, Heartless, who as their name implies spends their time literally taking hearts out of bodies.
What makes this framed storyline more interesting to me is that throughout this run Dick Grayson’s public image has been a story element. Armed with a hefty inheritance from Alfred Pennyworth (RIP), Dick has been the public face of an ongoing effort to clean up Bludhaven. Sure, he’s still been beating up bad guys with night sticks while doing flips at night. But at the same time, he’s been developing civic programs aimed at sustainable systemic change.
Now in this concluding arc, we get a villain who is trying not just to punch him in the face a whole bunch, but to undo his image and along with it the public good that he’s done for the community. A simple solution for superheroes is always to team up, and the Batman comics have gone to that well a lot lately. I’m not going to count it out, but I feel like the majority of major in-continuity Bat-family stories within the past 3 or 4 years have ended with the family coming together and everyone being reminded that challenges are best tackled with your pals. This one can’t quite be solved that way, because if Dick tries to reveal that he can’t be Heartless because he’s Nightwing, it compromises everyone close to him (although, to be honest, I could still see this arc ultimately ending that way…).
So, I think the plotting by Tom Taylor here has been solid, but what has really elevated this run throughout is the artwork by Bruno Redondo with colors by Adriano Lucas and letters by Wes Abbott. Redondo is such a clean artist, with precise and interesting linework. But he doesn’t just rest on that aesthetic. Throughout the run this has been a superhero comic that has found ways to take interesting risks with its visual storytelling. Nightwing #116, for example, is conceptually straightforward, but there’s still an ample supply of interesting visual choices, starting on page 1 (see above) with the first panel and all the flash bulbs coming at the commissioner.
Anyway, I enjoyed Nightwing #116 quite a bit. If you’ve been reading this run from the start (as I have), it’s a nice full circle arc as we move toward our conclusion. Obviously, things are likely to work out for Dick (this is a superhero comic, after all), but it’s going to be fun watching him get to that point.
Verdict: BUY
The Round-Up
- We get the return of a fan favorite alternate DCU this week with Dark Knights of Steel: Allwinter #1. The book is bifurcated, with a lead story centering on this fantasy world’s Deathstroke by writer Jay Kristoff, artist Tirso, and letterer Wes Abbott. It’s good and gritty, with kinetic black-and-white artwork. What’s for sale with this sort of thing is seeing familiar characters in alternate worlds that give them a chance to do interesting things, and this story is definitely that. Nice last page cliffhanger, too. And if that weren’t enough, this issue also serves up a back-up by writer Tom Taylor, artist Riccardo Federici, colorist Arif Prianto, and letterer Wes Abbott. It’s just an 8-pager, but it seems likely to have huge implications for this world moving forward. This new volume is slated to run for six issues.
- It’s no secret that I love current Hellblazer comic. I’ve maybe written about it four or five times in this space. It’s a great comic But within that, I still thought John Constantine – Hellblazer: Dead in America #7 was an especially interesting chapter in this ongoing story. There’s a lot of interesting things going on in Dead in America. The group is trundling through the U.S., getting tangled up with its magic and legends. There’s a strong supporting cast, and oh yeah, John Constantine is dead. But if that weren’t all enough, the story also picks up a thread from the original Sandman, and this seventh issue is where that is most directly addressed. I won’t spoil any more of it past that, aside from saying I thought it was excellent. This issue is by writer Simon Spurrier, artist Aaron Campbell, colorist Jordie Bellaire, and letterer Steve Wands.
- Finally, Wonder Woman #11 by writer Tom King, artist Tony S. Daniel, colorist Jay David Ramos, and letterer Clayton Cowles, is a tie-in to DC’s linewide summer event, Absolute Power. The premise is basically that Wonder Woman and her magic friends (much of the cast from the Justice League Dark run that featured her) are hunted down by Amanda Waller’s Amazo robots. We’ve seen elsewhere in this event that there might be something odd happening with those robots, and this tie-in issue leans far into that, giving us one that is for some reason quoting Dickens in fits and starts (Detective Chimp, of course, uses his keen detecting skills to piece this together). In the context of this event, this issue feels like a nice bit of track-laying for a bigger reveal to come around those robots. Stay tuned…
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