My love of the Dick Grayson character has transcended a lot, including, but not limited to, various retcons, bad writers, good writers who burned out, bad artists, etc. However, in recent memory, I can only recall one Nightwing story that I actually liked, and it wasn’t in his own book. Or in current continuity.

Over at Pretty, Fizzy Paradise, Kalinara has recently written a great exploration of the current Nightwing. And, despite my genuine affection for the character, I have to agree with her. Nightwing is DC Comics biggest mistake. Had he known what was coming, I think Dick Grayson likely would have stayed Robin.

But it didn’t have to be that way. Back when Marv Wolfman and George Perez had Dick adopt the Nightwing identity, it was a very meticulously planned event. For years in the New Teen Titans, they had molded Dick Grayson into the smart, cool, ultimate team leader. Despite his lack of super powers, you knew that he was the most dangerous of all the Titans: he had his many, many years of training, not only as an acrobat by his parents, but as a skilled fighter and detective from Batman. And his transformation from doubting his abilities to becoming confident in them was, to me, the most satisfying thing about the New Teen Titans.

In the few years after Dick became Nightwing, his popularity increased: I recall the character popularity polls in the Comic Buyer’s Guide back then that had him in the top five. Had they wanted to spin him off into his own comic, it would have worked, perhaps, given a good writer/artist. Except that they forgot what Kalinara rightfully reminds us all: “Dick Grayson’s strength is in his interactions and bonds with people. But by isolating him, they turned his emotional strength into a crippling weakness.” They should have Kalinara writing Nightwing. But that’s the true strength of the character: I suspect that Wolfman wanted Nightwing to be like the Batman of the 50s: comfortable fighting muggers, demons or aliens. Equally at home with either the Batman or Superman families.

Now, I’ve ranted on this before and I’m likely to do it again. The Nightwing origin story in the Judas Contract should be THE origin story. Forget all the stupid “Wah, Batman fired me so I decided to copy him” retcons that were foisted upon Dick Grayson in Zero Hour and beyond. The truth is, Dick Grayson grew out of needing Batman’s constant approval. That’s why he’s unique: he took what he learned and decided that the best way to apply it was to work with a team.

One thing I just don’t get, though, are all the folks that seem to like the Dick/Barbara Gordon pairing. It’s forced and it’s a retcon and it smacks of fan-service to me. In the pre-Zero Hour days, and the pre-Crisis days, the Robin-Batgirl relationship was much more interesting. You had Robin, horny teen-ager, teaming up with Batgirl, about 10 years his senior, with Barbara constantly rebuffing his “Hey, Babs, wanna touch my batarang” type advances. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t all that better, but it was at least different.

Anyhow, all this leads me, unfortunately and in a roundabout way, to Nightwing #119, the second of the “One Year Later” issues. I didn’t like the last one. If anything, this one is worse. Firstly, when you have two characters who are wearing similar outfits, you should be able to tell who is who. The art in this issue tries, but ultimately fails. Secondly, the stupid gauntlet grappling hook is stupid (and I like almost all grappling hooks) and makes Nightwing look like a dumb Spider-man clone (they should bring back the glider wings and complete the look). Thirdly, the action sequences are poor: I hated the Dixon era Nightwing, but at least the action scenes were pretty. Here, they are just there. Fourthly, I’m already confused as to how many red-headed women are characters in this comic. Are there two or three? And didn’t the “himbo” type character get played out when they make Ronnie Raymond an underwear model? Fifthly, I could go on up to “thirtiethly.”

Nightwing’s battle with Jason Todd (really, was anyone surprised?) had me wondering if Dick took the past year off: it really shouldn’t have taken him long to deal with the imposter. But comic book logic dictates that the hero has to do stupid things when confronted with a lame villain and Dick follows that logic: he apparently takes time off to heal his arm and sleep with redheads before trying to find Jason again.

I guess we’ll get more angst when they deal with Barbara Gordon relationship issues. Or maybe Jones will just have Nightwing sleep with a few more redheads that are indistinguishable from one another. While that might make a fanboy drool, it won’t make this comic any better.

DC Comics needs to get rid of Bruce Jones ASAP from this title. I thought Dixon was bad, and Devin Grayson was worse, but either is preferably to Jones at this point. The two OYL issues should have really set some sort of tone beyond “Dick Grayson is still screwed up.” However, I am willing to see how this arc concludes. And, call me a fanboy, but this cover intrigues me. Perhaps Nightwing is getting a Flamebird? Anyhow, this wouldn’t be the first time I continued buying a bad comic just because I like the main character. And heck, six issues of Nightwing is still a lot cheaper than four issues of Batman: Year 100.

Technorati Tags: Dick Grayson, Nightwing, Batman

This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 5:32 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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