Having discovered that Blüdhaven’s seemingly corrupt Mayor is more of an ally than he could possibly have imagined, Dick Grayson realizes that it’s time to use his new fortune to save the city. Despite being raised around it, however, Dick doesn’t really have a lot of experience using wealth to save the world, and he turns to a number of his friends, family and allies before revealing the first stage of his ambitious plan to the world. Nightwing #83 is written by Tom Taylor, drawn by Bruno Redondo, colored by Adriano Lucas and lettered by Wes Abbott.
This was the issue I’ve been apprehensive about for some time. I mostly enjoyed the first issue of this new run, but I wasn’t a fan of the idea of Nightwing being a billionaire. I believed that the type of stories that could be told with him as one would not be as interesting as the stories we’d get of him NOT being one.
As the series progressed, I found my reservations dropping, and a large part of that was because those stories largely ignored Nightwing’s newfound fortune…but the billionaire problem remained. This issue was inevitable. How do I feel about it now that it’s happened?
I’ve got mixed feelings. But the thing is, overall? I really enjoyed the issue. Tom Taylor may not know how to save the world, even with access to the kinds of resources real world billionaires hoard away. But damned if he doesn’t know what makes a superhero comic fun.
He’s On The Roof!
Last month’s issue gave us a bit of an origin story for Melinda Zucco, though it focused a lot more on the circumstances of her birth, and a lot less on Melinda’s own motivations. We get a rushed rectification of that at the start of this issue, learning that Melinda is actually a bit of a double agent. Her position as Mayor is simply an undercover job meant to take down Blüdhaven’s crime families from the inside.
We get very little time to digest that, however, before Nightwing has to confront the police – and Blockbuster – waiting for him outside. Nightwing’s not at his physical best – low on sleep, still injured from his fight with Heartless a few issues ago – but there is one thing he can rely on. He’s got quick and easy access to his home turf: city rooftops.
This whole sequence is gloriously superhero. Striking a heroic pose on the roof in utter defiance of the danger surrounding him. Trading barbs and statements of purpose with a villain high above the streets below, a villain who makes his escape and leaves his henchmen (in this case, Blüdhaven’s police force) for our hero to deal with. Nightwing turns a helicopter full of gunmen into a convenient getaway vehicle with a single, graceful, fluid move; the height of acrobatic prowess mixed with the use of his own unique gadgets to tie his foes up.
(Side note, I have tried very hard not to compare Nightwing’s action scenes to Spider-Man’s. Graceful acrobats with quips and style both, that’s never been more clear this issue, as Nightwing entangles his opponents in a string like material that is barely trying to not sound like “thwip”)
I wish Nightwing could be nothing but sequences like this. Alas, it is not meant to be.
A Pillar of the Community
After taking some much needed rest, Dick wakes up fully recovered and ready to take on the world – but he’s got some people to talk to, first.
The thing about Nightwing is, he has family. He is a family man, right from the start. Unlike Bruce, who without Alfred’s help can’t seem to remember anything much about his parents past their death, Dick is someone who remembers what his family was like, and someone who realizes the importance of family as he grows older. He’s found family in Gotham, in the Titans, hell, he’s even found family popping up from the past wearing the name and corrupt history of his greatest enemy. Dick was always going to share the wealth. And he was never going to do it alone.
He seeks out advice from a lot of people, and I love this reminder of the unique position he holds in superhero comics. Dick binds the superhero community together – I can’t think of anyone more connected, or more respected from street level heroes all the way up to the Justice League. Speaking of the latter, this issue’s got a beautiful conversation with Superman up on the roof of the Daily Planet. Two iconic superheroes, a pair of the warmest hearts in the DC Universe, I always wish these two would spend more time together. Despite their love for heights, Superman and Nightwing share a groundedness that makes their humanity shine whenever they’re around each other – and it’s far too easily forgotten that Nightwing got his moniker from Superman, a continuity gem I’ve always treasured.
Having gotten the perspective he needs, Dick proceeds to call a press conference right out on his front door.
“So I’m Giving It Away”
I’m not going to lie – given how little I liked the idea of billionaire philanthropist Dick Grayson, I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d been holding in for months when he announced that he’d be giving his wealth away. It’s the relief of knowing just how easily this can be written away, that confirmation of just how temporary this story is.
That being said, there is an uncontested idealism to all this that doesn’t entirely sit right with me. Let’s not forget, this is the same Tom Taylor who gave us X-Men: Red, which also played with the idea that saving the world is a simple affair for those who have power enough to actually make change. It works well for superheroics – for saving the world from an asteroid or a megalomaniacal villain. But urban development is not the realm of superheroes – this is a method of world saving that’s set entirely in our world. There’s a lot more nuance here – and that kind of nuance is something that Taylor has been consistently weak at capturing.
It’s a feature, not a bug. His comics career, and the Nightwing run for sure, has been filled with moments that land instantly, cutting right to the heart of what makes his characters so appealing. The thing is, issues like the ones Nightwing is attempting to tackle don’t benefit from Occam’s Razor. Honestly, even that wouldn’t be much of a problem if it hadn’t become such a focus of the book – or hadn’t been so self-congratulatory.
As Dick recites a laundry list of things that he’s planning to do, we get reaction shots of his friends and new allies – instant approval on all their faces. Dick is doing the Right Thing, and everyone should admire him for it, unless you’re literally a villain. Introducing political ideas in your comic is one thing, taking time to have all your fictional characters admire what a good choice is being made is another thing entirely. There’s a lot of admiration thrown out for a very lazy approach to making the world a better place – and it’s not the first time we’ve seen it, and with Taylor on Superman: Son of Kal-El, it won’t be the last.
I really, really want to like Nightwing. I believe the moves he’s making are completely in character for him, too. I like the idea of superheroes doing more for people than just punching more immediate problems away. There’s just no evidence that this is a story that will be tackled with the nuance it deserves, or with respect to the complications involved with the kind of change Dick is hoping to bring about. What that leaves us with is a somewhat annoying affirmation that fixing the world isn’t that hard to do. That’s not the inspiration it’s meant to be – it’s just showing a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem.
