Last year, I reviewed the first arc of Nightwing, written by Dan Watters with artwork by Dexter Soy, and found it to be a pleasant surprise, signaling some great superhero adventures ahead. Recently, I caught up with the series, and decided to let our readers know where things stand with Batman’s ex-sidekick, two story arcs later.
The second storyline, Death Traps, was a tough-to-sugarcoat disappointment.
It started off with a bang, with Nightwing on the trail of Captain Hallow, a ghostly urban legend from Bludhaven’s past. But just as I was getting settled in, the whole story was dispensed with in only two issues, making one of the coolest aspects of the plot, the uncertainty of whether Captain Hallow is a human killer or a real live (or I guess you’d say real dead) ghost, vanish almost as soon as it starts. Making matters worse, the Captain Hallow angle was more interesting than the rest of the story, in which the Fifth Dimension starts bleeding into reality, a bit of an odd choice, plot wise, for a relatively street-level series. Not that writers shouldn’t be allowed to try something new, but some of the aspects that made the first arc so enjoyable (Jackboot cops on jetpacks! Gang members using weird science to mutate themselves!) are largely absent in this one. Even that wouldn’t be an issue, if those elements were replaced by others just as exciting, but unfortunately, Nightwing spends much of the story fighting illusions and wandering around, and it’s just not as compelling as what came before. There are some good moments, like a touching flashback to his childhood that pays off in an unexpected way, and a grudging alliance with the villainous Olivia Pearce (more on her in a bit), but it wasn’t enough to salvage this volume, and I was left feeling that the story was spinning its wheels. (Though there was one notable, spoilery twist that certainly piqued my interest and would pay off in the next volume.)
But I wasn’t quite ready to give up on Nightwing (or Night-hare, the bunny rabbit I mentioned in my last review, who continues to be adorable. Hear me well, DC Comics: if anything happens to Night-hare, we riot.)
Thankfully, things roar back to life in volume three, The Cirque du Sin, the climax to the story Watters has been telling thus far, revolving around the machinations of the Zanni, a self-proclaimed god from the Fifth Dimension, and his earthly minion Olivia Pearce and her private security company (provider of those jetpacks). Speaking of Olivia Pearce, we learned her dark origin story in the last volume, but find out even more in this one, and boy howdy, it turns out it was even darker than we thought. Indeed, The Cirque du Sin is the darkest story so far, repeatedly dipping its toes into bona fide horror territory.
Those horror elements speak to one of the books’ main strengths. Sometimes spooky and ominous, sometimes quirky and lighthearted, this run on Nightwing balances tones in a way that sounds contradictory in a review, but works very well on the page, and is a big reason why it’s so much fun. On a related note, I enjoyed the way Bludhaven is portrayed here: not as outwardly grimy and chaotic as Gotham City, its darkness is more subtle, a seemingly normal city where something is always lurking just under the surface.
The Zanni escalates his fiendish schemes by abducting some of the local children, while Nightwing is forced to deal with complications brought about by that spoilery twist from Death Traps. It all leads to Nightwing launching a one-man rescue mission into the Fifth Dimension, coming face to face with the Zanni once and for all. No spoilers, but if you think you’ve seen it all when it comes to superheroic showdowns, let’s just say Watters found a cool spin to put on the mayhem, and I was on the edge of my seat to see how it would all shake out.
I’m looking forward to the next arc, entitled Bludhaven Lore, which will follow Nightwing investigating urban legends connected to Bludhaven’s past (will Captain Hallow return?), which sounds right up Watters’ alley. Watters clearly has quite an imagination, and he’s using it to carve out something fresh and unique, and I can’t wait to see where he takes Nightwing next.
The verdict: make like Night-hare and hop on this one. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
