Writer: Tim Seeley
Art: Fernandez
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
$2.99
DC Comics

Nightwing has been quite a fascinating read. While ostensibly a “back to basics” turn for Dick Grayson and the creative team, it’s learned quite a few lessons from the recent Grayson run. While it’s easy to have the allure of putting characters back into their comfort zones, Seeley makes the best of it by following up pretty quickly on the recent throw-down with the Parliament of Owls as well as Tim Drake’s death in Night of the Monster Men, by dealing with Dick’s attempts to solve the mystery behind recent player Raptor.

One of the major things that’s helped set this run of Nightwing apart is the willingness to play a little looser with what Dick is willing to do to get the job done. While it’s always been convenient to play Batman as toxic and harmful towards other people, it’s far more interesting to play someone who’s more malleable as a person than Bruce Wayne: and that’s Dick Grayson. One of the things that’s been great about this approach is it utilizes Dick Grayson’s long history: as Robin, as Nightwing, as Agent 37, as Batman, and a member of the Justice League in order to show how he can’t be pinned down, which also allows him to achieve goals and make mistakes Batman wouldn’t. One of those mistakes being namely to work with a criminal like Raptor to shut down the Parliament of Owls in the first arc coming back to haunt him.

Part of the fun of reading Nightwing has also been to watch the art settle and grow. Javier Fernandez has been a great boon to the book in light of a post-Mikel Janin world. While the book doesn’t focus quite as heavily on certain attributes as Janin did, Fernandez does a great job of showing off Nightwing’s physicality, as well as the brutal threats he has to deal with: from giant snake-men to Raptor with a beer can. Chris Sotomayor’s colors also do a lot of heavy lifting in making the world visually stand out from other books on the market. While there are a ton of Batman books on the market, this is definitely one going for a different feel, as well as an attempt to flip the script on how to approach a long-standing character, and it’s definitely worth your money.

4 out of 5 Raptor Theme Songs