Nightwing #2 – Review

By: Kyle Higgins (writer), Eddy Barrows (penciller), JP Mayer & Paulo Siqueira (inkers), Rod Reis (colorist)

The Story: Someday, this antiquated, second-rate circus will all be yours.

The Review: Keeping up relationships with people takes work.  You have to put in the effort to stay up-to-date with their lives, lend them a hand when they need favors, and be sympathetic and open to their needs.  Of course, we live in a Facebook world, where often all that’s needed to stay in touch with someone is to press “Like” when they post some semi-witty status update about how eating instant noodles for dinner is a metaphor for a drained bank account, FML.

Obligatory as that “Like” may be, it is still an obligation you have to fulfill if you have even a modicum of interest in keeping in touch with that person.  It’s one thing for Dick to retain his connections to his circus family, but that means mutual attachment, which in turn means he has some responsibilities towards them.  Higgins brought in an interesting new avenue to Dick’s life, but how he’ll play this for long-term continuity value is crucial.

A lot of what we see so far sticks pretty close to the cliché or predictable, most especially the sparks flying between Dick and former circus gal pal Raya.  There, you basically have the typical plot of “man runs into the girl-next-door of his youth; past and present collide; heart rending ensues.”  You have to take most of this for granted since about the only thing you know about Dick and Raya’s past relationship is that she hated his taste in clothes then, and still does.

Dick’s interaction with the elderly Mr. Haly (of Haly’s Circus fame) offers more fertile ground.  After all, before Bruce Wayne stepped in as the former boy wonder’s benefactor, the most natural choice to be Dick’s father figure would have been the man who patronized nearly his whole childhood.  Again, Higgins forces us to assume too much about this quasi-father-son relationship, as Mr. Haly’s exact attachment to Dick remains vague at best.