Nightwing #25 – Review

By: Kyle Higgins (writer), Will Conrad & Cliff Richards (art), Pete Pantazis (colors)

The Story: Dick Grayson sneaks out to the movies, only to find himself in the middle of a thriller of his own.

The Review: At the start of The Black Mirror, Dick Grayson remembered how his father always marked upcoming shows with different colored pins on the calendar to represent how dangerous the tricks needed to be. They were marked red or blue, except for Gotham. A trip to Gotham meant that the audience demanded real danger. For his part in the Zero Year crossover, Kyle Higgins gives us a glimpse at one of those trips. It was properly marked.

That danger comes in two forms. The first is the Riddler’s power outage and the mob mentality that follows. Some of the best pages of the issue are those immediately following the blackout. The slow build towards chaos, the mundanity of it, Higgins hits beats that have been drilled into our collective unconscious over the past decade and a half with resounding clarity.

The other danger is our villain. Though he’s not likely to convince anyone to buy this comic when they otherwise wouldn’t, Amygdala’s appearance makes surprising sense in the context of Zero Year, even if his proximity to the future Robin seems a tad contrived. He also presents a clear danger for Dick, who would probably be capable of getting home. Unfortunately, Amygdala has never been a particularly chatty villain and he doesn’t bring much to the story beyond a sense of menace.

Nightwing #3 – Review

By: Kyle Higgins (writer), Eddy Barrows & Eduardo Pansica (pencillers), JP Mayer, Paulo Siqueira, Eber Ferreira (inkers), Rod Reis & Allen Passalaqua (colorist)

The Story: So long, Mr. Haly.  Love, the circus freaks.

The Review: It’s not surprising most of our heroes’ childhoods remain a bit vague; at that age, there’s little depth to be mined, except for grim, life-lasting traumas, of course.  Still, some characters can stand to have their early lives developed a little more, like Nightwing.  He had a fairly wacky upbringing, yet it evidently gave him with the right stuff to hurdle over tragedy and become the respected hero he is today.  How exactly did a circus childhood do that?

Higgins clears up that question to some degree here, establishing quite a few new relationships in Dick’s life along the way.  Aside from “girl next door” Raya, his little gang of circus friends included the daredevil Raymond and the mischievous Zane.  With jolly Mr. Haly watching over them, you see Dick pretty much grew up in a Hollywood-movie idyll, complete with a scene where instead of giving the kids the extra chores he promised their parents, Mr. Haly instead lends Zane the keys to his truck so they can see a midnight movie.  Sap to the max, but touching.

All of these figures now reassert themselves into Dick’s life—not literally, since two of them are now dead.  Mr. Haly, having left for that great three-ring arena in the sky last issue, also left behind a dying wish for Dick to take charge of the show and protect the secret of the circus (a Boxcar Children title if I ever heard one) too.  Obviously, Haly’s real son isn’t all too pleased his inheritance was passed to his prodigal “brother,” so that’ll be a major source of tension to come

But Bryan Haly’s resentment is fairly commonplace against the showdown between Nightwing and Zane, who left show biz to become a kind of booking agent for killers.  When our hero goes to see if his former friend might have been responsible for hiring Saiko, things go downhill.  After all, you don’t work with assassins on a daily basis without learning a thing or two about getting your hands dirty yourself.