\nDick Grayson does what internet critics always say Bruce Wayne should do and starts using his new found wealth to fix Bl\u00fcdhaven.\n<\/p>\n
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\nAn underappreciated feature of DC’s Compact comics line is that, like manga, you can read them with one hand, leaving the other free to eat your support frex. A more obvious advantage is that you get to sample new writers or artists for the low price of ten books. I bought this because I like Nightwing (I have always been a New Teen Titans<\/cite> fanboy). I hadn’t heard of either Tom Taylor or Bruno Redondo before.\n<\/p>\n \nBased on this though I’d like to see more of either. Taylor is a fun writer, able to give Nightwing a sense of humour without it becoming irritating while Redondo has a clean, well flowing art style that in his faces reminds me of Steve Lieber or Kevin Maguire. His fight scenes are assured too and I love the way he draws the city of Bl\u00fcdhaven, seventies NYC by any other name. It has been a while since I’ve read such an assured, competent superhero story like this. Something that isn’t yet another event tie-in, nor trying to say something profound about what being a superhero is like.\n<\/p>\n \nNo, this is just a collected slab of Nightwing<\/cite> continuity with all the pluses and minuses this brings with it. Nightwing: Leaping into the Light<\/cite> collects Nightwing<\/cite? 78-83 and 87-91, as well as Superman: Son of Kal-El<\/cite> 9, also written by Tom Taylor. This collect the start of Taylor and Redondo’s run on Nightwing<\/cite>, on which they stayed until issue 118, a rather respectable run for any creative team these days.\n<\/p>\n \nYou’ll notice that there’s a three issue gap in the middle of the collection, so it’s not quite a straight forward chronological run. Nor is the plot line in the crossover with Superman: Son of Kal-El<\/cite> resolved; you have to buy that<\/em> series’ collections if you want to know what happened next. Finally, much as it was easy to get into it, this isn’t quite a clean start: things happened to Nightwing recently that are still refered to, but you really don’t need to know more about them then what Taylor already tells you about them…\n<\/p>\n \nWhat Taylor and Redondo do with Nightwing<\/cite> is basically taking this old Calvimn & Hobbes<\/cite> gag seriously: what if Bruce Wayne\/Batman stopped beating up costumed weirdos and put his vast wealth to work making Gotham City better? They do this by making Dick Grayson a billionaire in their very first issue by having him be the heir to Alfred “Batman’s butler” Pennyworth’s wealth. (He also adopts a dog: Haley, aka Bitewing). Having done some soul searching and having come into contact with Bl\u00fcdhaven;s large unhoused population he decide that this is where he’ll focus his efforts first. When asked why this particular issue, he answers that it will get colder soon.\n<\/p>\n \nIf based on this you’re expecting a semi-realistic comic about the difficulties setting up a charitable foundation or the like you’ll be disappointed however. Dick Grayson’s plans infuriate the criminal rulers of Bl\u00fcdhaven and they immediately put a price on his head, the resolution of which is the main plot in this volume, as a series of increasingly dangerous assassins come after him. What I liked about this is that Nightwing doesn’t faces these dangers on his own. Both his team mates in the Titans as well as members of the extended Bat family come over to help him, most noticably one Barbara “Batgirl\/Oracle” Gordon, with whom Dick rekindles his long running off and on relationship. I like that sense of a wider world and superhero community, it reminds me of the Bronze Age superhero series I grew up with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dick Grayson does what internet critics always say Bruce Wayne should do and starts using his new found wealth to fix Bl\u00fcdhaven. An underappreciated feature of DC’s Compact comics line is that, like manga, you can read them with one hand, leaving the other free to eat your support frex. A more obvious advantage is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11620"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11631,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11620\/revisions\/11631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Calvin](\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/batfax.jpg\")
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