Nightwing #20 Review and *SPOILERS*

Everybody Hurts........ Sometimes

Written By: Tim Seeley

Art By: Javier Fernandez, Chris Sotomayor, Carlos M. Mangual

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: May 3, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Wow, this arc has really been a letdown for me because not only does it feel like Tim Seeley is just trying to rip off Grant Morrison, but because he's doing a poor job at it.  In our previous issue, we saw Dick and Shawn track Dr. Hurt to an underground temple of Anubis, where the villain planned on sacrificing Damian Wayne at dawn and after our hero fought with his dollotron doppelganger, Deathwing, he found that Dr. Hurt hates waiting and already killed Robin......... plunging Dick into what looked like hell.  Yeah, it was all over the place and didn't make much sense, but hopefully this final issue to the arc brings everything together so that we can see our heroes live, our villains defeated and if Shawn Tsang is actually pregnant with Dick's baby.  Let's jump into this issue and find out............ but I'm not expecting much.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us finding out what was exactly going on in the previous issue when it looked like Dick's soul was sent to hell after Damian was sacrificed and that's that Dick is now stuck in a nightmare world, where he's believes he's living his life in the future after Damian has died and is now Deathwing going after Professor Pyg for his part in Robin's murder.  While this theater of the mind is going on we see that Dick is just kneeing in a catatonic state, while Dr. Hurt simply stands by and doesn't really do much of anything except for encourage the monster that Dick has become within his nightmare. 

Eventually, after fighting Robin in his mind, who has taken over the Nightwing persona, Damian is able to get Dick to snap out of this fantasy land, where we find out that Dr. Hurt has done all of this because something is coming and it scares him.  We don't get much of that though because Shawn comes in and sees that Damian is still alive and everything is rushed to an end when Deathwing tries to take his revenge on Dr. Hurt for making him into this dollotron by stabbing him with the Blade of Nothing....... which you'll remember is that mysterious blade that shows you a dark future and apparently once it's used on Dr. Hurt, it causes the entire temple to collapse......... Yeah.

In the end, Nightwing, Robin and Shawn escape and see that the temple creates a collapse that looks like a Nightwing symbol and the trio head back to Bludhaven, where we find out that Shawn isn't pregnant and that Damian simply came to this city because he missed Dick.  

That's it for this issue of Nightwing and goddamn did we really not get any answers in this arc at all besides that Dr. Hurt set all of this up because something that scares him is coming and that he needed to make Nightwing into a weapon to go against it, but none of it makes much sense because Nightwing seemed to be plunged into this hellish dreamscape when Damian was sacrificed, but as we find out he was never dead and the Blade of Nothing that finally gets a name in this issue apparently makes temples come crashing down........... just because.  Now, for a positive I will tell you that I didn't mind Javier Fernandez' art in this issue as much as I usually do and for the most part enjoyed everything I looked at in this book, but besides for that and the decent moment at the end between our former Dynamic Duo, there really wasn't much to this issue.  Initially, I was getting into this dreamscape torture, but since it amounted to nothing, that too was just a disappointment by the end.

Bits and Pieces:

Our "Nightwing Must Die" arc comes to an end with this issue and really.......... nothing is ever properly explained and everything seems to be rushed to a conclusion that is disappointing as hell for everything that was thrown at us in this arc.  Where I usually hate the art in this book though, I found myself actually enjoying it and at this point in my Nightwing reads, I'll take any win I can get because it's certainly not coming from the stories.

5.1/10