Nightwing #21 Review and *SPOILERS*

Boys Night Out!

Written By: Michael McMillian

Art By: Christian Duce, Chris Sotomayor, Carlos M. Mangual

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: May 17, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Now that Dick is back in Bludhaven and Dr. Hurt is defeated, it's time to get back to some city super heroics.... especially since Shawn Tsang found out that she was indeed not pregnant and decided that she needs some space from our hero for a bit.  So yeah, Dick has plenty of time on his hands to be the protector of Bludhaven and can work through some of this relationship frustrations by pounding on some baddie's faces.  With this being a one-shot before we get to our next arc, there isn't a lot to say going into this, but we do have Wally West showing up and that's always a good time.  Let's jump into this issue and see what Nightwing's been up to and how he spends his time when a buddy of his shows up in town for a few hours to thrill.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us seeing the true face of Bludhaven and while it may not be the most terrible thing when thinking about how a victim of a crime might react, it's certainly something that you really never want to see and that's a woman who was being attacked by a mugger picks up the assailant's gun and tries to shoot him after Nightwing had already put the guy on his ass.  Dick being one of the greatest guys of all time doesn't want to see anyone dead or see anyone become a murderer through a fit of passion, tries to jump in front of the bullet, but he's too slow.  Thankfully, Wally had picked just this time to show up into town and plucks the bullet out of the air and defuses the whole situation.  

From there on out, the two commiserate about their relationship statuses, like how Wally's still in love with Linda Park, but she has no knowledge of the time the two once shared together and how Shawn Tsang has been M.I.A. in Dick's life since she found out that she wasn't pregnant.  This leads the boys to having a night out, where they first go to a bar and almost decide to pick up some women, but eventually they go and see a shitty pirate movie instead, that really gets our superhero story going.  As the two were walking out with a crowd of people from the theater, everyone realizes that they're missing something of theirs and this leads to our heroes trying to find out what went down.  It's kind of cool too because Wally taps into the speedforce and finds out that someone is manipulating time and kind of skipping through space instead of moving laterally through it like everyone else.  This leads to a funny moment, where Wally starts calling their foe "The Skipper", but eventually they come across him and we find out that he's calling himself "Timebomb"........ and I'm instantly depressed that our heroes don't force "The Skipper" name on him.

In the end, after realizing that the two really aren't a match for Timebomb, who uses a backpack harness to create fields to pause time, the foe actually almost kills Wally, which seems odd because he still needs to be fast enough to activate the harness to use it and in my mind, Wally should be faster than that, but after it looks like a train takes out the two, Timebomb rejoices in their deaths, moving him up to simple pickpocket with a time manipulating device to full on psychopath, Dick and Wally surprise him, knocking him out and calling it a day.  As our issue closes, we see that the harness actually belonged to Tiger Shark, who not only wants to make sure that Timebomb doesn't talk about where he found the harness, but wants to make sure that Nightwing is put in his place once and for all.

That's it for this issue of Nightwing and while this issue doesn't seem to mean much in the long run of things, it was an appreciated break from what we were getting and having the added bonus of having Wally West show up in this issue and having Dick and his back and forth was fun.  Yeah, there were times that the dialog felt a bit forced to give you that retro feel of the characters from when they were first Teen Titans decades ago, but at the end of the day it was just fun for fun's sake and I didn't mind it all too much.  The art in this issue was decent and had some dynamic action scenes and while I initially got lost in what was going on with Nightwing throwing his escrima sticks about, I quickly got back on the trolley and enjoyed myself.  All in all, this isn't a bad issue, but not one you really need to read for the ever evolving mythology of Nightwing, it's just here as a break and I had a bit of fun reading it.  

Bits and Pieces:

While this one-shot doesn't do much for big picture of Nightwing, it does give us a simple break from the stories we've been getting and allows our hero to have a bit of fun while his best friend is in town.  The art was decent, but the dialog was forced at times, but all in all, it was fun to read.

6.8/10