Nightwing #29 Review and *SPOILERS*

Cold As Ice

Written By: Tim Seeley

Art By: Paul Pelletier, Andrew Hennessy. Adriano Lucas, A Larger World's Dave & Troy

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: September 20, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to get back to the Metal Tie-Ins and that means it's time to get back to The Batman Who Laugh's magic cards that grant wishes to villains, which just essentially means that they get a ring within Gotham to call their own and possibly become gods or some such nonsense.  It's all a bit up in the air still with what's going on with these Tie-Ins, especially since we don't really know shit about The Batman Who Laughs or what his real game is.  In the previous Tie-in, we saw Robin, Green Arrow Harley Quinn and Killer Croc make their way through Riddler's ring, where they solved his riddle.......... which was way better than anything going on in The War of Jokes and Riddles and now they're on their way to Mr. Freeze's ring, where we saw them come across Nightwing.  Let's jump into this issue and see what our hero of Bludhaven will add to this story and hopefully find out a little more about what this Dark Multiverse Batman is planning.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with our Gotham Resistance team gaining a new member in the form of Nightwing as they take down an ice monster, but to me the battling and the eventual bickering that goes on between these characters is just filler to the main story, which in my mind goes down completely in Nightwing's narration, which ties Metal into his encounter with Doctor Hurt months ago in this title.  Yeah, it seems that since Batman opened the doorway for Barbatos, the cut that Nightwing got from Doctor Hurt across his forehead has opened back up and has been giving him visions like he saw before............. which really, it sucks that we had that Doctor Hurt story so long ago because when that came out we didn't really know a lot about what Metal was going to be and looking at it now, it might have played out a whole lot better if it had come out closer to this event because where it seemed that Nightwing was just having visions of other worlds in the Multiverse and possible futures, here we find out that he was seeing the Dark Multiverse for what it is........ a Multiverse made up of bad choices and failures.  The only thing, now he's having visions of Batman opening the door for Barbatos and I'm starting to wonder whether or not if Batman's poor decision making has actually led to our Earth-0 becoming a part of the Dark Multiverse because that's a failure that's bigger than most.

So yeah, the narration is what is driving the story for me, but as far as panels go, after our team defeats the ice monster, they come across a powered up Mr. Freeze and some more ice monsters, which leads them to finding a secret Court of Owls armory to hide in and within it they find weapons and armor made of one of the Metals of the Mantling and they use these to go out swinging as they confront Mr. Freeze.  This part too doesn't do much for the story besides let you know that the Court has been adding things to Gotham since Metal started going down, but the narration continues to impress me because it goes into the fact that the Court had been preparing Nightwing to become a Talon for most of his life and even put Electrum in his tooth and our hero is starting to wonder whether or not if the Court continues to have plans for him like if Batman was meant to be the doorway for Barbatos, is he meant to be its weapon.

In the end, we switch back to the Teen Titans continuing to help people in Gotham like we saw in the last Tie-In, but now we see that the Suicide Squad has shown up looking for Harley Quinn and Killer Croc and even though these two teams have very little in common, they're forced to work together when The Batman Who Laughs sends his Crow Robin army at them and what seems like his actual Crow Robin son to lead them.  As our issue closes we have to wonder what happened to the Suicide Squad and Teen Titans because while our Gotham Resistance team is moving on to Poison Ivy's ring, we see that The Batman Who Laughs is going to change the game up a bit by unleashing a possessed Squad and the Teen Titans at our heroes.

That's it for this issue of Nightwing and I have to say while I don't really care for this whole breaching each ring of the city issue by issue thing that we're going with for these Tie-ins, I really did enjoy this issue for the larger picture that it presented with Nightwing's narration.  He's played a big part of the Court of Owls plans since the beginning of the New 52 and wrapping his encounter with Doctor Hurt, which seemed to come about way before anything else in dealing with Metal, around it just really added to the scope of Nightwing's involvement in this event and it really peaked my interest.  Yeah, the paneled page that was presented to us and the whole ordeal with Mr. Freeze isn't much, but the art was great and the narration like I said is strong as hell............ So yeah, it's weird that I really like what this issue did, while not really liking the issue itself.  I'm stilling going strong marks though for the ideas presented to us and for making the Doctor Hurt story have a bit more weight to it than it previously did in my mind.  

Bits and Pieces:

While I'm not a fan of the way these Tie-Ins are going about telling their stories in the whole ring around the Gotham angle they're presenting, I was a fan of everything dealing with Nightwing's narration in this story, which in my mind adds a larger scope to what is going on in Metal and even makes previous Nightwing stories in his series bigger because of it, with how it ties them together.  I enjoyed the art in this issue and only wish that the main plot for these Tie-Ins was a bit stronger.

7.8/10