Nightwing #46 Review

Tech War

Writer: Ben Percy
Artist: Chris Mooneyham
Publisher: DC Comics
Release Date: July 4, 2018
Cover Price: $3.99

What DC Said:
A new high-tech corporation setting up shop in Blüdhaven claims to be the cure for what ails the crumbling city. But Night-wing learns it’s a very hostile takeover when he runs afoul of their metahuman operative, a digital phantom impervious to physical attack. Luckily, Nightwing has his very own I.T. backup: Batgirl! But can the two work together after their meeting in BATGIRL #25, also in stores this month?
This months issue opens with the crazy ass Phantasm spider crawling out of Dick's mouth and it's...crazy ass!  We get a narration from Dick while this is going on and at first, I didn't even know it was him.  That's my problem with this run so far, Ben Percy just doesn't have Dick's voice down.

The main problem here is that Dick suddenly is using hacker and computer terms that just don't feel natural to the character.  It's not just that the anti-tech Grayson has been pushed so hard, but also the very clunky words he is thinking.

Percy does finally get around to giving the reader some rules for the evil avatar, Wrym, but the whole situation is still confusing.  Either Dick can submit the info getting Phantasm spider to Wyrm or he can fight him.  Tough choice there, but Dick takes door #3 which actually is a window...that he goes crashing through.

So far so okay...until Barbara just happens to be there to catch Dick and take him to safety.  I guess safety is a relative term as the city is full of giant green digital monsters.  Of course, Babs and Dick escape...to Dick's sewer-based secret lair...that we never saw before!  I wonder how much Bruce paid for that?!?

We then get a couple scenes showing how bad Phantasm really is before going back to Dick and Barbara who are putting the pieces of this mystery together.  The problem is, the idea of a mystery is kind of just thrown out there.  Yea, Dick wanted Babs to investigate Mirage, but mainly because the Phantasm machine was evil.  Now we got a class picture with connected deaths and it feels forced.  Then we get the "shocker" of who is behind it all.  Really?!?  While Dick is surprised that a couple workouts don't define a man, I just shook my head!

We end with trouble on two fronts, but since Ben Percy has done nothing at all to make me care about anyone in this book, it fell flat...at least for me.  

Yea, I am ready for this story to end.  It feels like Percy is making things up on the fly and none of it is interesting.  Worse yet, what started out as a bit of social commentary has turned into a mob/tech war that again, is just boring.  I worried that Percy was shoving Nightwing into a prefab story and it's just not feeling like a Nightwing book yet.

Bits and Pieces:

I want to move on to something else.  This story of tech gone wrong is boring and without anyone to cheer for, I am just left yawning.  I did like the art here, but not much else.

5.5/10