Nightwing #55 Review

It's A Gas, Gas, Gas

Written By: Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza

Art By: Chris Mooneyham, Garry Brown, Hi-Fi, Andworld Designs

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: December 19, 2018

The saga of Ric Grayson continues with this issue, where our former hero will probably talk about not caring about being a hero in his life before brain damage and while that sounds like a sad ass thing........ I'm kind of digging it.  Yeah, you have your problems with always having to repeat what came before so new readers can follow along, but this slow burn story about Scarecrow coming to town to call out Nightwing, while three police officers and a firefighter take on the Nightwing persona themselves is actually kind of intriguing and I'm having a fun time with this new status quo for not only our hero, but for Bludhaven as well.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Scarecrow makes his move now that Ric Grayson has convinced him that fear itself isn't as scary as no fear.  Let's check it out.

When we jump into this issue we see that this is going to be Scarecrow heavy and because he's been sitting on his hands or just doing small bits of villainy up until now........ It's much appreciated.  Yeah, I'm a sucker for Scarecrow and I'm also a sucker for how his fear gas is depicted in this issue when Detective Svoboda shows up to Dr. Crane's door for a little questioning.  I've been having problems with this series and how it depicts Scarecrow just being in costume out of nowhere, but here we see that it is simply an artistic cue for us to know that the gas is working when we suddenly see him in costume.  This issue also goes out of its way to clear up something that been problematic for me the past couple of years that the Scarecrow's been depicted, in that he has no idea what his victims are hallucinating......... Yeah, that sounds like something that I should obviously know, but other writers have him interacting with the fear dream all the time and it gets a bit wonky.......... No wonkiness here.

For as much as I like the depiction of the Scarecrow in this issue, this does continue the trend of this series in having to reiterate what's going on with Ric Grayson again and again and that gets a bit tiring, especially when his muscle memory and the idea that he doesn't want to remember who he once was is his main involvement in this issue. Who cares though right?  Yeah, we have the new Nightwings we can have some fun with............ Well, they're there....... they're just not doing much this issue except for setting up some grand first encounter with Scarecrow in the following issue.  So yeah, that's a bit disappointing.

All in all, I continue to love the art in this issue as I have the previous ones and I love the depiction of Scarecrow in this and the idea that he's finally changing up his game with his super-villainy..... Sadly, our heroes are the weak point of the issue because they really don't have anything interesting to do.  Their moments are still enjoyable, but I would have liked them to do a bit more than what we got out of this.  Hopefully, the action is just waiting for us in the next issue.

Bits and Pieces:

While we finally get some forward momentum with our villain of the story, our heroes seem to be waiting to jump in...... and because of that..... they're really kind of boring this issue.  Yeah, there's some fun to be had and some decent art that's depicting it, but it seems that all of the action really lies in the next issue, making this..... purely setup.

7/10