Nightwing #65 Review

Family Reunion

Written By: Dan Jurgens

Art By: Ronan Cliquet, Nick Filardi, Andworld Design

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 16, 2019

Bludhaven is without power and the people are rioting in the streets...... and you thought Gotham was bad.  While I can't tell you why the city is having rolling blackouts or what Lex Luthor exactly gave the Talon, William Cobb for his offer, I can tell you that William is looking to get his Great Grandson Dick Grayson into the Court of the Owls like he was always supposed to be and with our title character going by Ric now and having no memory of his past as Nightwing, William Cobb sees this as the perfect time to act.  Let's jump into this issue and see if we get any answers to this Year of the Villain story.  Let's check it out.

For this issue of Nightwing we finally have our hero pitted against William Cobb and Ric is discovering his legacy and if Talon has his way, his destiny.  Now while this is all cool and what I've been wanting from this arc, it sadly decides to split away from the fight and the exposition in order to give us more of the Nightwing Squad on the streets, trying to stop the rioters and helping people where they can.  While I've actually been pretty fond of the Nightwing Squad since Dick went and gave up the moniker, there inclusion here only serves to pad out the issue with nothing of substance since it only gives our new heroes a chance to give a speech to the rioters to inspire them to stop........ yeah, it doesn't work and the speech is something we already saw Ric do two issues ago.  So yeah, nothing really going on with these characters in the book, only them continuing to tell us that Bludhaven has been having black outs, but we still don't get an explanation about why.  

On the Ric Grayson side of things though, this part of the book is really interesting because of what it might mean for our character going forward or at least giving him the opportunity to overcome great odds and possibly finding his former self again, but for older readers there's not a lot new here.  We essentially just get a bare bones history lesson on William Cobb until our cliffhanger, which feels like it should have been part of Lex's offer, but is referred to as something from the Court of Owls.

All in all, the art in this issue is great and all the characters involved are depicted beautifully, the problems are that even when we get the fight between Talon and Ric that we've been waiting for, it doesn't do much to further the story until the cliffhanger, while the rest of the Nightwings are here purely for page count because they don't bring anything new or interesting to the story.  The cliffhanger really is interesting though, which Jurgens usually shines with, but it always feels like there's way more issues than there need to be to tell a story, while answers are seldom given to what's going on.  Hopefully with the new development at the end of this issue, the next installment will be something special.  

Bits and Pieces:

The showdown we've been waiting for is here, Talon Vs. Nightwing!  Too bad it's padded out with the rest of the Nightwings not adding anything new to the story, while the fight between our hero and villain is pretty much just catching Ric up to speed with who William Cobb is.  The art is great though and the cliffhanger leaves me excited for the next issue and what it will bring.

6/10