Written by: Tom Taylor
Art by: Bruno Redondo
Colors by: Adriano Lucas
Letters by: Wes Abbott
Cover art by: Bruno Redondo (cover A)
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: July 17, 2024
Nightwing #116, by DC Comics on 7/17/24, sets Dick Grayson on a spiritual journey to overcome his fear of heights while Heartless takes control of Bludhaven.
Is Nightwing #116 Good?
Good gravy! October can't get here fast enough. In an already slow, meandering, do-nothing arc centering on a villain who remained unchecked and undeterred by Nightwing for years, Tom Taylor still manages to find a way to waste even more time. I mean hats off to Taylor for making an uninteresting plot even more uninteresting, but that's not the kind of feat that's going to earn anyone an Eisner (Although, the qualifications for earning Eisners these days appear to have little to do with talent or accomplishments).
When last we left Dick Grayson in Nightwing #115, Heartless made his big move to set Dick Grayson up as the "real" Heartless and criminal mastermind in charge of the city. Bruce Wayne seemed content to let Dick Grayson be carted away in a nondescript ambulance, where Heartless and Tony Zucco discovered the domino mask in Dick's jacket, proving he's Nightwing. The issue concluded with Dick waking up wearing Heartless's mask and standing near the body of a Heartless victim when police arrived.
In Nightwing #116, news travels fast. Tom Taylor sets up a rapid-fire montage of reporter questions and press conference answers that use circumstantial evidence to link every plot point in Tom Taylor's run together in a damning spider web of incriminating activity that suggests Dick Grayson is Heartless. Meanwhile, Dick Grayson lies handcuffed in a hospital bed, under police guard, while he recovers from being shot and beaten by Bludhaven police during his arrest.
Tom Taylor has the right idea, but the execution is lacking. The reporters bring up photos, meetings, seemingly connected events (like the homeless encampment fires), and more in a way that suggests Dick is in the right place at the right time to cause all of it. However, the execution is lacking because Dick should be able to easily present proof of his whereabouts on several, if not all, of those events to show he couldn't have done it. Further, the montage of "damning evidence' is only possible because Nightwing has done nothing to stop Heartless since the beginning.
Dick escapes the hospital and heads to Barbara's place. She acquired a copy of his medical report which shows traces of fear toxin in his blood, specifically modified to cause a fear of heights. The toxin is mostly gone, causing Dick and Barbara to conclude that his lingering fear is psychological. Dick decides he has to leave town for a spirit walk, and he needs everyone to remain to keep Bludhaven safe in his absence.
Again, Taylor has the right idea but executes it poorly. If Dick's fear was caused by an infusion of fear toxin, a simple blood test should have picked it up as soon as he noticed a problem. Didn't he get checked out? If so, how did fear toxin get missed? The explanation only works because everyone around Dick is incompetent, which really means Taylor didn't put in the work to make this plot point believable.
Dick begins an international trek to Nanda Parbat with his dog to receive mental and spiritual help from Boston Brand, aka Deadman. Brand helped Dick to overcome his fear when he fell for the first time as a boy. Now, Dick seeks Brand's help again.
"Wait a minute! Isn't Brand dead-dead after last Summer's horrible Knight Terrors event?" you might wonder. Yes, you're right. An editor's note confirms as much. Dick somehow immediately deduces that Rama Kushna brought Brand back and bound his spirit to Nanda Parbat in a huge development that nobody saw. Again, really lazy work from Taylor.
Meanwhile, Heartless begins broadcasting his master plan to the good citizens of Bludhaven over the Internet and airwaves. He orders the Titans to leave the city or he'll begin executing the parents of every child he has in captivity, an order the Titans comply with for now. Heartless then taunts Nightwing to come out and face him, secretly knowing Nightwing is Dick Grayson and hoping the taunt will draw Dick out.
The issue ends with Bruce Wayne donning the domino mask.
What's great about Nightwing #116? The concept, plot pacing, and execution may be terrible, but at least the story is moving toward a resolution. Some movement, even if clumsy, is better than no movement, which is what we've had on this title for nearly two years.
What's not great about Nightwing #116? Taylor's lazy, poorly structured construction of the Heartless arc grows more glaring with each passing issue. It's clear now that Taylor had an idea for Heartless but didn't know what to do with him, so the last few issues are a mish-mash of hand-waving contrivances that come out of nowhere to justify why Dick and everyone around him didn't do what they should have done in the first place.
How's the Art? Redondo's digital art is perfectly serviceable in a relatively action-free issue. The figures don't integrate as well as they should into the backgrounds, and the coloring relies too heavily on purples (Not Rico Renzi levels of bad but bad enough to be noticeable), but the art team gets the job done.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Final Thoughts
Nightwing #116 is a mediocre, lazy, action-free issue that tries to explain why Nightwing's lack of effort to capture Heartless was really part of some master plan (that nobody will believe). The art is serviceable, and I'm at least thankful the series is moving toward closure, but this title is going to go down as a series of wasted opportunities and missteps.
4/10
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I am glad I wasn't the only one unimpressed with this issue after the cliffhanger of the last one. I like the work that went into setting Dick up as Heartless with how the reporters were connecting the dots, however the premise aka Nightwing in police custody and set up especially during this time were heroes are under close scrutiny and can't interfere as much as they could before is ultimately brushed aside and easily passed over in favor of a lazy plot point that has not been making sense or really going anywhere of why Grayson is afraid of heights ( and I guarantee the resolution to that will be just as underwhelming). We have an interesting and tense set up of trying to prove Dick's innocence by law and fighting Heartless at the same time but we never get the impact of that pressure on Dick, they mostly just gloss over the imapct of these important events on characters in recent years to get to other plot points, other events etc so we don't see any character progression and it results in a story feeling stagnant and not important despite stuff happening. We wait for the next writer just to repeat the cycle and so on. when I saw the previews for this issue I was actually hopeful that this might not be the case here, with how much detail was being put to make a case for why would people suspect Dick and how he was stuck in the hospital and trying to show the pain of that, it looked some care and deliberation put in the plot for once which is rare for most comics. See, moments like that actually help readers take the villain seriously as someone who was really a threat to the hero later on but we immediately after that page cut to Nightwing somehow having escaped from all the security while injured without help when that would have been something that a reader might have wanted to see, that would have been interesting and cool.
ReplyDeleteAlso it's funny to me that this issue spent so much time and wasted panels to explain why he has to do all this alone, why he has to walk all this path, made fun of some tropes only to have that fear toxin explanation coupled with that ridiculous panel of Bruce deciding to be Nightwing. So Bruce just decided to put aside all of his batman suit right there on the rooftop and wear Nightwing's suit out in the open????? Couldn't this have taken place in the cave or somewhere secure??? Why did he wear Batman's armour just to change it? I persume he didn't come to the conclusion right there and had a Nightwing suit in his pocket all this time. So it's funny to me that they went all this way to make fun of tropes by then adding one in the end that is wayyyy more ridiculous and tropy and also nonsensical. God forbid we take the toll the journey has on Dick seriously, no worries, he does cardios, no need for genuine character moments of him going through stuff, nooo let's have Batman just changing outfits infront of the whole city to make a symbolic moment that is ultimately meaningless and just fanservice.
I don't know why I expected more and hoped for more from this issue because of the promise of the last pages of issue 115, I should have learned my lesson of all these years of reading Taylor written runs but oh well. In the end this arc will be as filler like as the rest of this run without having genuine character moments and Heartless will not be worth remembering. As always my criticisms are only for the quality of the writing and not the writers personally.
OMG !! His appearance is really like One Punch Man and slope game
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