Nightwing #16 – Emotional Rollercoaster of a Pixar Film
Fair warning right now. This review will contain an insane number of comic pages and panels, simply because so much of this comic made me laugh out loud with the wit. Tim Seeley KNOWS how to write Dick Grayson so incredibly, incredibly well. He has his dark Batman moments but he’s all about the witty banter. I finally put down my coffee to finish reading after I nearly snorted it out my nose twice in two pages.
But this isn’t all witty one-liners and Nightwing jabs. It takes a sudden turn for the dark at about halfway through, and it never looks back. Remember at the end of last issue, the one that was so damn lovey-dovey? Something bad happened to current girlfriend Shawn Tsang. Nightwing learns in the middle of the issue that she was taken, or worse. The very last panel suggests that it’s definitely something worse. After I finished, I said out loud, “Well, that turned dark.”
But we don’t start the issue with Nightwing at all. Instead, it’s Damian Wayne, chilling in his new digs in San Fran, checking Chirper on his tablet. He should know better than to follow what the Internet says, but then again, he is just 13. He takes great offense when he sees people saying that Dick Grayson will inherit Batman’s cape and cowl, not Batman’s son (not that anyone knows Robin is Batman’s son).
So he asks his Teen Titans team whom they think is Batman’s successor, and they unanimously say Nightwing. Robin doesn’t take too kindly to that. He smashes his tablet and charges off to Blüdhaven to confront Grayson.
Grayson, meanwhile, isn’t thinking of the chat on Chirper, inheriting Batman, or really anything about the Batfamily. He’s too busy beating up a pathetic gang called The Horsemen and whipping out the one-liners.
At the end, angry Robin shows up, demanding answers to a question Dick doesn’t know. Dick is willing to talk, but he just got a rather urgent voicemail from Shawn, before the bad thing happened to her. So he needs Robin to take a chill pill, after he lays down some of the best lines on his little Robin bro.
I’m calling dibs on “Robin Meltdown” as my future band name.
And that’s about where the laughs ended. When Nightwing drops in Shawn’s apartment, he finds her gone, but with no signs of struggle. The only clue he has to go on is the Robin Hood book he loaned her that now has coordinates scrawled on the title page. The coordinates lead to Paris, Nightwing’s next stop.
But he won’t be going alone. Robin is willing to suck up his current beef with Nightwing (that he still doesn’t know about) to help out his big bro. Adventures of Robin and Robin. What could go wrong?
Oh wait, this is about Dick’s love life, sooooo everything?
Our Rating: YUS
Author: Tim Seeley
Artists: Javier Fernandez and Chris Sotomayor
Publisher: DC Comics
Publish Date: 03/01/2017
Acquired via Purchase
