Nightwing #1

And still more New 52!

Title: Nightwing
Issue: 1
Date: November 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Kyle Higgins
Penciler: Eddy Barrows
Inker: JP Mayer
Colorist: Rod Reis
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Katie Kubert, Bobbie Chase
Cover: Eddie Barrows, JP Mayer, Rod Reis

Nightwing is one of those characters that I usually enjoy because he's one notch less extreme than the Batman, both in terms of his abilities and his personality. It makes him more realistic, and often more reasonable that Bruce Wayne, which can be refreshing in a universe of extremes.

Much of this book delivers just that vibe. We see Nightwing on patrol taking down a random masked killer on the subway. Dick is sporting a redesigned costume with a lot more red in the look (Possibly a throwback to the Flying Graysons/Robin? It really doesn't make sense for any other reason.). He's still in Gotham, and back to his Nightwing gig after a year under the cowl (when Bruce was "away"; so it's not entirely clear what elements of continuity were kept).

And Haly's circus is back in town.

So is a mysterious, and very dangerous man who's out to kill Dick Grayson. This may or may not tie into the events of Batman #1 (it really SHOULD; this is the perfect chance for a bit of cross-title continuity).

The introductory bit was good, and I loved Dick's interaction with the circus performers when he finally goes to visit. There's even a new potential love interest (and a potential rival) thrown into the mix.

But the last few pages, when the plot rapidly descends, were a problem for me. Dick allows two cops to die because he decides to powder out of a fight to do a costume change. This is the kind of trivial use of violence that I get really frustrated with in mainstream comics. And it didn't help that the random killer in the opening scene slashed three throats before Dick arrived to stop him. The writer makes an halfhearted effort to have Dick acknowledge the fact that he just cost two human beings their lives for the sake of protecting his secret identity, but after a quick couple of reaction captions ("This is on me." really shouldn't cut it here), we're back to business as usual.

And to make matters worse, the bad guy is an expert fighter who really ought to have no trouble figuring out that the guy who he's fighting in the costume is the same dude that he was fighting a couple of minutes ago without the costume.

Too bad, because for 21 pages, I really wanted to like this book.

Rating: 5.5/10