Nightwing #3

Done with my Arisia reviews. Back to the New 52.

Title: Nightwing
Issue: 3
Date: January 2012
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Kyle Higgins
Penciler: Eddy Barrows, Eduardo Pansica
Inker: JP Mayer, Paulo Siqueira, Eber Ferreira
Colorist: Rod Reis, Allan Passalaqua
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Katie Kubert, Bobbie Chase
Cover: Eddie Barrows, Rod Reis

Dick Grayson confronts his past as he investigates the murder of Mr. Haly, the owner of Haly's Circus. Actually, I should say that he's the former owner of Haly's circus. The current owner is, well, Dick Grayson.

This had some really great development of Grayson's backstory, including a fun opening flashback scene, plus plenty of insights and intrigue.

A shift of scene to Chicago has Nightwing confronting a former friend turned crime boss. The ensuing battle included an extended psychic attack sequence of the "face-your-fears" variety that went on for about five tedious pages (one would have been plenty) before Nightwing at least manages to salvage a satisfying resolution out of the scene.

That in turn leads to a really good scene between Dick and Raya, so it's not a complete waste.

Still, five pages? At least Saiko was kept to a minimum.

Hoping for more circus intrigue next issue. And maybe a better villain?

Rating: 6.5/10

Nightwing #2

Bonus Review! I goofed and bought the third issue of three DC titles that I had planned to drop after issue #1, so I went out and bought the second issue of those three titles today (yay for a good sale going on at New England Comics!).

Title: Nightwing
Issue: 2
Date: December 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Kyle Higgins
Penciler: Eddy Barrows
Inker: JP Mayer, Paulo Siqueira
Colorist: Rod Reis
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Katie Kubert, Bobbie Chase
Cover: Eddie Barrows, JP Mayer, Rod Reis

This was a big improvement on the first issue, especially once we got past the rather generic (and inconclusive) fight scene between Nightwing and new villain Saiko.

Dick Grayson's relationship with new love interest (well, old flame, actually) Raya Vestry developed nicely, with a decent flow to the dialogue and some advancement of the plot along the way.

This was followed by a BIG plot twist that was actually pretty clever, especially if they allow it to be a long-term development rather than something that gets resolved and forgotten at the end of this storyline.

Ending brings us round two with Saiko (still generic; this villain is doing nothing for me right now), and some tragedy and mystery to finish things up.

Saiko isn't doing the story any favors, but fortunately he appears to be a hired gun. Maybe there's a more interesting boss waiting in the wings. Other than that, the handling of Dick Grayson continues to be good, and the new plot elements in this issue raise a ton of potential.

Rating: 6.5/10

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

War of the Supermen #0

Another leftover: This is from last year's FCBD, but I picked it up this past weekend.

Title: War of the Supermen
Issue: #0
Date: June 2010
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: James Robinson, Sterling Gates
Penciler: Eddy Barrows
Inker: J. P. Mayer
Art For Second Story: Julian Lopez, Bit, Aaron Lopresti, David Finch, Joe Weems, Gary Frank, Cafu, Ethan Van Sciver, Diogenes Neves, Vincente Cifuentes, Blond
Colorist: Rod Reis
Letterer: John J. Hill
Editor: Matt Idelson, Will Moss

If (like me) you're clueless about the storyline that leads up to this "war", you should read this book in reverse order. The second story is basically a recap, told in the form of Lois Lane's notes for her story on New Krypton. Or you could just let me fill you in. New Krypton is what became of the classic bottle-city of Kandor of Silver-Age fame. The bottle-city was a Kryptonian city shrunk down to micro-scale, which the writers would find various reasons for Superman to be unable to find a way to restore to full size.

Well, someone finally realized how silly that was. Actually, what happened was that someone realized that the concept was silly, and instead of leaving it where it belonged (as a nostalgic memory along with Jimmy Olsen as Elasto-Boy), they decided that the story would be less silly if they went ahead and un-shrunk Kandor.

Nope. Still silly.

So now you've got an entire population of super-persons on an artificial planet, presumably on the other side of the sun from Earth. And they've gone and elected Christopher Reeve era villain General Zod as their supreme leader. Superman, suspecting that Zod has evil intents, has infiltrated the General's forces. But he still acts shocked when it turns out that, yes, the evil villain who was exiled to the Phantom Zone turns out to really be an evil villain. Shocking, I know.

Superman comes crashing through the wall, but everyone's got superpowers. Ursa (last seen losing her powers and then getting taken out with one punch by Margot Kidder at the end of Superman II) has a kryptonite knife. Really. A kryptonite knife. Apparently just so they can show a bit of blood, because we all know that you can't have a really good Superman story without blood.

The most annoying thing about this, really, is that Superman behaves like an idiot through this entire scene. A lot of people have gripes about the Superman character, but what I've always liked about him is that when he is written well, he thinks his way out of problems rather than slugging his way out. This is not one of those stories.

And even the attempt to replicate the "I destroyed New York twenty minutes ago" bit from the Watchmen fails to make Zod into a particularly compelling villain. He brags that Ursa is going to show Kal-El what a "precise" strike is, and she proceeds to inflict, well, only a flesh wound. He also does all of the usual villainous gloating and revealing of plans.

I liked the Lois Lane recap bit better than the opening story, but it was still only a recap. There's only so much you can do with that.

Bad concept to begin with. Badly executed.

Rating: 4.5/10