Written by Kyle Higgins
Pencils by Juan Jose Ryp
Inks by Roger Bonet
Nightwing #17 was touted as the hot follow up to Death of the Family as Nightwing deals with the fallout of everything he and the Bat Family went through in Batman #17. I was pretty excited for this issue as I am a huge Nightwing fan, but once I started digging in all I found was disappointment. To say I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. What I got was possibly the most boring issue of Nightwing since it’s New52 launch. I was hoping for a Grayson with a deeply fractured psyche after the Joker ordeal, instead this issue barely scratched the surface of his mental state. He’s obviously shaken up, but something like what he went through should have caused at least some interesting emotional damage. All we get here is page after page of Nightwing and Grayson associates asking if he’s okay, if he needs to talk, how he’s doing, blah, blah, blah. In each instance he responds with an “I’m okay.” Seriously boring stuff.
Damian does make a guest appearance, tailing Grayson everywhere he goes to get a read on how he’s doing. Damian doesn’t fall for the ‘I’m okay’ shtick, and does manage to show up in time to keep Grayson from pummeling some baddies to death, after which they go for a heart-to-heart jaunt around Gotham, again nothing really interesting happening here either. Lastly we are introduced to a new bad guy called The Dealer (sigh), a guy who sends people out to cull memorabilia from the sites of Bat Family fights. Yeah, another uninteresting move to finish it off.
Before I even dug into the issue enough to be bored the first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t digging the art at all. The way Nightwing’s face was drawn seemed off to me and made me miss whomever it was that used to be on the book with Higgins. Pretty much all the facial work was a no go for me.
Overall we get a boring story, an uninteresting bad guy and artwork that left much to be desired. I am really hoping that Higgins manages to pick up the pace of the story in issue #18 and that this thing with The Dealer actually goes somewhere. I really hate to be so down on anything I review, but I just can’t let this one go, especially because it’s one of my favorite characters and I read it with the intentions of reviewing it.
1.5 out of 5 nerds
Follow Christopher on Twitter @AUDone44 and The Nerd @nerdfollowing
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
Nerd Comments