Comics/ Comic Reviews/ DC Comics

Nightwing #153

By Andy Frisk
Feb 19, 2009 - 21:07
Nightwing’s final issue sees him setting off on a new beginning, no, not officially as the new Caped Crusader, but as a new resident of Gotham who will be going out a lot at night, and not just for a few drinks on the town.

As the issue begins, we get Nightwing preparing to vacate his New York residence, The Cloisters, for the dangerous streets of a now Batman-less Gotham. When The Flash asks Nightwing, aka Dick Grayson, if he could zip him into Gotham, Dick replies that he’s gonna take the train. Flash forward to Dick’s train ride into Gotham and we can’t help but flashback in our minds to Miller and Mazzuchelli’s Batman Year One scene where a young Bruce Wayne takes his first train ride back to Gotham after years of training to become The Dark Knight. Kramer’s pencils and layouts are nearly and deliberately almost a match for Mazzuchelli’s take on the scene. Even the dialogue Dick carries on in his head during the ride into town is reminiscent of Bruce’s all those years ago. Dick, of course, is met by Alfred and taken back to the mansion where the two are joined by Robin, aka Tim Drake, to get the cave back in order.

Nightwing #153

Interestingly enough, Dick’s first good deed on the streets of Gotham is to change the burnt out street light on Park Row, once known as Crime Alley, that he saw from the passenger seat of Alfred’s new model hybrid roaster on the way to the mansion from the train depot. It is an incredibly simple yet powerfully symbolic act. The street light is apparently the same one under which Bruce’s parents were murdered and The Batman was born years ago. As Dick proceeds to light the remnants of a candle which we are meant to understand was the same solemn candle that Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson swore their allegiance to combat crime over all those years ago at the outset of the crime fighting career of Batman and Robin, Dick is shrouded in the light of the newly restored street light overhead. It is an image symbolic of the return of the light that Batman was to the streets of Gotham, but also symbolic of the light shown in the darkness by a new protector for Gotham’s streets, as it is Dick Grayson, Nightwing, who has reignited that light, and who better to reignite that light than one who is worthy of the mantle of The Bat? The juxtaposition of the candle, over which such a solemn vow was spoken and the streetlight, relit by Grayson is a powerful one. The new light encases the old, just as the new protector rises to take the place of the old. Grayson’s new vow, that “this light must always shine no matter what” is not just the reinforcement of an old vow but the expanding and renewing of that vow.

We can’t say for sure that all of this train riding, candle and street lighting foreshadow Grayson’s assumption of The Cowl but is sure sheds some light on where his story will take us in the month’s to come.

Rating: 8.5/10
Last Updated: Jan 7, 2012 - 7:41
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He should be the choice to take over for the bat. It was a mistake to let Azreal take it the last time around and it would be a mistake to have a different character take it now. The thing is with each new arc and writer each of these characters go through so much and seeing Dick finally as Batman is long overdue.

#1 - nidnarg - 02/22/2009 - 15:19

Good review, I'm a huge fan of Grayson ever since I was a 6-year-old. The whole concept of 'Robin' worked for me back then, so when Grayson grew up (in parallel to my own) and became Nightwing, I ate it all up. It's all good. The tragedy is that it's a good character treated poorly. He was the catalyst for the introduction of Bludhaven into DC Comics and throughout the city's destruction he's been ignored. His residence in NY was a POOR CREATIVE EFFORT. It was in VAIN. DC should keep its characters out of New York, we already have MARVEL for that and enough of fictional cities oriented into the NY-structure to use it as a good narrative device. So I was partially glad that I could forget the whole 'Nightwing in New York' phase and move on.

One error though my friend: in Batman Year One it is JAMES GORDON who takes the train ride to Gotham, not Bruce (he flies in, which is later alluded to brilliantly in Batman Begins), hence the whole 'this city looks like an accomplishment from above, where the strength and effort of generations is seen' (another precursor to Miller's commentary of a city in THE SPIRIT). So yeah, hope you got that right.

#2 - Nave Hayder - 04/06/2009 - 16:49

You are so right...thanks for pointing out my mistake...

...I knew that I should have pulled out my Batman Year One trade and not just ran off of my obviously faulty memory!

;-)

#3 - Andy - 04/12/2009 - 11:56