Seeley, Tim
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
2 out of 5
(1 book)
Nightwing Vol. 1: Better Than Batman
(Art by Javier Frenandez and Yanick Paquette)
A Rebirth book. Reclaiming the mantle of Nightwing, Dick Grayson infiltrates the Parliament of Owls, intending to destroy them from within. He finds himself teamed with the mysterious Raptor, a mercenary with a suprising code of honour and some connection to Nightwing's past.
The title of this book, 'Better Than Batman', gives you a pretty good idea of how ambitious it is in concept and how its failure is almost inevitable. Don't get me wrong, I love the character of Nightwing, but he is absolutely never going to be better than Batman either in-universe or in a meta sense. That is the very core of where this book goes wrong. Here we get an attempt to recapture the lightning in a bottle concept introduced in the New 52 Batman arc featuring the Court of Owls by having a similar organisation (this time a Parliament of Owls) as the antagonists and a similar attempt to retcon the lore of the core character. It, unsurprisingly, doesn't work so well and, ultimately, feels very derivative.
At times Raptor comes close to being an engaging character, as a sort of dark reflection of Batman's role in Nightwing's life, but it rapidly gets derailed. One of the worst moments is where Batgirl comments that Nightwing like Raptor because he's funny and charming, like him but, honestly, at no point in this entire book does Raptor do anything that could be considered either funny or charming. It's also all-but impossible to buy into the idea that Raptor has been there for Dick's whole life, just off-panel through everything from the death of his parents, to his life as Robin and on into his time as Nightwing. It's too big a retcon and feels more like the writer trying to put their stamp on all of Dick's mythos rather than introducing a compelling and credible antagonist.
2 out of 5
Read more...
DC Comics (here)