Comic Art

It is a common policy in the comics industry to treat the best-selling characters in a way, let’s say discriminating. It’s not just that they have series (limited and ongoing) based on them or that they appear in almost all the others through those (usually annoying) crossovers, they also get their own annual issues! There have been comic books in the past with unbelievably good annuals (like Hellblazer, almost every one was a tremendously well written and pretty large issue) and others quite indifferent, in which category you will include the second annual of Batman’s former sidekick, that’s up to you!

When Dick Grayson left Batman and his role as Robin, he did not become a lawyer as he first considered but another masked crime fighting hero, a much darker and more mysterious one, Nightwing. His name has its origin in a story Superman told him to inspire him when he felt lost, an urban legend (or not?) of Krypton about a man who dreamt of a better world and tried to help forging it. Nightwing worked on his own for a period, he was the protector of Blüdhaven (the economically degraded neighbour city of Gotham), then joined the Teen Titans as their leader and even later he led the Outsiders, a group of heroes created both by Teen Titans and Young Justice. Youngest son of an acrobat family, Dick saw his parents getting killed by a mafia boss extorting money from the circus (the incident that was credited to Two-Face in Batman Forever, the movie by Joel Schumacher) and dedicated his life in fighting crime and protecting the innocent.

In this annual issue we follow Nightwing after the incidents of Infinite Crisis that almost got him killed (during the Battle of Metropolis Alexander Luthor almost assassinated him while he was trying to save Batman’s life, DC admitted that their original plan was to kill Dick Grayson and they abandoned it in the last moment) and learn more about his relationship with Oracle (Barbara Gordon), the woman he offered his heart to one year ago. I must confess that the storyline confuses me, especially after Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, and the characters are not my favourite but many people that I know swear it’s really interesting; I might give it a try!