Quarter Bin #9 "Nightwing: The Target"

Continuing our themes editions of this column, let’s have a look at:

NIGHTWING: THE TARGET (DC)
From 2001.

A little-known prestige format one-shot (hell, the idea of “prestige format” is itself something of a lost art at DC these days), and a comic I only even heard about last year, the main appeal of it was the creative team of Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel. Since neither name carries the same weight in 2011 as it did ten years ago, let’s take a look back at why exactly I would care so much.

While there are in fact many reasons, the most relevant one is that Dixon and McDaniel were the original team behind the NIGHTWING series launched in 1996. Dixon was a company writer, who’d helped make his reputation on books like ROBIN and GREEN ARROW, while McDaniel was known for a run on DAREDEVIL, a comparable vigilante figure, whose style would be well-suited to conveying the animated look of a title featuring Dick Grayson, a former circus performer who had become better known as a stalwart Teen Titan and former Boy Wonder than for his ability to hold his own. Incredibly, he’d never carried his own ongoing series to that point. Dixon was needed to give the character credibility, to establish an entire world around him, one separated from Gotham, Dark Knights and Teen Titans. McDaniel was needed to present him in a fashion that set him apart.

To put it mildly, they pulled it off. There are only a few creative teams I will forever hold in great esteem. Ron Marz and Daryl Banks on GREEN LANTERN. Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos on IMPULSE (and early issues of the mishandled X-NATION). Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett on SUPERBOY. Most of these teams seemed to spontaneously form at roughly the same time, perhaps by sheer coincidence, perhaps by inspired editorial selection.

When fans think about that kind of chemistry, they naturally think of tandems like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Chris Claremont and John Byrne, Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, the heavy hitters, who either made history or lasted for obscene lengths of time together, sometimes both. For me, simply because I had to privilege of following them personally, I gravitate toward those who simply seemed inspired by each other, to push characters to considerable heights, even if they didn’t always seem to be appreciated. I know that DC certainly admired Kesel and Grummett together. The duo followed Superboy from ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN to a couple of memorable runs in his own title (I’ll be writing more about them later). Marz and Banks had the job of not only completely revamping Green Lantern mythos, but establishing an entirely new character. Waid and Ramos presented what I consider to be the CALVIN + HOBBES of the superhero set.

But Dixon and McDaniel were still unique. Of all the creators mentioned so far, I feel the most continued interest in a guy like McDaniel, who has maintained against all conventional wisdom exactly the same appeal he first demonstrated (at least for me) in NIGHTWING. All these guys became journeymen. It was the nature of what made them so special in the first place, being in the right place at the right time, finding their perfect matches. I have to believe that he thought DC fit his style better than Marvel, because all these years later, Scott’s still there, one of the unsung tenures of comics history. He’s still waiting, maybe, for that next perfect match. (Never mind that he found it with Tony Bedard on THE GREAT TEN, because fans didn’t seem to notice.)

With NIGHTWING, he and Dixon gave Dick Grayson a whole new lease on life. They pushed him into a strongly independent direction, and worked so well together that DC apparently found it appropriate to give them a further spotlight with THE TARGET, which is like their run in miniature, Dick fighting corruption in his adopted hometown of Blüdhaven, a seedier, more obviously corrupt version of Gotham (thus the unwieldy name, and why it was eventually, spectacularly erased from the DC map during INFINITE CRISIS). The title of the book comes from a separate identity Dick assumes during a particularly tricky case, a one-off deal that shows the nuances of Dick’s war on crime, the way it evolved during the course of NIGHTWING (Devin Grayson, when she came to the end of her controversial run, perhaps did it one better, but I don’t suppose we have to get into that now, but suffice it to say, DC had to reboot Nightwing afterward, the first time in that title’s history, over a hundred issues, which is itself a huge testament to the work Dixon and McDaniel began).

The Dick Grayson that exists today, the one who has permanently (we’ll say) assumed the mantle of Batman, is a direct result of the work begun in NIGHTWING, the strong push for character established by Dixon and McDaniel. Something like THE TARGET one-shot, a terrific find if there ever was one, is just another sign that, among all the teams that I personally have come to enjoy in my experiences with comic books over the years, Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel deserve a permanent record of their achievements, reprints of their trade paperbacks, hardcover commemorative collections. Maybe even a return engagement. Maybe McDaniel doesn’t have to look so hard for that next blockbuster collaboration. If anyone can succeed Tony Daniel on BATMAN, or any team deserves to assume control of BATMAN & ROBIN, it would be these two.