Unbeatable Comics: Nightwing #10

writer: Kyle Higgins
artist: Eddy Barrows, Geraldo Borges

Nightwing is not Batman.

I think Kyle Higgins is about to explore that better than he thought he would.  The introduction of Paragon is like the Nightwing version of the Court of Owls, someone who thinks they know how to improve Gotham better than the heroes do.  That's an important story to tell for any member of the Batman family.  For years Batman has waged a crusade to clean up his beloved city.  Yet Gotham has not become a utopia.  In most respects, Batman's failed.  The reason is the same as I've just explained: everyone thinks they have the answer.

Jeph Loeb's The Long Halloween is perhaps the ancestor text for this Batman story type, with the Falcone clan poised to define Gotham City on their terms, and Batman, just getting started, helps to subvert those plans.  Bane did it, too.  In fact, that's what Christopher Nolan has been doing in all of his Batman movies.  Everyone has a solution and no one can get any progress done because they're all fighting each other.  As far as I could tell, Scott Snyder's Court of Owls was a conspiracy that sought to accomplish the very same goal.

I didn't read most of the Court of Owls saga, but I know Snyder and Higgins have done a fair amount of collaborating, most obviously in Gates of Gotham, the DC reader's introduction to Higgins.  As this issue kicks off the ambitions of Paragon, Higgins has Nightwing muse on the sad state of Gotham, its glory days buried far beneath the collective scum that has for many years manifested itself in the nocturnal activities of the Dark Knight and the corrupt forces he works tirelessly against.  Higgins works with a different kind of conspiracy, too, someone trying to frame Nightwing for murder, and a dirty cop who's possibly been at this hobby for months.  It's not the first time a writer has flung this kind of story at Nightwing, but it's a welcome return.

Nightwing isn't Batman because he seems capable of taking a little perspective.  When Dick Grayson joined the Teen Titans, he found himself in a group of friends.  When Batman joined the Justice League, he had maybe one friend and a bunch of people he didn't trust.  Dick's had an alien girlfriend and complicated relationships with numerous female colleagues, including Donna Troy and Barbara Gordon, the latter of which Higgins and Gail Simone have touched on in the New 52.  He's known the responsibility of living up to an image many times over: with his parents, with Batman, as a leader, as a replacement Batman.  Batman's only ever believed in one image, and that was his own.  Nightwing might seem more carefree and replaceable, but no Robin since Dick Grayson has so successfully transitioned into his own crimefighting career, not even wunderkind Tim Drake.

Nightwing is the version of Spider-Man that would exist if Marvel let Peter Parker exist in a world where his parents mean more to him than his aunt and uncle, if he had to exist in the shadow of giants and learn how to emerge from it.  Nightwing doesn't strike fear like Batman, but then Batman doesn't make friends like Nightwing.  The more he works on his own, the more lonely Nightwing becomes, closer to the archetype set by his mentor.  But he also establishes the ability to operate independently better than Batman, who will have to reluctantly admit that he works better with a little help than he does when he's completely alone.  There will never be a Nightwing Incorporated.

Higgins has put our boy in another bad spot, in the center of another conspiracy, and while the opening issues of this series have already seen that in the remnants of Haley's Circus (which Dick seems poised to transform into his own Wayne enterprise, only instead of a business, an entertainment) and then Nightwing's unexpected connection to the heart of the Court of Owls.  Paragon calls himself "Gotham's true son," and perhaps that's what's at the center of this story, that Nightwing is a son by his core definition, and like any son, the world he grows into doesn't always respect the path to responsibility.  He's faced a thousand hurdles   already, and some ready will consider this story redundant, but it's Nightwing's story, more than the Court of Owls was Batman's.  There's a reason why the whole family took on the Talons, because that was a clash for the whole family, a challenge everyone had to face.

Everyone clashes against each other in Gotham.  Nightwing, and Kyle Higgins, are about to explore the ego behind this phenomenon.  And maybe that's it.  Nightwing doesn't have an ego.  That's why he's ideal to serve as a counterpoint to Batman, or to usurpers like Paragon.  Carry on, Higgins!