Nightwing #30 (DC)

writer: Tim Seeley, Tom King
artist: Javier Garron, Jorge Lucas, Mikel Janin

via Bleeding Cool

Among the many fake controversies to be found recently on the Internet was the one surrounding the final issue of Nightwing (this one).  Apparently there's a whole alternate, original version that exists and does the elegiac, retrospective, reverent look that fans might have wanted to see otherwise, and this one has been seen a crude patchwork, poor substitute.

Yeah.

I'll admit, it's not a perfect issue.  But it's a far better one than it could have been.  As you may or may not know, Dick Grayson ended up being a pivotal player during Forever Evil after he was kidnapped by the bad guys and exposed to the world as being the face behind the domino mask of Nightwing.  By the end, he "died."  Not in the typical comic book fashion.  More like a cliffhanger.  In the final issue of the crossover event, he was alive and hardy.

And repositioned.  And so his ongoing series, Nightwing, was cancelled, and was just relaunched as Grayson.

Dick Grayson was originally introduced in 1940's Detective Comics #38.  He is of course the original Robin, Batman's sidekick, the Boy Wonder.  Over the years his role has evolved.  He was the original reader surrogate, the Spider-Man prototype if you will.  Eventually he struck out on his own, starting when he helped form the Teen Titans.  In the '80s he adopted a new superhero identity, Nightwing, and a new costume.  In the '90s he donned the cowl of Batman for the first time.  He was scheduled to die in Infinite Crisis.  Grant Morrison had him reprise his time as Batman.  And now this.

I've long been a fan of the character, thanks to Burt Ward's depiction in the classic '60s TV show.  (Holy glove-fidgeting, Batman!)  I was too young and unfamiliar with the actual comics at the time to know it wasn't Dick who was killed off in "A Death in the Family."  I was devastated when I saw the news in the paper.  I wondered why he wasn't in Tim Burton's Batman.

And, eventually, I thrilled when Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel launched the first Nightwing ongoing comic.  I loved that run.  I loved Devin K. Grayson's run.  And I wondered why it was so hard for subsequent creators to sync up with Dick the way Chuck and Devin had.  When the New 52 came around and Kyle Higgins launched the next Nightwing ongoing comic, I thought someone had finally figured it out.  And for a brief moment, he had.

And...so it reached the point where Dickwas once again expendable.  Or, malleable.  A trait that has become perhaps Dick Grayson's defining characteristic.  The ability to be "who you need me to be."

That's from this issue, by the way, those very words, the final ones of this final issue.  It's not a perfect summation.  It's something a character in transition would say in lieu of something more definitive.  But that's what's unique about Dick.  He's an icon who's free to evolve.  Always looking for that chance to define his legacy.  All over again.  Because he's always changing, it's hard to think of him in the same way one does, say, Batman or Spider-Man.

That lost version of Nightwing #30 might have been that statement.  Who knows?  What I love about this version is that it's a final issue that actually speaks to the next issue.  Directly.  You have no idea how rarely that happens.  Is this actually the first time?  Correct me here, folks.

So often, the final issue of a series, or sometimes just a creative run, is self-reflective, self-referential.  Most of the time it's be a different creative team than the one that was last best known, and is incongruous.  Or dismissive.  What have you.

You will note the absence of Kyle Higgins in the credits.  No Chicago (Dick's last context prior to this and/or Forever Evil).  I don't have notable history reading Tim Seeley or Tom King, both of whom write Grayson, along with artist Mikel Janin.  They're all here.  A lot of the issue is representing the new context, Dick as an undercover agent infiltrating a criminal organization known as Spyral.  His new context is being a spy.  Actually, it's not terribly different from Devin K. Grayson's Renegade arc (so there's even precedence!).

There's also Batman beating the stuffing out of Dick.  And Dick fighting back.  We get Dick's version of the mission statement Christopher Nolan had Bruce Wayne's father give him in Batman Begins ("And why do we fall, Bruce?  So we can learn to pick ourselves up."):

"We fall because someone pushes us.  We get up to push back."

I consider this a pretty good time to be a fan of Dick Grayson.  I think the more DC's writers are forced to think about him and work with him, rather than merely write more adventures (which is what it might seem they're doing now), the better he is.  So I'm happy that an issue like this exists.  I'm happy that it tries to reconcile the present with the past.  I'm happy that the ending is the same as the beginning.

But I'm strange like that.