Grayson #3 (DC)

writer: Tim Seeley, Tom King
artist: Mikel Janin

via Comic Vine

So this is my first regular issue of the series.  After the intriguing preview in the last issue of Nightwing from Tim Seeley and Tom King and then the brilliant Futures End edition, I decided to give it a shot despite reservations that it might not as an ongoing experience work as well as I might hope.

Now I'm thinking, what was I thinking?

I love spy capers.  Alias remains one of my all-time favorite TV series, and as it turns out, Grayson reads a lot like that (minus Rambaldi), especially in the early days when Sydney Bristow was still trying to figure out loyalties.

And I also realized something about Grayson.  It's actually a lot like one of my favorite storylines from Dick Grayson's past.  It involves another Grayson, Devin K. Grayson, her "Renegade" arc from the Infinite Crisis era (which is more or less the secret origin of what happened to Dick in Forever Evil and this subsequent reboot, which makes it all the more appropriate).  In that arc, Dick went undercover for an extended period of time.  It was gangster stuff, but still the same general idea.

Seeley and King seemed to understand from the start that Dick's sense of identity is fluid, although he himself remains constant under all his guises.  The point is, he's a character who can handle different personas, whether it's Robin, Nightwing, Batman, or an agent of Spyral.  It's the conflict this always brings him, his ongoing identity crisis, that defines Dick best of all.  It's inevitable that at some point he'll stop being a spy, but it's suddenly such a smart move to have finally moved him past his Nightwing days, that it's surprising to realize all those years where I knew subconsciously the character had grown stagnant led to this moment.

Will most issues feature one-off villains like the guy in this one who uses his guns as his eyes?  I guess I'll see (heh).