Nightwing #9 Review

writer: Tim Seeley / artist: Marcio Takara / DC Comics After a pretty successful run of arcs to open Nightwing’s new existence in Gotham, we were treated to what I’m guessing was a one shot of Nightwing joining alt-Superman for a mini adventure. Apparently, Grayson has been having nightmares where his friends are getting merked in gruesome ways and he’s helpless to stop. Alt-Superman recognizes this as a tactic from a foe in his home dimension and decides to go into Grayson’s dreams to help him defeat the dream invading foe. Meh. The Inception-light story element serves a couple of masters as it makes way for a surreal setting in Nightwing’s dreamscape where literally anything can happen, but overall gives us a plot that can be thoroughly unattached from anything else in the story thus far. There’s lots of fighting, lots of alt-Superman mentorship and guidance and a nice/neat resolution, but the story doesn’t really elevate to a height of supreme interest. Essentially, this seems to be just a transition issue to introduce Nightwing to a new (and for us familiar) setting. And that’s fine, not every issue needs to be a must read the second our comic book opens on Wednesday morning. it’s not a waste of your time by any means, but its not a highlight of the series by any stretch.

Takara fills in this month on the art and the style is definitely suited for the trippy dreamscape. Nothing explicitly stands out, but I did think the character models were handled well in the exterior…