Taking a Knife to the Nerve of the Moment – Talking Tech with Nightwing Author, Ben Percy

We here at Black Nerd Problems had a chance to sit down with Benjamin Percy about Nightwing and technology in preparation for the release of Nightwing #45, available now. ***Minor Spoilers for Nightwing #45***

On Nightwing and The Bleeding Edge Storyline When I tell Ben that I was excited to see him take over Nightwing after his Green Arrow run, he thanks me and tells me how excited he is to get to play with the Batfamily. It’s a big sandbox and there’s a lot of fun to be had. I proceed to ask about why he selected VR as one of the technologies that has gone awry in his story and he quickly corrected me. “It’s not just not VR. It’s Alexa… always listening. And [The Phantasm] is Alexa with a PS4 or VR delivered to every citizen.” His focus with The Bleeding Edge is on the fear of cybercrime. He explains about the Dark Web and how his novel, The Dark Net, drew the attention of his current editor who asked him to inject adrenaline into that premise within the superhero world. He describes all the ways the anxiety of technology has defined us: how we are struck momentarily with fear whenever a phone glitches, whenever our computers make a screeching sound, whenever we trust our data to a third party. “Every swipe, every click, every tap on the keyboard is being fed into some algorithm.” He comments if this is what he as a 39-year-old is thinking about, what effects this digital revolution is going to have on the next generation who grew up hand-in-hand with communications. He …