More words than anyone could possibly want on 2025's Nightwing Vol. 1: Bludhaven (collecting the 1995 miniseries and the first eight issues of the ongoing)

While I read a lot of Batman comics in the '90s, I sat out Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel's Nightwing ongoing series. I mean, as a teenager and college student with limited income, I had to draw the line somewhere, and that seemed like a good place to draw it. 

I had obviously read a lot of Dixon, and while he was not a particularly colorful nor imaginative writer, he was great at coming up with new crimes and heists on a monthly basis, and penning comics that read like mini action movies that happened to have a superhero in them. I wasn't familiar with McDaniel at all. I imagine if the book had been drawn by Norm Breyfogle or Tim Sale or Vince Giarrano or Jim Balent, I might have snapped it up, but it was not (I am now trying to imagine the book drawn by any of the above and can't quite see it).

Also, I remember balking at the very existence of Bludhaven, the fact that Gotham City happened to have a neighboring big city that was even more corrupt and crime-ridden that no one had ever mentioned before. That was too much for Teenage Caleb's suspension of disbelief (Grown-up Caleb doesn't care and, in fact, I now see it was completely integral to making the Nightwing ongoing interesting; having Dick as Batman Lite fighting crime in Gotham City just wouldn't have worked).

So why am I reading it now, especially given the fact that the reputations of the series' creators are now so, as Travis Hedge Coke pointed out on my Bluesky post about it put it, "tarnished"...? Well, as I explained a few posts back, my teenage nephew is starting to get into comics, and  he said he liked Nightwing. I ordered this particular trade paperback online for him and, when it arrived, I noticed that not only did it collect the beginning of the monthly, but also a four-issue 1995 miniseries penned by the late Denny O'Neil. 

That was of particular interest to me, as not only had I not read the miniseries, but I don't think I had ever even known it existed. Released when it was, the mini, penciled by some guy named Greg Land and inked by a Mike Sellers, would have slotted in between the events of "Prodigal", the multi-book event storyline during which Dick Grayson temporarily became Batman after "KnightsEnd", and the launch of the Nightwing ongoing.

So, after giving my nephew a brand-new copy for his birthday ("Can you pose like that?" his mother asked after he unwrapped it, trying to strike the pose Nightwing did on McDaniel's cover for the trade), I ordered a copy from the library to read for myself...and, of course, blog about.

Having now read the four-issue miniseries, I'm not entirely sure why it was published (Pretty great Brian Stelfreeze cover though, right? Unfortunately, it has Dick in his previous costume, and probably wouldn't have worked for the collection cover; Stelfreeze also drew the cover of the second issue, and McDaniel provided those for issues #2 and #3, neither of which are quite as strong, and McDaniel covered the fourth and final issue).

It's not exactly that nothing happens, but not much of real consequence does. The plot provides a couple of potential big, life-altering events for the Dick Grayson—he decides to quit superheroing and try out life as a civilian, he meets a new love interest and he learns a secret that might mean he was wrong about who actually killed his parents—but, by the fourth issue, all of those things are resolved in such a way that he's pretty much right back where he was at the beginning of the series, albeit it wearing a new costume. 

If the point was simply to get him into a new costume, DC probably didn't need to a publish a 90-page story. Surely that could have happened in Nightwing #1...or simply off-panel. I wonder if perhaps the reason DC published a Nightwing miniserires was to test the waters and gauge market interest in a Nightwing ongoing series.  DC had just published a one-shot—Nightwing: Alfred's Return—a few months previous, and the monthly launched about nine months after the mini concluded.

Regardless of the why of it, let's discuss the what of it.

The opening scene finds Nightwing, still wearing the costume seen on the cover above, atop a rooftop at night, looking down on a quartet of very large men in an alley, one of whom is about to execute a young woman with a pistol. He intervenes, chattily beating everyone up and saving the girl...but not before the leader of the gang forcefully drives her face into a brick wall, knocking off her glasses and knocking her out.

"Without her glasses, she's beautiful," Nightwing thinks, and then follows that up with "I can't believe I thought that.

For reference, here she is with glasses:

And here she is without: 

Jeez, what does Dick have against glasses...? If he went to the high school in She's All That, I suppose he would have thought Rachael Leigh Cook was some sort of hideous monster before Jenna Malone gave her a makeover. 

Ironically, the last I knew, Dick was in a relationship with Barbara Gordon, who famously wears glasses.

Anyway, Batman shows up and the two glare at one another as if they are about to fight, but, instead, they chat a bit about what just happened.

The girl is Miggie Webster, she had been kidnapped and the cops were unable to crack the case...but Nightwing was able to find and rescue her in the nick of time. The former Dynamic Duo talk about their history over the course of a few pages of climbing a wall, swinging from extremely thick ropes that get all McFarlaney below where they hold them and running across rooftops.

At the end of the scene, Dick says he's going to quit the hero business, and hands Batman his old costume: "Put it in a trophy case. Give it to the Salvation Army. Burn it."

The next day, Dick goes to see Miggie in the hospital, and gives this weird-ass explanation:

You probably don't remember me...My name is Dick Grayson. I was there--in the alley a couple of hours ago... I have a friend who was one of the paramedics... Anyway, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd see how you are--

I found this amusing because not only does Nightwing have a relatively small mask (It's not like it might disguise his facial features the way that Batman or Daredevil's masks hide theirs) but at this point he also has a very distinct, flowing blue-black mullet. I mean, if you encounter two such young, fit guys with that same exact hairstyle in a matter of hours, you might be a wee bit suspicious, no...? I think of this hairstyle a little like I've always thought of Oliver Queen's distinct goatee; it's just a little too distinct to successfully pull off a double identity with.

I don't know if Miggie does recognize Dick as Nightwing or not. As he's leaving, she says, "I feel I owe you something...a cup of cappuccino?"

If she knows he's Nightwing, sure, that makes sense. He did save her life. The least she can do is take him out for coffee. But if he was just some guy in the alley with his friend, what does she owe him for...? For checking on her the next day...?

Well, whatever. Dick returns to his dusty, grocery-less Gotham apartment and lays atop his blanket-less bed in a tiny pair of red and blue briefs.

(A little something for the ladies, from Greg Land and Mike Sellers.)

The next morning, Alfred, who Dick's narration tells us is his best friend (Take that, Wally!), arrives with a plate of pancakes, a thermos of coffee and a bunch of papers, in order to feed Dick and talk about how happy he is that he's considering a life beyond vigilantism. (Dick is considering law school, he says).

Among the papers, however, is something that will fuel the events of the rest of the series. A threatening letter written in yellow scrript—what, did the writer use a highlighter?—addressed to his parents, mere days before their deaths. It reads:

If you say anything about what you saw, they will kill you and your whole family.

Be warned.

Pickles The Clown

It was in an envelope postmarked from the Principality of Kravia, one of those little fake countries that must make the maps in the DC and Marvel Universes so much more complicated than those in ours. Apparently, Haly's Circus visited there shortly before the Flying Graysons were killed, and now Dick is questioning whether it was really Tony Zucco who killed his parents all those years ago...or someone from Kravia.

Just when he thought he was out of the hero game, he finds himself pulled back in...!

Kravia is ruled by a rather ridiculous looking dictator named Prince Balsik, who wears a blue, green, purple military uniform with lots of medals, shoulder cords and a sword. His face is badly scarred with big, thick scars that look like a wild animal had mauled him. 

His soldiers wear orange and yellow armor and helmets that looks like something out of a video game...or, perhaps, the future, and though their guns fire bullets, Land draws them more like laser guns. 

When Grayson starts making inquiries, the prince sends an assassin after him, but between meeting the assassin and then having the first of two fights with him, Dick manages to go on a date with Miggie, who seems oddly desperate to spend time with Dick (This is, for the detectives at home, Clue #2 that Miggie's life isn't as perfect as Dick, who spent his childhood training under the World's Greatest Detective, assumes it must be).

Eventually, Dick visits the Batcave, gets a briefing from Oracle, whom he just refers to as "Oracle" (no mention of how she looks in glasses) and, now regretting his decision to give Batman his superhero outfit, is in need of something to wear.

Enter Harold, "Batman's chief mechanic, computer whiz and all 'round genius...not to mention costume maker!"

It is Harold who is responsible for Nightwing's new costume, the simple, mostly-black one with the stylized blue "V" over the chest that runs down his arms. I'm pretty sure this is the very best of all of Nightwing's costumes (and, notably, all of those that followed it over the course of the next 30 years have mostly just been slight variations of it). While Harold is responsible for it in-comic, I wonder which real-world artist designed it.

Anyway, here's Dick's first appearance in it:

For some reason, Land gave him long, claw-like nails on two of the fingers on his right hand and, amusingly, once Dick puts his hair into a ponytail, it seems to be about five times as long as it was when he was wearing it down. Did Harold also give Dick extensions...?

From there, Dick infiltrates Kravia, and does so during Prince Baslik's first night of an ethnic cleansing. In a rather grim scene, one that prefigures that one gag from Family Guy, Baslik hands a subordinate a light brown card and asks, "Your men have copies of this card, Colonel?"

When he responds affirmatively, the prince follows up with, "They understand they are to terminate anyone whose skin is darker than this?"

Dick's not there to save the country or end Baslik's rule, but he inadvertently does so, in the process fighting lots of those weird futuristic-looking soldiers, discovering a very dark and melodramatic secret about the Kravian leadership, escaping a particularly scary-sounding deathtrap, deciding whether or not to kill someone who might have had his parents killed and ultimately learning the truth behind Pickles The Clown's threat to his parents.

As I said earlier, after his little adventure, Nightwing's status quo reverts to where it was on page one, the only real change aside from his costume being his acknowledgement or acceptance that Batman and Alfred had given him a good childhood after all. "You and Alfred gave me a home and you gave me what we don't mention," Dick tells Batman on the penultimate page. "The L word." (Unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim ruined the moment for me.) 

I've shared enough imagery above that you probably have a good sense of what the miniseries looked like. It's always interesting to see Land's work from this early in his career, when it seems to have genuinely been created by Land putting pencil to paper...something that can't be said of his work in the 21st century.

I mean, I have no idea exactly how he creates his artwork, but, when I think of Land, I think of images like this now, images so obviously photo-referenced that it seems as if he is finding photographs and then digitally manipulating them to add on superhero costumes...and not even with much care, so that, say, Reed Richards or Sue Storm's face may look like those of completely different people from panel to panel.

I honestly don't get it, as that seems just as tiresome to me as drawing would. (But maybe easier on the hand?)

 There are a few examples of...well, let's say shortcuts in this series, published 31 years ago.

Here, for example, is an image of Batman and Nightwing swinging through the night together:

And here, on the very next page, is Batman and Dick-as-Robin swinging through the night together:

Obviously, the point is that the images should be similar, demonstrating how Dick has changed even if his partnership with Batman hasn't, but jeez, if Land was going to repurpose the Batman pose, couldn't he at least have changed up the exact weird tangling of the ropes, or the angle of his wrists, or which foot is visible or something...? Like, gestured towards making them look different...? Colorist Cathi Bertrand did a little bit more work in distinguishing the two images of Batman, making his costume seem a bit bluer in the second image.

(Again, these images appear on consecutive pages; in fact, there are only five panels between them). 

Here's another, more obvious one, in which Dick punches the assassin four times in the mid-section in four panels, although Land only drew two panels and then repeated them:

A pre-cursor of what was to come, perhaps...

With the miniseries now out of the way, the rest of the trade is devoted to the first eight issues of Dixon and Beatty's ongoing, which was inked by Karl Story. 

That's a pretty hefty chunk of comics there, twelve issues total, in a $19.99 trade paperback. Pulling up the calculator on my phone, that works out to $1.66 per issue...a pretty solid value, really. 

Now, while the miniseries isn't really necessary, and doesn't really come into play at all in the events that follow, those first eight issues of the ongoing do all belong together, as they are all more-or-less a single storyline. 

In it, Batman sends Nightwing to Bludhaven in order to find out who was responsible for killing 21 men in a very particular fashion (Their heads were all turned around backwards and they were thrown in the water, eventually floating into Gotham), and Dick spends those eight issues trying to get to the bottom of that particular mystery...which involves the city's kingpin of crime Angel Marin going missing, and some unknown player seemingly assuming his role in secret.

It's only in the later issues that Dixon and McDaniel start to hint at the new kingpin of crime (and yeah, I'm using "kingpin" on purpose, as the title seems less Batman Lite and more Daredevil Lite, including having a very large villain in the suit in the antagonist role). 

Fist he's just a voice, then a figure in the shadows, and then a civilian name being bandied about and, ultimately, on the very last page of the seventh issue, hie revealed visually and his supervillain identity spoken aloud (In a very dramatic lead-up to that splash, McDaniel draws three consecutive panels of Nightwing addressing him, gradually falling under a shadow as the gigantic crime boss apparently stands up in front of him).

Now, these comics are from 1996, so, chances are you already know who this mysterious villain is. I mean, I did, and, as I said, I didn't read Nightwing back then...I just knew Dixon had made use of the character via osmosis I guess, seeing issue of Nightwing on the new comics racks and, eventually, reading about it on the Internet. 

If the comics weren't 30 years old, I'd be hesitant to name the character at all here, but, well, they are 30 years old, so I guess I will name him eventually, so I guess you can stop reading now if you don't want his identity spoiled.

The book isn't presented as a mystery—that is, there are no suspects, and Dixon doesn't provide the reader with enough clues to guess at who the crime boss might be—but it is mysterious, and Dick spends seven issues trying to get to the bottom of it as he feels out the local criminal underworld.

It seems unusual to me as it is essentially a single, eight-issue story arc, with the mysterious villain revealed at the end and, while the conflict isn't resolved, it is only at that particular point that the book's premise is finally unveiled and the hero gets a new status quo. 

The hopelessly corrupt city lacks anything approaching a hero and is portrayed a lot like Frank Miller presented the Gotham City that Batman returned to in the Batman arc "Year One" (Although Bludhaven lacks a Jim Gordon and a Harvey Dent to help Batman do his work) and, realizing all of this and the fact that it is in the clutches of an honest-to-goodness supervillain, what started as a mission for Dick becomes his vocation.

Just as Batman has his Gotham City, then, here Nightwing gets Bludhaven.

While I said these eight issues basically constitute a single storyline, this isn't any sort of Bendis-ian decompression...in fact, was there decompressed storytelling in mainstream comics circa 1996...? Dixon breaks the eight-issue story into smaller chunks, one-issue stories and short arcs, even if they are all part of the same story (Outside of the big crossover events, I'm having a hard time thinking of a Batman arc from the '90s that went on quite as long as this; that is, Nightwing #1-8 weren't advertised as an event, but the story was more event-sized than most comics from the Bat-office at the time).

Each issue has a big action sequence and features Nightwing foiling some kind of crime. In some cases, these are the work of "Reynard", a member of Gotham gangster Black Mask's False Face Society who wears a fox mask; in other, they involve Nightwing going after pressure points in Marin's organization in an attempt to find out where he is and who it is that is replacing him.

Along the way, Dick rents a seedy apartment in a terrible neighborhood, an act that introduces a running gag and, I assume, a potential love interest. The building's super is a woman named "Clancy" with an Irish accent that seems to always be behind a closed door or somehow covering her face when Dick tries to talk to her (washing her hair in the sink, carrying a stack of boxes, etc.) She turns out to be of Chinese descent (Though she was adopted by an Irish family, which is where she picked up the accent, before moving to the states).

Dick also takes a job as a bartender at a local cop bar, which he hopes will provide him with a source of intel.

Oh, and he loses the ponytail during his first encounter with Reynard and Black Mask's gang.

Dixon and McDaniel thus stock the book with brand-new supporting characters, although familiar faces do pop up. There's a page in the first issue, in which Batman charges Nightwing with the murder investigation and Bats later checks in via computer. Oracle and Wally West literally phone-in appearances. And Robin Tim Drake guest-stars in issue #6, where, during some downtime in crime-fighting, they discuss how different the pair are when it comes to the role of Robin.

Ah, the simpler days, when there were only ever three Robins, and one of them was totally dead forever...!

The creators also introduce the first of several new villains created for the series: Lady Vic, a British aristocrat/assassin who fights with various bladed weapons. McDaniel gives her an interesting look, although I have to admit it's one of those designs that doesn't quite look right when someone else draws it (And thus probably isn't the best of designs). I think it's the mask/helmet that does it.

As for the major villain, that is of course, Roland Desmond AKA Blockbuster. The second Blockbuster, to be precise, although he was basically just like his brother, the fist Blockbuster: A big, strong, simple-minded engine of destruction. 

During 1995 event Underworld Unleashed, he had sold his soul to the devil Neron, and in exchange was given brains to match his brawn (visibly signified by his huge, swollen head, from which dangled a skullet). He menaced Manchester, Alabama in the Impulse tie-in issue to the event series before Dixon decided to use him as a Wilson Fisk-like giant, super-strong crime lord in Nightwing.

Earlier in the post, I mentioned that it was hard to imagine this series being drawn by some of my favorite Batman artists of the '90s, and that was largely because of how distinct it was visually. Yes, the cover of the trade that my sister made fun of isn't that great (That of the first issue, or #7 might have been better choices), but the art inside is much better.

McDaniel is a completely original artist, to the point that, looking at his art, I can't really see who might have influenced him, nor can I think of other artists with whom to compare him. His art is instantly recognizable and, although I wasn't a big fan of it back then, I've come to appreciate more and more. 

His page layouts are all quite dynamic, but his art doesn't necessarily look animated or invigorated on a panel by panel (or panel to panel) basis. Many of his static images nevertheless seem to violently fly off the page at you; there's a real in-your-face quality to much of the action, particularly when it involves Nightwing leaping, which he does a lot of.

A signature technique that McDaniel employs, and the thing I think of when I think of his art, is to draw multiple images of Nightwing in the same panel to indicate how much and how fast he moves. It's an old comics trick, although I find it notable that McDaniel doesn't accompany the multiple figures with speedlines, nor does he draw the "past" images of Nightwing as less substantial than the "current" one...he'll just draw 3-12 Nightwings in a panel or splash, inviting the reader to follow the character as he jumps and flips and swings around.

It is, of course, a great trick for a character known for his athletics and acrobatics—and the sleek, cape-less character design makes it easier to pull off than it might for a character like Batman—and it allows a reader to appreciate how Nightwing moves. 

It's also pretty effective in fight scenes, as it gives one the impression that Nightwing is everywhere all at once (One thing I always liked about Breyfogle's art is how he would pose Batman so that he was fighting multiple opponents at once. So that, for example, he might be standing on one leg while he kicks one guy in the face, his right hand might be smashing a second guy's face against a wall or table, and his left hand extended in a throw, as a batrang whizzes across the room at a third guy. Sometimes when McDaniel draws Nightwing fighting a group, he does so by drawing four Nightwing figures in the panels executing different moves against different guys).

It looks like the previously linked-to cover for Nightwing #7 is the first time we see McDaniel's multiple Nightwings on a cover. Inside the book, it's on the tenth page of the first issue, wherein he leaps from a rooftop onto a speeding truck below:

Later, there's a fight atop a speeding train going through a tunnel, and McDaniel draws Nightwing doing what looks like a combination of an acrobatic routine and a live-action game of Frogger as he jumps off the train before it enters the tunnel, crosses the traffic on the overpass while thet train is passing through the tunnel, and then lands back on the roof of the train right behind his opponents, who used the more traditional strategy of guys on top of a train when it's about to go through a tunnel and ducked.

This is probably my favorite example, though, as Dick Grayson leaps back and forth between buildings in a way that suggests the old Ninja Gaiden videogame to me:

So yeah, I passed on this book in the '90s and, given the reputations of the creators of late, I hadn't felt any urgency to check it out, but I'll be damned, this is a pretty good action comic about a vigilante fighting crime and, thanks to McDaniel's idiosyncratic work—which often I appreciate more than I necessarily like—I can't think of another book that looks anything like it. (Other than, maybe, other McDaniel-drawn books, of course). 

The pair certainly did their job with these first eight issues too, as I now kind of want to know what happens next...

"Night of the Monster Men," reviewed

It might seem a little early for a crossover story, given that DC Comics' "Rebirth" initiative is only a few months old and that the first story arcs of this period are just now wrapping up, but you know how it is in Gotham City. One night it's a paramilitary organization attempting to assassinate citizens with drone-mounted weapons, the next giant monsters are rampaging.

"Night of the Monster Men" was a six-part story that ran weekly through two issues a piece of Batman, Detective Comics and Nightwing, detailing Batman and his many allies' attempts to safeguard the city from bizarre monsters created by Hugo Strange and set loose on the city as part of an elaborate (and rather silly) attempt to dramatize the renegade psychologist's diagnosis of Batman's flawed psyche.

Before we get into the story itself, it is probably useful to remind ourselves what's been going on in Gotham City just prior to this event story.

Batman recently took Duke Thomas under his wing and began training him as a new partner, here taking the unusual step of not naming him Robin (Duke wears a black and yellow, bat-themed costume when on the streets, but thus far hasn't taken a codename of any kind). Among their very first challenges were facing two metahuman superheroes–Gotham and Gotham Girl–driven mad by Psycho-Pirate's Medusa Mask. Gotham died, but Gotham Girl survived, and has been living in the Batcave with them (For more on Duke, check out All-Star Batman; he's been appearing in both the main story and starring in a back-up feature).

At Batman's behest, Batwoman has been training Spoiler (Stephanie Brown), Orphan (Cassandra Cain) and criminally insane supervillain Clayface (Basil Karlo). Their first big mission was trying to stop her father and his secret splinter group of the U.S. military from killing dozens of Gothamites that they believed were part of a conspiracy that may or may not even exist. Batman's new team succeeded, but at the cost of Red Robin Tim Drake's life...or so it seemed. In reality, he was saved only to be imprisoned by the mysterious Mr. Oz (This was the first story arc of the recently de-relaunched Detective Comics).

The original Robin, Dick Grayson, recently retired from his brief career as a super-spy for Spyral and resumed his Nightwing identity. He's currently working alongside a sketchy new partner named Raptor to stop the Court of Owls from going international (in the pages of Nightwing, obviously).

As for Batman's other allies, current Robin Damian Wayne is MIA (apparently off founding a new iteration of the Teen Titans, as can be seen in the pages of Teen Titans), Batgirl is traveling Asia (in Batgirl) and Red Hood is semi-undercover as a bad guy in an effort to infiltrate Black Mask's criminal organization (in Red Hood and The Outlaws).

Now, if the Monster Men sound familiar to you, there's a good reason for that. Batman first faced off against Hugo Strange's Monster Men in 1940's Batman #1, in a story entitled "The Giants of Hugo Strange." In that story, most likely written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson (although credits weren't exactly trustworthy in that particular franchise at that particular point in time), Strange injected five insane men with a super-serum that turned them into 15-foot-tall ogres bent on mindless destruction–a perfect cover for his robberies.

Matt Wagner returned to that material for his 2006 miniseries Batman and The Monster Men, which expanded and updated the story to fit into modern Batman continuity and meet modern comic story-telling style. Both would have been knocked out of the character's official history with 2011's Flashpoint-driven reboot, making this third version of the story the official one. The monster men in Wagner's telling were still very man-like; not so in writer Steve Orlando and company's version.

Batman #7 ("Night of the Monster Men," Part 1) by writers Steve Orlando and Tom King and artist Riley Rossmo

Even without the threat of monster men, this is going to be a pretty terrible night for Gotham City, as Hurricane Milton is bearing down on it. That's right, a hurricane. Gotham City not only sits atop a massive fault line (see "Cataclysm" and "No Man's Land"), it's also in the path of hurricanes, making it the most dangerous place to live on the eastern seaboard, and that's just when considering the natural disasters!

This is explained via a radio announcer, for which I blame the issue's co-plotter Tom King, as he used that device in "Robin War" as well. Batman is meeting with his top lieutenants Batwoman and Nightwing atop a building, telling them that they are going to make sure no one dies at all, no matter what, to which they both essentially reply not to be so crazy, Batman; it's not like you can punch out a hurricane. Batman is really upset about Tim Drake's fake death, though, and so he calls "everyone" in.

Here "everyone" merely means Spoiler, Orphan, Clayface and the Gotham City Police Department. I've already mentioned where his other sidekicks are, although I'm not sure why he hasn't called in the Justice League, as presumably Superman, for example, actually could punch out the hurricane...or at least use his various spectacular powers to divert it. Of course, one could always ask why Batman doesn't just call his bro Superman to come solve any problem he's faced with, and readers of Batman comics generally have to just accept the fact that Batman won't call in the League because they are reading a Batman comic and not a Justice League comic. That's a little more difficult in this case, though, as he just called the League in two issues ago to help him take down Gotham (the mad superhero, not the city), and, as we'll see, the League eventually shows up during the course of this story, right when they are needed the least.

The plan is for Clayface to split into a bunch of selves, each of them in the shape of GCPD officer, and his clay-selves, Spoiler and Orphan will help evacuate the city and keep peace at the caves outside of town.

And then a monster shows up, so Batman takes Batwoman and Nightwing to deal with that while the others handle crowd control.

Said monster is very, very different from the previous versions of the monster men. These monsters begin their "lives" as corpses laid out on tables in a morgue, and then start...dripping. Red goo. Hugo Strange, meanwhile, is working out in the nude.

You can see his butt and everything. He looks at his watch and says, "It is time to start." And bam, the corpses start going "FSSSSSS" and swelling and bubbling and dripping and mutating (one of these, I should note, is a woman, not a man, so maybe this should have been called "Night of the Monster People").

The first monster looks like a two-story tall baby, one fat baby arm bigger, redder and fatter than the other, with a massive, swollen, mushroom cloud-shaped head with a huge red eye in the middle of it.

Batman loses his Batplane to it immediately, then starts buzzing it in a cool little "combat capsule" jetpack thingee that Steel apparently built for or with him ("Remind me to thank John Henry. Steel was right. Handles like a dream"). Batman then manages to kill the monster with fire, but don't worry; as Alfred and Duke, oracle-ing from the Batcave inform him, it's not "traditionally alive." Besides, we saw it mutate from a corpse, so we know it was dead before the battle began, meaning Batman is free to "kill" these monsters.

Using giant syringes to take tissue samples and with Alfred and Duke on the computers, Batman and team are able to determine that the giant baby monster was the guy who slit his own throat in front of Commissioner Gordon the previous Batman arc, warning "The Monster Men are...coming." Also, it has heavily modified cells, "like programmable stem cells, but super-charged."

But this is, of course, only the first monster. A second appears on the final splash page (that's the one at the top of the post), this one even less human in appearance, bearing a body something like that of a huge pteradon, but with a long, maned neck terminating in a fang-filled animal head with six red eyes. At this point it becomes pretty clear what this story is going to end up being all about: Batman vs. kaiju, basically.

I immediately thought of Steve Niles and Kelley Jones' series Batman: Gotham After Midnight, during the course of which Batman broke out a giant monster-fighting machine he had made, which was essentially just a giant metal punching machine.

Batman's giant monster punching machine, from Batman: Gotham After Midnight #3.

If you'll recall, he used that device to fight Clayface, who, in that story, had grown to giant proportions. As Clayface is now on Batman's side, perhaps he would grow giant and fight a monster hand-to-hand in this too...? One could only hope.

My next thought? Okay, maybe now you call in the Justice League. Multiple giant monsters seems more like a League-level threat than Gotham (the guy, not the city) was in issue #5, you know?

This chapter is drawn by Rossmo, who is probably the strongest of the three artists involved in this story. I'm not sure who designed the monsters, but they deserve high-fives; they are all very different from one another, and some of them look like Guy Davis-level weird; more anime monsters than old-school kaiju (Cover artist Yannick Paquette unfortunately does a poor job of featuring the monsters themselves on these covers, as you can see above; I can't tell you how disappointed I am that they didn't have Jones draw these covers, as Batman and monsters are pretty much his exact wheelhouse).

The most noticeable thing about Rossmo's Batman? Goodness are his ears tiny! I mean, Paquette draws fairly small ears on Batman, but Rossmo's Batman has ears that are smaller than Bob Brown or Dick Sprang's Batman ears; they are only slightly longer than those of Kingdome Come Red Robin's or Midnighter's bat-ears, and, if you say, "But Kingdom Come's Red Robin and Midnighter don't have bat-ears," then I say to you, "Exactly."

I wonder where Sims would place Rossmo's bat-ears on the Sprang-Jones scale...?

Nightwing #5 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 2) by writers Steve Orlando and Tim Seeley and artist Roge Antonio

In the Batcave, Duke is whining to Alfred about having to stay indoors with him doing computer stuff instead of being out there fighting giant monsters with Batman, while Gotham Girl, wearing Duke's old Robin jacket over her superhero costume like they are going steady or something, remarks that she can hear buildings crumbling and giant heartbeats with her super-hearing. Guys, there's an entire mansion a short elevator ride above you; surely you can find Gotham Girl something to wear aside from Duke's old coat.

In the city, Batman and Batwoman take on the second of the monsters, the one that looks a bit like a huge furry pterosaur with a weird head, while Nightwing is tasked with tracking down Hugo Strange, starting with the morgue where the corpse that grew into the first monster was last seen.

Before he goes, Nightwing mentions that Batman does have a giant-monster fighting plan (Ooh, I hope it's that Kelley Jones contraption!), which he calls "The Tower contingencies" and Batman calls "The Wayne Watchtowers." By whatever name they are called, however, we are told that they are too dangerous to activate before the city has been completely cleared.

Does Batman have giant-monster fighting mechas all folded-up inside a few of his properties? Is the climax of this series going to involve our heroes launching giant, bat-themed Evas?

We'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, Batman activates Duke's "special project," "The Bat-Beacon." This is essentially Batman's own emergency broadcast system, which projects holograms of Batman out of all the street lights, so he can tell people to evacuate and to keep a stiff upper-lip and everything.

From there, he and Batwoman grab some super-motorcycles to fight the monster with; by the time they've engaged it thusly, it has grown two more heads.

As for the girls, they are helping Detective Harvey Bullock and other members of the GCPD move evacuees into the cave system outside of town, but something weird is going on there. Everyone is getting irritable and angry, as is prone to happen in such situations, but there's a red liquid covering them, so maybe their anger isn't entirely natural?

At the morgue, Nightwing does not find Strange, nude or otherwise, but he does find evidence that there are not two, but four monsters that have burrowed their way out of there. Our Oracle Bros Alfred and Duke help determine the identity of one of the dead guys-turned-monster, and Nightwing realizes that it is headed for Blackgate prison.

This is the monster on the cover. Monster #3 is roughly human-sized from the waist up, with a Nosferatu-like head, a desiccated torso and insect-like arms and legs. It drags a gigantic, bloated mass behind it, likely containing something super-gross.

Nigthwing is in the process of hurriedly assembling a hang glider or something to fly out to Blackgate with when Gotham Girl rockets passed him on her way to save the day. If you missed Tom King's initial Batman arc, her deal is that she and her brother were both given Superman-like powers, but the more they use them, the quicker they burn out their life forces. Additionally, she is suffering the effects of a the Psycho-Pirate's Medusa Mask, so Batman and Duke would both prefer she just hang out in the Batcave, rather than fly off to fight giant monsters.

In this scene, it becomes clear why she is still wearing her superhero costume with a zip-up jacket over it; it's so she can un-zip that jacket to reveal the big, one-letter logo of her superhero costume, Superman-style.

Detective Comics #941 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 3) by writers Steve Orlando and James Tynion IV and artist Andy MacDonald

Batwoman, still fighting Monster #2 atop a motorcycle, checks in with everyone via radio, so that during the course of a five-panel sequence we can be reminded of who is doing what where (and also see incoming artist Andy MacDonald's renditions of all the characters right off the, um, bat). Batman continues to try to talk Gotham Girl out of flying to confront Monster #3 at Blackgate, saying Nightwing will be there soon, and she talks a bit of smack: "Whoever Nightwing is he isn't fast enough or strong enough."

Much of the action in this issue is divided between two battlegrounds: The caves outside Gotham where Spoiler, Orphan and the GCPD have corralled the evacuating citizens, and Blackgate prison.

The people in the caves have gradually started questioning authority and fighting one another and, thanks to the red goop, begin to act with a sort of hive mind, turning on the heroes and law enforcement.

In an incredible act of being-smart, Spoiler starts thinking about the way plants, molds, fungi and algae communicate, and thus how to combat this goop, which is apparently another monster of sorts. New 52 Stephanie Brown, who is now apparently a genius (she sure made out in the reboot, huh?) comes up with a plan to neutralize the goop without killing or harming the people it's possessing: Raising the heat in the caves. So she, Orphan and the un-gooped cops start shoving road flares all over the cave walls and ceilings. This explains in part what Stephanie keeps in her many pockets and pouches--so many road flares.

At Blackgate, Gotham Girl lands in a superhero pose that shatters the cement beneath her, accompanied by the sound effect GA-THOOM. That is the sound of Gotham Girl smash-landing on cement: "GA-THOOM." What does she find there? Dog-sized creatures that look a bit like giant toads crossed with superman villain Doomsday, attaching themselves to the shoulders and heads of inmates and snaking their long, gross Venom tongues down around them. These are the things apparently hatching out of the huge, gross egg-sack that Monster #3 drags behind it. Nightwing arrives and tries to talk Gotham Girl down a bit, suggesting that maybe tearing the monster to pieces isn't the best course of action, but she basically goes into berserker mode and tearing through the monster's egg sac and then just ripping and ripping and ripping in one of the grossest sequences I've seen in a long time: She and Nightwing are just covered in dead monster gore by the time she's done.

As for the Bats, they are still motorcycle-fighting Monster #2, which continues to grow heads along its long neck. By the end of this issue, it's up to five heads, the topmost of which SPLURTs out a huge knife-shaped horn somewhat reminiscent of Gamera's goofiest-looking opponent, Guiron. They call Nightwing to check in on him and Gotham Girl, but they get no response: Nightwing can't come to the Bat-radio right now, because he's too busy being transformed by the monster blood and guts into a monster himself! Both he and Gotham Girl are turning into monsters, and, in Dick's case, ironically so, as his new monster form is that of a half-bird, half-bat creature.

Batman #8 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 4) by writers Steve Orlando and Tom King and artist Riley Rossmo

The five-headed, building-sized Monster #2 has taken flight, and Batman is still crouched atop his motorcycle, which is attached to the monster by a grappling hook. That's right, he and Batwoman are still fighting the five-headed, blade-horned furry pteradon-esque creature. Surely at this point a call to Superman wouldn't be out of the question, right? He could be in Gotham knocking that thing out and back in Metropolis in less than a minute. I'm sure it would be no trouble at all!

After another quick recap of who is where, the increasingly eager to join the fight Duke reveals to Batman that he and Alfred have discovered what it was that created the monsters: A super-steroid with notable similarities to Venom, the super-steroid that Bane used to take to get super-jacked (and Batman was briefly addicted to, pre-reboot).

Nightwing and Gotham Girl, both mutated into monsters--albeit human-sized ones--by the viscera of Monster #3, both arrive on the scene for some more fighting. Batwoman keeps them busy while Batman finishes off the kaiju via a judicious application of electricity, and joins Batwoman by popping a wheelie and slapping Gotham Girl across the face with it. Oh, that Batman!

That's actually just the first of the cool tricks he tries out here, including wearing Clayface as a big suit of battle armor to go hand-to-hand with Gotham Girl.

It's not enough though, and the day isn't saved until Duke Thomas arrives on the scene with a monster cure in a giant syringe, which he pokes G.G. with. Meanwhile, Batwoman and the monster-ized Nightwing fight in the sky and, outside of town, Spoiler's gambit with all the road flares worked, and the red goop making the Gothamites act all crazy melts off them, forms a river of black goop, and streams out of the cave, where it transforms into Monster #4, the biggest, scariest of the monsters so far.

It's humanoid in shape, but with four long arms, and a body that looks a little like a robe, with a long, dangling red veil. Sprouting from its shoulders are a pair of huge trees with red leaves.

Again, Paquette's cover really rather sells the monster short. With giant monsters, it's all about scale guys...although I suppose it's understandable that the artist might want to focus on the human-sized hero whose name is on the book in the cover image rather than on his titanic opponents.

Nightwing #6 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 5) by writers Steve Orlando and Tim Seeley and artist Roge Antonio

Batwoman and the de-monsterized Gotham Girl manage to administer Duke's de-monstrification serum to Nightwing by the former essentially roping and riding the mutated Nightwing into the syringe the latter was holding up. Nightwing pukes up a bunch of monster juice, and is back to his old self, only missing his mask and a few small pieces of his shirt. Really, he could have stood to lose his entire shirt. I mean, don't you guys want to sell comics, DC? Then lets get Dick Grayson more shirtless more often!

Monster #4, the last of the Monster Men People, strides towards downtown Gotham, scooping up a train car in one of its massive hands. Ah, giant monsters and trains! A classic combination.

Spoiler and Orphan arrive in a station wagon (?) to join the rest of the Bat-squad, just in time to dodge the train engine the latest monster chucks at them. Nightwing takes Spoiler to the top of a Wayne Tower, where she plugs her...super-computer staff?...into the floor and she and Nightwing start reviewing various clues regarding Hugo Strange's whereabouts on the Iron Man: The Movie like hard-light computers it projects...?

Again, I'm not sure how or why Spoiler is fucking Oracle all of a sudden, but I don't really like this new, hyper-competent version of a character whose original charm came from the fact that she was an extremely willful amateur with more heart and guts than actual skills. I suppose this is just the way James Tynion IV, Scott Snyder and other Bat-writers and editors decide to characterize her post-reboot, but for someone who has been reading her for a very long time, it sure feels off, like she was absorbing Tim Drake's mad computer skills through his kisses or something.

By way of explaining how she's able to crack encryptions in a matter of seconds and follow a money trail involving the Monster Venom and the facilities to process it, she tells Nightwing, "I'm The Cluemaster's daughter, Dick." Um, yeah, exactly my point, Steph.

Meanwhile, Dick watches a few seconds of recorded sessions between Strange and the four patients of his that he ended up turning into his Monster People, showing no respect for patient doctor privilege. Those few seconds are enough for Dick to boil each patient's diagnosis down to a single word--Manipulator, Fear, Grief and Child. He's starting to put it together.

The monster knows what they are up to, and starts scaling the tower to get to them, so Batman must activate the Wayne Watchtowers. Is this where one of his buildings transforms into a giant monster-fighting robot? No, sadly nothing that dramatic. The activation does apparently knock all power out of the city and then maybe divert it to the building or something, as it heats up and sets the monster on fire or something with a "SCHWUFF" as Spoiler and Nightwing jump to safety, Strange's location uncovered just in time.

So that's all four monsters down and out, has The Night of The Monster People ended so soon, with a whole issue yet to go?

Ha, Batman and friends wish!

No, the "dead" monsters have all been linking some kind of pink goo that has been gradually sliming its way together, forming an even bigger monster than the biggest of the first four. This final monster isn't too sensational of a design; he looks a little like Spider-Man villain The Rhino, but with a giant Sarlacc Pit mouth for a face.

So this is the climax: One final, big-ass monster for Batman's team to fight while he goes to face Strange. As he's about to go, Nightwing tells Batman what he's figured out about Strange's plan. They monsters aren't just monsters, but they are a statement. People wrestling with childhood trauma, facing grief and fear and manipulating others around them, all of them combining into one, single monster. The Monsters are, Nightwing says, Strange's diagnosis of Batman.

So Batman does the sensible thing: He calls The Justice League and asks them to come take care of this monster for him while he and his team go beat the crap out of Strange.

No, I'm just playing. He tells his team to use The Watchtowers--special fortified buildings bristling with high-tech weaponry that Batman built after Darkseid's "Year One" invasion--while he goes to fight Strange himself. On the final splash page, we finally see Strange again. He is not nude, but he is wearing a Batman suit. Not the cape and cowl, just the suit from, like, the neck down. Which is really too bad, because I'd love to see what he would look like wearing the cowl. Like, it's hard to imagine a Batman with a beard and glasses, isn't it?

And that's the final page of the penultimate chapter of "Night of The Monster Men"...! Just one more issue to go!

Detective Comics #942 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 6) by writers Steve Orlando and artist Andy MacDonald

This is page four of this comic book, in its entirety:

That totally looks like they are all jumping into their own individual robot lions or vehicles or Megazords or whatever, and they are totally going to combine them to form a giant robot, right? I mean, everything about that page, right?

I found the third tier the most intriguing, because it shows that each of the four Watchtowers is apparently programmed with a particular symbol for a particular member of Batman's Bat-squad to light up on its side. I have to imagine those symbols change depending on who is in the individual towers' cockpits, as it's really hard to imagine that Batman had a tower all set up for Spoiler and Orphan, neither of whom even really have symbols, but not ones for Robin, Red Robin, Red Hood or Batgirl.

As for the symbols, the girls have some terrible ones. Spoiler's icon is...a pink "O"...? Not even an "S" for Spoiler? Or something, anything, purple? And Orphan, whose name does begin with the letter "O" gets, what, a hashmark indicating five? A symbol representative of the stitching over the mouth of her current, dumb mask? That's kinda dumb.

A friend of mine pointed out to me that Orphan's symbol looks a little like a crudely drawn, hobo version of the bat-symbol--imagine the little lines in the middle as its ears and two of the lower points on the serrated bottom of the traditional bat-symbol, and the two larger lines on the edges as the largest points of the wings--which kind of works for Cassandra Cain.

Damn I wish she'd hurry up and re-adopt the name Black Bat and a better, more bat-like costume...

Batman arrives in Hugo Strange's penthouse hideout to confront him, and Strange is an all-around amazing decorator! The walls have all these weird, Batman-specific medical charts. Like, there will be a profile of Batman's head, with the mask and skull cut away to reveal Batman's brain, and then all these little (unfortunately illegible) scribbled notes and lines, pointing to which part of Batman's brain thinks about what (Justice? Bat-shapes? Vengeance? Black? His mom's pearls?). There's even a Vitruvian Man, only with Batman in it--so, a Vitruvian Batman, I guess. It's like Strange took a bunch of medical textbooks, and then drew Batman costumes on all the figures.

These are plastered everywhere on the walls, while Strange himself sits atop a throne of psychology books (My favorite title? "Crazy People"), some thick, sticky substance along the bottom (I would assume it's that red stuff that Monster #3 leaked to make people crazy.

Before Batman can strike across the room and punch out Strange, the doctor warns him that he's wearing a "suicide suit," and therefore if Batman strikes him at all, it will kill him, breaking one of Batman's cardinal rules about crime-fighting. They begin their long talk about Batman's psychology, which essentially amounts to Strange's belief that Batman's mental health issues are flaws that make him a weaker crime-fighter, whereas Batman believes they are actually strengths, or at least he's been able to master them and turn them into strengths, which help make him a better crime fighter. Guess who's right?

Meanwhile, the watchtowers prove to not be able to transform into robots. Rather, they are just kitted out with a bunch of laser guns and giant harpoons and stuff like that. These are enough to temporarily stop the monster, but not enough to do so permanently. And this monster's hide is so tough that the giant syringe of monster cure won't pierce its hide. What are they to do? Spoiler alert: Nightwing run across one of the harpoon lines anchoring the monster in place, dives into its open mouth and administers the cure to its softer insides, causing it to vomit him out. And keep vomitting. Re-reading it now, it looks like the monster may actually have vomited itself out through it's mouth, if that makes any sense.

And back to the Batman vs. Strange battle, the latter talks himself into unconsciousness, as Batman secretly brought back-up with him. Clayface blanketed the top few floors of the building with his own malleable body, completely sealing the flow of air into the room. Apparently, Batman can just go without air a lot longer than Strange, who passed out during his speechifying. (It here occurred to me that this particular move was a very Plastic Man-like move, and made me reevaluate Clayface's role on the team. I wondered if at some point Tynion hadn't considered using Plas or Metamorpho or maybe eve Elongated Man in the book, but either changed his mind or had it changed for him by DC; it would explain Clayface's presence, given that as a villain who has pretty much never shown a "good" side before he is a definite odd one out on this Bat-squad team of Tynion's Detective.

And then, after all give giant monsters have been defeated by Clayface, Gotham Girl and a half-dozen physically fit people with masks and capes but no powers, guess who shows up? The Justice League has the gall to arrive to help with clean-up. Yeah Green Lanterns, that's cool you guys can use your power rings--the so called "most powerful weapons in the universe"--to lift and move rubble, but where you a few pages ago? You couldn't have been using those rings to beat up Godzillas with giant boxing gloves!

(By the way, one of the things I don't like about the new Cyborg is his undefined, apparently limitless powers. Like, what's he doing there? I thought he just shot sonic weaponry out of his hand-cannon things, but here he's apparently lifting girders and masonry as if he had a blue-tinted Green Lantern ring. I love that The Flash, The Fastest Man Alive, is literally just standing there next to him though. What's Flash doing exactly, supervising? )

On the final pages, we see Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane in a cemetery, remarking on the headstones erected for the four victims that Strange used to make his monsters, which an anonymous donor paid for (I bet you five dollars it was Bruce Wayne; no, ten dollars!). They talk to one another in a brief conversation meant to set up future storylines. When Kate asks Bruce if Strange was sent to Arkham, he says no, but "somewhere...better equipped for his mind." (Hm, maybe Bruce Wayne bought Oolong Island?). He also said that Strange's Venom was given to him by Bane, in exchange for the Psycho-Pirate, and that he's "not waiting to find out" why. If you've been reading Tom King's Batman, you already know why, because that storyline, "I Am Suicide," just ended.

Batman further tells Kate that SHIELD ARGUS has "pulled eminent domain" and built a big research facility around the mostly-vomit body of the final monster, and since the monster goop can be weaponized, it "bears...watching." This will apparently be followed up on in Tynion's Detective and the upcoming Batwoman book.

And that is that.


********************

Since DC re-relaunched Batman last year, they have been having Tim Sale providing variant covers for the series. I personally find this kind of ridiculous, as Sale's covers are almost always superior to those of the "regular" artists and, while I continue to not understand the specific economics of variant cover sales, it always seemed more logical to me to pay one artist to draw a single cover for a single issue of a comic, rather than paying two or more to provide multiple covers for the same damn book.

Anyway, as I've stated repeatedly above, Paquette's "regular" covers may have included pretty decent images of Batman, Batwoman and Nightwing, they usually failed to depict the monsters in any way that demonstrated their size and/or scariness. That was definitely not the case with Sale's variants, the first and fourth of those below.

As you can see, he makes the monsters look huge, while also putting Batman at the center of the action, and he does so using some fairly basic visual tricks. The Nightwing variants are penciled by Ivan Reis (the second and fifth of the images below), and Rafael Albuquerque drew the Detective variants (the third and the sixth).

Overall, Albuquerque and Sale do the best job of making the giant monsters look like giant monsters; Reis' images aren't really all that fair to compare to Paquette's on that score, as the monsters he draws are more less human-sized.

Anyway, for comparison's sake, here are what the other artists involved in drawing the Monster People came up with:

Just how popular is Dick Grayson's butt?

Dick Grayson's butt is popular, but just how popular is his butt? Is it more popular than John Constantine? Is it more popular than the new, New 52 iteration of Azrael? Is it more popular than the second most recent new Green Lantern of Earth, Simon Baz? It can't possibly be more popular than Harley Quinn, can it?

These questions likely sound pretty absurd, and you're probably thinking "No, of course not...Well, maybe in the case of Azrael, but not those other guys..."

After all, Constantine has his own comic book. Baz is co-starring in a comic book with another Green Lantern. Harley has at least one book a month on the stands. But Dick Grayson's butt never has, and likely never will, have a title of its own. At best, it co-stars in whatever books Dick Grayson is appearing in. Most recently, that means the pages of the just-canceled Grayson, and soon it will be appearing alongside–well, right behind, anyway–Dick in a new volume of Nightwing.

But if that is the case, I can't help wondering why the cover of Grayson Annual #3 features a pretty generic image of Dick Grayson in front of a pink spiral–the same basic image that graced Grayson #1 and was used as the cover of the series' first collection, Grayson Vol. 1: Agents of Spyral–with his butt prominently displayed (That is, in fact, the only difference other than the artist between this image and that of the cover of Grayson #1; the posing).

The story inside features a handful of guest-stars, including Azrael, Green Lantern Simon Baz, John Constantine and Harley Quinn...oh, and Gotham City Police Detective and occasional Wrath of God, Jim Corrigan. But rather than a cover featuring any or all of those characters, DC went with the shot of Dick's butt. One might think that at least throwing Harley Quinn on the cover, which was actually a marketing plan for two month's of DC Comics, would increase the sales of this lame duck annual, but no. Dick's butt.

Based on the evidence provided then, I can only conclude that this mean's Dick Grayson's butt isn't just more popular than any of those characters, but that it is more popular than all of them put together.

Well, now that I've typed the word "butt" more often in one sitting than at any previous point in my life, how is Grayson Annual #3 beneath its cover? Not bad!

Entitled "Who Is Agent 37?", Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly's story features four individual team-ups between Dick Grayson and characters seemingly picked at random: Constantine, Azrael, Simon Baz and Harley Quinn. The four of them are summoned by mysterious invitations to a hotel room in Gotham City by Jim Corrigan to tell the stories of their team-ups as a way of answering the question in the title.

Artist Roge Antonio handles the art in this framing sequence, while each team-up features an artist. Natasha Alterici draws a story in which Constantine crosses paths with a mostly naked Grayson as he shuts down a coven of vampires (and this script sure works over time to remind us that a) Dick is very sexy and b) Constantine is very bi-sexual).

Christian Duce draws a story in which Grayson finds himself in a battle between Azrael and...The Order of St. Dumas, I think...? (I couldn't make heads or tales of this one, despite having read Batman & Robin Eternal, which re-reintroduced a New 52 Azrael; the first panel editorial box that tries to explain when this story is set and ultimately shrugs with a "You know what? Doesn't matter! Last issue! Just have fun!").

One-named artist Flaviano draws a chapter in which the undercover Grayson and the undercover Harley team-up to steal something Joker-related from a rich supervillain memorabilia collector (Pity all of the stuff in the cases was generic; would have been a good opportunity for Easter eggs).

And, finally, Javier Fernandez draws a chapter in which Green Lantern Simon Baz, portrayed here with a Guy Gardner-level of hotheadedness, is trying to exterminate Parademons, and Grayson lends a hand.

By the last pages, the gathered super-people are all able to figure out who exactly Agent 37 was nearly simultaneously, thanks to a push from Corrigan, and Grayson himself makes an unexpected appearance.

That made me laugh. In his defense, I think Baz was in space with B'dg when Forever Evil happened, and Grayson probably isn't a celebrity outside of Gotham City. 

I liked the art in each of the five different sequences okay, although that in the Green Lantern sequence was probably the weakest. The coloring and the scripting likely didn't help, but Baz's quirk of carrying a sidearm at all times (because he doesn't quite trust his ring and wants the back-up of a gun, because The New 52), is pretty confusing here because while Grayson calls him on the use of the gun, most of the time we see Baz using it it is a glowing green gun. It's unclear if that's his real gun, or a ring-generated construct of a gun. Either way it's weird, and either I massively misremember Geoff Johns' story arc regarding Baz in the pages of Green Lantern, or he's been written really weird and really wrong lately, as he is essentially being portrayed here (and in Green Lanterns) as the guy he was upon his first appearance during Johns' Green Lantern run, and not who he was by the end of the run.

I'd be lying if I said I understood the whole business with Grayson's secrt identity and his facelessness and the hypnos, but then, I've never understood that aspect of Grayson.

Over all though, this book featured a clever premise, a decent snapshot of various DCU characters at a particular point of time, as the "DCYou" era ends and the "Rebirth" era begins and stronger art than your average publication from the publisher.

The last two panels also provide about as perfect an ending for the Grayson series as one could hope; sure, Dick and Helena Bertinelli parted more formally and finally in the actual last issue of the series, but in this story set sometime before then, they get a nice little ride-off-into-the-sunset moment. Or jump-off-into-the-moonlight moment, I suppose.


Oh, and by the way...

Good on Dick Grayson, protegee of Batman, for calling out Green Lantern Simon Baz on killing Parademons. And good one Baz for sighting Superman's terrible example. But I call bullshit on Grayson's justification for the proto-Justice League killing so many of their foes in Justice League #1-6 (Which is what I assume Baz is referring too, unless I missed another story in which Superman mowed down Parademons).

Superman using his vastly superior powers to kill his opponents in any circumstance is about as un-Superman-like as you can get, and I found it really weird and wrong in the context of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's Justice League arc. "Aliens invade Metropolis" is kind of a weird definition for "war zone," and Superman and company's use of lethal force only got more bizarre as the story went on, as not only did Johns not write the pre-requisite "I can't detect any life-signs at all, whatever these monsters are, they aren't alive, so don't hold back!" line, but he then revealed that they were innocent civilians being turned into Darkseid's soldiers right before Superman's eyes. Gah.

Anyway, Grayson Annual #3 is a lot better than Justice League #1-#6, although I bet it won't sell 1/25th as well.