An Honest Review of: Nightwing by Tom Taylor Omnibus Vol. 2
Overview
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Nightwing by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo Omnibus Vol. 2
Omnibus Collects: Nightwing #101-118 and Nightwing 2022 Annual #1.
The Main Creative Team
Writer: Tom Taylor
Artists: Bruno Redondo, Travis Moore, Stephen Byrne, and Sam Basri
Recommended Pre Reading
Reading the first half of the run (Nightwing 2016 #78-#96) is pretty much required. Also, Taylor’s run on Titans is running concurrently with this series and provides some extra context, but isn’t required at all.
Review of the Story and Art
Tom Taylor’s time on Nightwing is kind of a weird entity. If you’re like myself and were reading Nightwing and comics in general when it was releasing, you couldn’t escape it. Everywhere you went, there was constant praise for this series. It won multiple Eisners. It was voted best series by DC fans multiple times. It was a constant stream of praise that pushed Nightwing further into the mainstream than he had ever been before. Since the series has ended, the discussion around the series has become much more contentious. If you get popular enough, at some point it will become trendy to hate you on the internet, despite whether it’s warranted or not. The real question is, is it just a popularity thing? Or is there weight behind its faults? Let’s talk about it.
Living up to its expectations
I adore the first half of this series. If you’re a veteran fan of the character, you’ll know we went through some rough years prior to Taylor. We dealt with Dan DiDio constantly trying to discredit and get rid of Dick Grayson due to some weird personal vendetta. Dick had his secret identity outed and was sentenced to a spy book that exceeded its expectations. When that didn’t work, Dick was straight-up shot in the head and turned into a different character. The Ric Grayson era is one of the biggest travesties I’ve witnessed in the industry. Taylor’s run came at the perfect time. His run rejuvenated the Nightwing brand. His more lighthearted tone and upbeat style, alongside masterful work by Redondo, really re-established Dick Grayson as a character going forward. Not only bringing meaning back to the character, but his role in the larger universe as well. I didn’t do a review for Vol. 1, but if I had, it would have had a very high rating. A very, very high one.
In this second half, it feels as though it loses some of that focus and gets a bit too big in nature for its own good. It loses a bit of that intimacy in order to prop up other things while becoming a bit complacent with the things that initially made it so great. I may sound critical of this book, but that’s mostly because of the regard I hold the first half in. Just being up front, I enjoyed my time with the book quite a bit. There’s much more to like than dislike. It just doesn’t reach the heights as its predecessor.
Close to the beginning of the book, we get Nightwing issue #100. I think this nails what an anniversary celebration issue should be. It not only celebrates the one-hundredth issue of the run, but Nightwing’s history in general. I loved all the throwback moments, and it’s really just such a caring and fun moment in time for the character.
Moving past that issue, though, is where the cracks start to show. The lighter tone and dialogue of this series is often a contentious point online. Generally, I think it’s kind of a uphill battle of an argument to judge the book for being “fluffy.” I actually commend it for trying to break away from the doom and gloom mold that the industry has defaulted to. Fun books have a place in the hobby and are a great change of pace, but I digress. In the first volume, I think the lighter tone actually really helps the book. It was able to achieve a light tone that, in turn, made for a fun book, while also using that tone to play into the intimacy of the characters. Here, it does not achieve those same feats. Why? Because it goes hand in hand with the biggest detractor of the series. The constant crossovers.
There is a heavy reliance on the Titans in this series. There’s a whole arc dedicated to them called Rise of the Underworld (#101-#104), and they are frequently recurring characters throughout the whole book. Inherently, I don’t have a problem with this. The problems start to arise when so much time is dedicated to these characters, like the Titans or the Batfamily, that the book no longer has time to focus on what made it special. Its light tone is still there, but it no longer gets those more intimate moments because that time now has to go to other places and different characters. If the book would have stayed a little tighter narratively and focused more on Dick, Barbara, and Melinda, it could have kept the sustained momentum without spreading itself so thin.
Taylor has a really good grasp on Dick Grayson’s core character. But with the pacing and the constant crossovers, that doesn’t get to shine all the time like it did in the first volume, and those more whimsical moments get highlighted more because they’re not contrasted. A good example of this is the The Crew of the Crossed arc, (#106-#109) or referred to as the pirate arc. This is the worst arc of the series by far for me. It’s another arc that takes Dick away from his core cast to go on a whimsical adventure that doesn’t show off Taylor’s skills with the character.
The End of an Era
As we start to wind down to the end of the series, we get some really good moments from Taylor. You could tell he knew his time with the book was coming to an end and wanted to fit in all the stuff he wanted to do before it was over. We get much more character driven moments. Before the final arc of the series, we get a shorter arc focused on Dick and Bruce teaming up to solve the murder of a young boy’s parents. I love this arc. It has such a great dynamic that shows off the bond between father and son, but also shows how far Dick has grown beyond Bruce. The quote from Bruce, “Dick Grayson is the best version of Batman there could be,” is shown off here. It shows the growth of Nightwing while not demonizing or belittling Batman like some other writers have done before. It’s really great.
This all leads to the final arc, Fallen Grayson. When this was coming out, I was extremely underwhelmed by it. After my second visit, I enjoyed it more. I still have my problems with it, but I feel like I was too caught up in the excitement around such a seminal run ending that it led to my disappointment. Here, I had no expectations, and I ended up enjoying it more. The only stuff I really don’t like is the stuff involving Heartless. That’s pretty damning, considering he’s the ultimate big bad that the book has been building towards, but I feel as though the loss of Blockbuster in this second half left the book needing to put more of the spotlight on Heartless, which hurt his character in the long run. I don’t love his backstory, and I think the mystery around him was much more interesting than his actual story. I like the way this run wraps up for the characters. I just feel as though the ending conflict, which was a major build for the whole series, was a letdown.
The Art
Bruno Redondo is absolutely brilliant in this series. Taylor and Redondo team up to give us some of the most inventive and awe inspiring comics I’ve ever read. In the first volume, we got the issue that was completely 2D. It was a home run of an idea. Well, in this volume, we get another innovative issue, this time the whole issue is in a first-person view from Nightwing’s perspective.
A lot of the time during my reviews, I’ll talk about how series have a lack of visual identity. That is not a problem here. Redondo intimately understands what makes this book special and capitalizes on those qualities every chance he gets. It’s stunning work.
Final Score and Overall Thoughts
The Pros
•Elite Artwork
•Inventive structures
•Really understands Dick Grayson as a character when not leaning too heavily into the whimsical
•Nightwing and Batman team-up arc
•A fun time
The Cons
•Too many team-ups
•Isn’t as good as its first half
•Loses some of the intimate character moments
•Heartless feels like a letdown
•Small table of contents and issue count
Final Score
Overall - 7.0/10
In this review, I have been critical, but that’s not to condemn this story. I think it’s mostly quite good. It’s just cursed by being the weaker half of such an instantly renowned and classic series. I don’t love the Titans arc or the pirate arc, but the rest of the series is a good time, despite not being as thrilling as its first half. Sure, this half has its weak moments, but it’s still quite enjoyable and has moments of true greatness.
Would I Recommend
Yes, especially if you’re trying to get into Nightwing. If you’re not already a fan and want to be, pick up this whole series.
The Afterword
If you’re seeing this, thanks for reading my review! I appreciate all the upvotes, comments, and follows I get on these.