Even though he’s not under the Batman cape and cowl anymore, Nightwing is still soaring in the DC Comics Universe of heroes.
And Dick Grayson is going to be playing a major role not just in his monthly series Nightwing, written by Kyle D. Higgins, but also soon in the “Night of the Owls” crossover that will run through most of DC’s family of Bat-books.
While it’s Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel’s run on the old Nightwing series in the 1990s that is still his “gold standard” for the character, Higgins is making his mark on Dick Grayson’s life by bringing his past, present and future all together in one big story arc.
In Higgins’ book, Haly’s Circus has returned to Gotham City— the same traveling group that featured a trapeze act with him and his parents as the Flying Graysons, before his mom and dad were tragically killed and Dick was taken in by Bruce Wayne, becoming Robin to Bruce’s Batman.
When owner C.C. Haly is killed, Grayson inherits the circus, which reunites him with a long-ago crush named Raya. But, as he learns when he goes on the road, the circus has a lot of secrets, and they might be connected to an assassin named Saiko and his accusations that Nightwing is a cold-blooded killer.
Illustrated by Eddy Barrows and available Wednesday digitally and in comic shops, Nightwing issue 5 takes Grayson and the circus down to New Orleans as he continues to investigate the mysteries, but it’s also going a little out of the norm, according to Higgins.
Editor Bobbie Chase thought it’d be cool to do something with voodoo since they’re down in the Big Easy, so Higgins ran with the idea of introducing a voodoo demon monster that speaks in iambic pentameter “as all good demons should,” says Higgins, referencing the classic DC demon, Etrigan.
Although unconventional, the writer promises the issue is “actually more relevant and thematically connected to Nightwing’s arc in this storyline than you may think.”
Readers will see the end of the Haly’s mystery by issue 7, but the circus will be sticking around Gotham City “in a much different capacity,” Higgins says.
Meanwhile, Nightwing will be sucked into the drama that writer Scott Snyder began in his Batman series with the Court of Owls, a Gotham secret society that has been around for decades and is determined to destroy the Dark Knight both physically and emotionally.
Some of the villains that Nightwing has defeated so far in Higgins’ series may be circling back seeking revenge as the hero returns to Gotham, which is where every part of his life connects. It stems back to what Snyder started in Detective Comics before and continued in his and Higgins’ Gates of Gotham miniseries: that Gotham City takes the things its protectors love and twists them and tries to use them against them.
Will Nightwing be somehow a part of the Court of Owls? Higgins will only say that he has known about Snyder’s story for more than a year and that the writers have an affinity for Dick Grayson and his future in Gotham. “Both as Dick Grayson and as Nightwing, the Court of Owls is going to affect him but perhaps not in a way that anyone thinks.
“It all comes back to Gotham City,” he adds. “Before you can really embrace your future, you have to confront your past.”
After the two-part “Night of the Owls” story that begins in issue 8 — the other Batman books start in their ninth issues — Higgins says the next arc will be titled “Prince of Gotham,” as Nightwing will be taking a different approach to fighting for Gotham’s future, especially focusing on the worst areas of the city, and realizes that there are no hopeful places in the city for its saviors.
“The difference between Dick and Bruce has always been that Bruce does what he does out of this sense of guilt and this feeling he has to,” Higgins explains. “And Dick Grayson does what he does because he genuinely enjoys helping people. He’s a much more empathetic character and he’s someone who enjoys people and interaction.
“That ability to both care about people and want to help the individual is something that is both an asset and a weakness, depending on how you look at it. It’s definitely something that separates him from Bruce, made him a different Batman, but also makes him a much different Nightwing.”
Prior to DC’s “The New 52” relaunch, when the presumed-dead Bruce Wayne was trying to fight his way back through history (as told in Grant Morrison’s The Return of Bruce Wayne), Dick Grayson took on the mantle of Batman — with Bruce’s son, Damian, as his sidekick.
Those fans who enjoyed his stint as the Caped Crusader might have been miffed at Nightwing going from being Gotham’s biggest player to traveling with carnies. However, Higgins never saw it as a “demotion,” and there has been a concerted effort within DC to keep him as a major force in its books — even switching up his costume colors, from blue and black to red and black, to highlight this fresh start.
“We look at our favorite characters, and we want them all to be A-list,” Higgins says. “But the characters don’t think like that. Dick Grayson’s not sitting there going, ‘My superhero career would just skyrocket if I were Batman!’ Nightwing is his mantle at this point. It’s just the uniform he uses to help people, and he’s very different from Batman.
Nightwing Costume 