#spoiler for this 20 year old comic he gets blown up and spends the rest of the comic as a head LMAOOO so

[0zzysaurus]

October 14 Head Injury // Climbing a Mountain

would she still love him if he was just a head ... ? ermm. ^_^ YES she would <3333 -- IDW2005 Wreck-Gar and Rum-Maj are soooooo cutesy

[davidmann95]

On Nightwing #18

This is just getting unfair. I think I’ve mentioned before that Nightwing’s been sailing under the radar as one of the two or three most entertaining classic-style superhero comics right now, but Nightwing Must Die! as even more of a straight-up continuation of Morrison’s Batman than Grayson is basically scientifically engineered at this point to appeal to me. And with the latest development, there’s a lot to unpack.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

I didn’t think Bane’s "I swear by the blood of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life conquering all criminals" was going to have any competition as the hypest moment in comics this year, but it seems the gauntlet’s been thrown down. Dr. Hurt is back - if visibly a bit worse for wear going by his suit and cowl - and the threat is on an entirely different level now, not just to Dick Grayson but to the Batman Family as a whole. And way beyond the surface-level homages to Morrison’s time on Batman (shot to the back of the skull, except this time Dick’s the one who has to beat the clock and save the day rather than getting yanked to the side in the finale issue of his own story!), he actually fits this arc like a black glove.

On basic level a big chunk of this arc has been about Dick in a parental position between Damian and the potential child with Shawn, so it makes sense for the ultimate Bad Father of their world to emerge as the real threat. Pyg’s his servant (one whose talents are particularly suited to what Hurt’s trying to do here, which I’ll get to in a second), his status as either The Literal Devil or an unwitting servant of Darkseid potentially justifies the weird Multiverse bits leaking in around the edges of the arc, and as Damian’s 14th birthday is imminent given Rebirth has established him as just turning 13, the events leading to Batman of Bethlehem start to get closer, and Hurt’s known to play a crucial role in them when Damian one way or another sells him his soul.

But there’s more to it than that.

The immediate question is: why Dick Grayson? Hurt visibly never cared about him in their first meeting, and while he was one half of that amazing double-punch with Damian in Batman and Robin, I don’t think that’d get him to devote a scheme on this scale to killing him when a sniper would do, much less risk the life of a Wayne. The answer of course is that he doesn’t want him dead. Hell, the solicit for #20 tells you that, and also makes clear why it’s Hurt: “Very few villains have ever broken Batman—but the man who’s been tormenting Nightwing is one of them! Why has he chosen Nightwing, and not Batman, to serve him in the dark new world he sees coming?” He wants a servant. More than that, one formed under very specific conditions, because “the best of you are driven by pain, powered by tragedy”.

This is not a new strategy for Simon Hurt. In fact, it’s the oldest trick in his book.

That’s why the arc is titled Nightwing Must Die. Not because he wants to kill Dick Grayson, but because he wants him to be Batman again - a monstrous new kind of Batman, broken and bent to the devil’s service. To Hurt, Grayson was never more than a worthless piece of big top trash, meant to serve his betters (might he know about the Court of Owls’ plans for him?). In this case via Pyg’s mind-eroding and person-crafting talents going hand-in-hand with the death of a loved one, tying together Dick’s fatherly concerns and Damian’s worries over who will inherent the cowl into a single coherent idea: is Dick Grayson supposed to be Batman?  Of course this puts me in the awkward position of kinda rooting for Dr. Hurt, given my answer to that question is definitely and thoroughly yes (especially if that means no more editorially-forced Blüdhaven arcs that Tim Seeley’s visibly less interested in than the good shit on either side of it), but even though this probably won’t lead to Dick reclaiming the title, I’m hopeful that Seeley will finally be able to justify Nightwing as an independent identity in a way that’ll work to my satisfaction.

And on top of all that: where the hell do we go from here? Dr. Hurt’s back, and it feels like it’s going to take more than the remaining two issues of this arc to resolve that given the scale of the danger he represents. And if and when Hurt makes it out of this, it makes absolutely no sense for only Nightwing to be going after him alone; Batman isn’t going to go “oh yeah, totally Dick, you handle my immortal evil-powered grandad who once drove me insane all by yourself.” What’s his place going forward? Is he going to be heavily involved in Metal? If not, I suspect any further attacks by him are going to be on the scale of a full-blown crossover. Batman as a title is going into the past for awhile (I suspect because of Metal being the obvious Important Batman Story and running at the same time, same as Zero Year ran during Batman Eternal), and when it comes back I wouldn’t be surprised if Seeley’s old Grayson partner in Tom King collaborated on a huge Batfamily vs. Dr. Hurt story. If they hold off awhile maybe it could even be the big 80th anniversary Batman event for 2019, with Detective Comics #1000 playing in as Damian’s birthday approaches and the death of Batman (which King already hinted at coming in his run!) looms. In any case, while there’s still every chance the creators could blow it, I’m at the moment more than happy to see Simon Hurt return to wreak, as he would put it, spectacular new atrocities.