SPOILERS AHEAD!!! BEWARE!!!!
The last volume made a big point of stressing how epic a grudge match we were in for when Nightwing finally found Tony Zucco, thew man who murdered his parents, The Flying Graysons. So I was kind of surprised by how much of an anti-climax this book turned out to be. Most of this volume seems to be setting up the new status quo of Nightwing, as it looks like he'll be making his home in Chicago from now on.
The bulk of the book is taken up by the unfortunately-attired Prankster, an ill-conceived and uninteresting character that detracts from the main storyline (Or what SHOULD have been the main storyline...) of Dick Grayson vs. Tony Zucco. There's a lot of unexplained backstory about Mayoral corruption, and a mysterious killer that wiped out all of Chicago's masked vigilantes, but none of this is explained, and when we do see Zucco, he's played up as an honorable family man who made one small mistake years ago when he, you know, he participated in organized crime and murdered a family in cold blood. Everybody is entitled to a mistake, right? What's the big deal....? Which makes it even more perplexing when, after (apparently) redeeming himself, Zucco immediately slides back into his old identity and former life of crime. So we basically just wasted six issues looking for this guy and getting closure, only to see it immediately undone. What a waste of my time.
NIGHTWING, VOLUME 4: SECOND CITY collects NIGHTWING #'s 19-24, and contains some nice artwork, but the story, by Kyle Higgins, is nothing but wheel-spinning and world-building that's designed to steer you right into the next volume. For me, there will be no next volume. I came, I sampled two volumes, and I decided this is just not for me. Your mileage may vary, but I found this to be truly boring, unexceptional stuff.
DC Comics provided a review copy.
No comments:
Post a Comment