So, Dan DiDio wanted Nightwing to die in Infinite Crisis, eh? Yikes. I know there are probably more than a few Nightwing readers who think having Bruce Jones take over your book is a fate worse than death, but at least there’s still a book to take over.

Was Nightwing so far gone he couldn’t be saved, or was he just superfluous in the greater scheme of things? I can buy the second scenario for Superboy, may he rest in peace. Kon-El started out as almost the Poochie version of Superman, and though he might have grown up a little in the last few years, he was always going to be a crown prince, never the king.

Ironically, one could see Nightwing as the functionless redundancy of the Batman family. As long as there is a Batman, there will be a Robin; but will there always be a place for an emancipated sidekick? Nightwing reminds readers that Batman is old. What’s more, his position isn’t easily explainable. Parents buying action figures know who Batman and Robin are, but they have to look at the back of the card for Nightwing’s origin. Like Jerry Seinfeld says, people root for the costume. Kill Robin, and you’ve killed an icon, notwithstanding that the guy who made the icon has moved on. Kill Nightwing and (I say cynically) only the Internet cares.

As for his place as Outsiders leader, well, Spee– I mean, Arsenal can do that. Besides, Arsenal’s checkered past (drugs, illegitimate child) gives him that gritty edge. The worst thing Nightwing did, apparently, was get fired by Batman, and really, how hard could that be?

Admittedly, Dick has been through a lot in the past several years, but maybe I’m not the best guy to talk about that, having barely read his book (or Outsiders) apart from crossovers. The people who have seem pretty exercised about it, though. On her Pretty, Fizzy Paradise blog, Kalinara says the character is “ruined,” and thinks Nightwing dying in Infinite Crisis would have been more meaningful. My closest recent encounter with the Nightwing book was 2005′s “Nightwing: Year One” (#s 101-06), with which I did have some problems.

In fact, one minor plot point contained a continuity quibble which, in the best fanboy tradition, begs to be revisited and used to strengthen our hero’s standing. According to the story, Dick knows Superman’s secret identity, presumably from Batman having figured it out. This contradicts post-Crisis history which holds that Batman and Superman didn’t discover each other’s secrets until well into Jason Todd’s Robin career, just before Superman and Wonder Woman’s first “date” in Action Comics #600. (Yeah, yeah, Superboy-Prime — bear with me.) Reconciling those two stories would mean that Dick had deduced Superman’s secret independently of Batman, but “Nightwing: Year One” doesn’t say that.

Still, why not? By that point Dick had been leading the Teen Titans for at least a few years, and had most recently been assisting New York City D.A. Adrian Chase in organized-crime investigations. Shouldn’t the scion of the World’s Greatest Detective have started making his own big discoveries?

Consider: we are told that Bruce Wayne spent most of his adolescence and early adulthood wandering the world for twelve years, until he returned to Gotham at age 25 and began his costumed career. Nightwing is at a similar point in his own life, except that he’s been wearing one costume or another the whole time. He is the second-generation Batman in everything but attitude, and DC should take advantage of that.

I would love to read a Nightwing book featuring Dick Grayson, wealthy playboy, jet-setting around the DC universe running errands for Lucius Fox and the Wayne Foundation, while busting heads on the side. DC must feel the need to justify any interpretation of Batman which varies from the Frank Miller model — well, Nightwing’s “happy Batman” lets DC have both. Heck, make Nightwing the star of the new Brave and the Bold team-up title. Dan Slott took a similar approach to his (admittedly) short-lived Thing series, and I think it would work here. Nightwing knows everybody, has been everywhere, and people seem to get along with him a lot better than they do his mentor. If George Perez is still drawing the book, so much the better.

I disagree with killing Dick Grayson because I don’t think his potential has ever really been tapped. Regardless of superhero comics’ revolving pearly gates, death still means something — otherwise, it wouldn’t be used for this kind of shock value. DC should do with Nightwing what it trumpets with so many other characters: take him back to his roots, build him back into the standard-bearer for his generation that he once was, and for goodness’ sake, let him have some fun!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Conventions, DC Comics, Grumpy Old Fan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.