DCU Comic Book Reviews

NIGHTWING #138

Lesser Of Two Evils

January 2008

Written by Fabian Nicieza

Pencils by Don Kramer

Inks by Wayne Faucher

Cover by Tony S. Daniel

Synopsis

[Continued from Robin, issue #168] 

In Chinatown, Nightwing is battling Ayin when he gets a call from Batman, who is in Asia, that Robin may be in trouble at Wayne Manor.  Nightwing finishes off Ayin and then uses the Justice League teleporter to go to Gotham City.  When he arrives, he encounters Tiger Moth, Silken Spider, and Dragonfly.  Nightwing uses a gas pellet to knock them unconscious and then heads for the Manor.  Nightwing then finds the manor being assaulted by hundreds of ninjas from the League of Assassins. In Tibet, Batman and Talia continue their search for Ra’s al Ghul.  In Singapore, the League of Assassins find the final piece of the puzzle that will allow Ra’s al Ghul to find Nanda Parbat.  In Wayne Manor, Nightwing finds Robin and Talia’s son Damian.  The three fight off the ninjas and are about to reach safety when Tiger Moth, Silken Spider, and Dragonfly, who are searching for Damian.  The ninjas attack the three women, injecting them with lethal darts.  Realizing they might die, Nightwing saves them, but leaves Robin and Damian to fight on their own.  [Continued in Detective Comics, issue #838]

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

There is a part of me that wishes Nicieza would continue to write Nightwing.  He seems to get the character, from the narration to the relationship between the boy wonder and Batman; this is the first time in a long time that I enjoyed their interaction between the two.  Nicieza also handles Damian and Robin a lot better than Milligan did in the first installment of this story.  Damian still comes across as a whiny brat, but Robin comes across as more assured and less whiny.  I think for these reasons (as well as the humor, such as the digs on Damian by the boy wonders), this is a fairly decent chapter to the story, although it doesn’t really achieve much in plot advance since Damian and Robin are in the same predicament at the end as they were in the beginning.  But, in a multi-part story, this is to be expected.  Essentially, much of the events in this issue are throwaway moments, which (in effect) are making this multi-part story much longer than it really needs to be.  Out of the 22 pages in this comic, only about 6 pages are really necessary for the story.

 

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