The Spy Who Loved Him: Reviewing ‘Nightwing 2024 Annual’ #1

Before the current run of Nightwing ends, there are still a few character-related loose ends to tie-up neatly as possible. Many of those center around the character of Bea Bennett, Dick’s love interest from the previous run turned member of an ancient pirate organization.

Thus, the premise of Nightwing 2024 Annual #1 was born, the whole long origin story of this mostly mysterious characters. A story given life by Travis Moore, Ivan Plascencia, Alex Guimarães, and Wes Abbott.

Moore picks up the writer hat alongside his usual artistic one for this double-sized issue.

Being an artist, Moore really delivers on the spectacle, emotional aspects, and world building. Creating a very dynamic showcase that allows the viewer to really feel like they are moving through a real space with real people. There is just a really dense and gorgeous appeal to Moore’s work that is tailor made for books with super powered or super power adjacent characters.

It’s got a really smooth, almost slick, appearance to it all. Which helps it feel like everything is gliding along so smoothly.

An important point to make is how the artwork definitely shows what it’s meant to show. I mention this because the structure of the story almost comes dangerously close to telling rather than showing.

Most of that comes from the choice to make this a whole flashback — character narrating their story at us — experience. So, tons of captions and boxes that lay out the nitty gritty and help get us from point A to point B. Were Moore not also the artist, or not paired with an artist that works with his style, the story would be close to expositing at us in great detail. As it stands, the two elements work well together since the same individual is pulling the strings.

I’m not a huge fan of tying one character, especially a newer one, so intricately through the history of established characters. It feels kind of cliché and not as original at this point, after being done so long in various mediums. I still feel the same way here with Bea’s story, for the most part.

Where that changes is the inclusion of Spyral, and the other agencies. DC Comics continuity is a real thick soup of confusion and convenience at this point, thanks to the New 52 reboot that led into DC Rebirth and the Dark Nights: Death Metal books, and then the recent Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths and Dawn of DC events or initiatives.

Many of those shifted things around, relaunched things, chose particular spaces or elements for long-time characters to exist. Those Metal themed events left the universe in a omniversal hypertime state, where everything that every happened in a DC Comics story essentially “did” happen and can come up.

If the writers so choose it.

So, the choice to include the Grayson secret agent era of Dick’s life, one of the best things to come out of his side of the line since the full reboot, was one to cheer. That being said, I was quite disappointed that Bea’s past has only minimal moments of her Pirate family heir status compared to the many years of spydom and following Grayson.

Plascencia and Guimarães do a splendid job at working their colors together though the issue. Hitting a lot of the same beats, keeping the relatively spaces very low-key and neutral like to create the more life-like base state of colors. Thus, allowing the more fantastical elements to embody brighter, more vibrant and powerful colors along the way.

It’s a seamless transition between the two, as I can’t even really tell who handled which portions. Allowing rougher darker tones to dominate in the right spots, before shifting to the smoother more heroic tones that we usually see in the Nightwing series. It very much did remind me of Adriano Lucas’ regular work on the main Nightwing series, creating a sort of visual continuity of sorts.

What provided the most connection to the regular issues was the always splendid lettering work provided by Abbott. Able to take even the densest amount of dialogue or captions and give them breathing room on the page. Which is a good thing since, as I mentioned above, there is an enormous amount of narration within this story. Abbott keeps it mostly to the sides or out of the main space, so that it frames the artwork as it should.

Dipping in little modifications here or there, changing the tone or volume while also letting characterization bleed through. Creating voices that sound authentic because they have flashes of emotion or personality behind them. As it should be.

Nightwing 2024 Annual #1 is now available from DC Comics.