Greatest Fan Of Nightmares — Reviewing ‘Nightwing’ #127

Dimensional barriers are broken as forces beyond our planet have their sights set on Blüdhaven and its stalwart vigilante guardian. Things get really trippy as Nightwing #127 kicks off the latest story from Dan Watters, Dexter Soy, Veronica Gandini, and Wes Abbott.

Ongoing comic books, especially superhero books, are very much built on expectations. We know who these characters are. Often what befalls them is something we can anticipate; the villains they face, how they will deal with it, and what types of stories might happen.

That’s what makes it so refreshing when we get those books that buck such trends. This happens when creators are willing to go wild, take chances, and push against the expectations, while still delivering the characters as we love them but doing so in new and fun ways.

If you hadn’t already guessed, that’s where this book falls.

<<SPOILERS FOLLOW>>

Hell, the other-dimensional clown being Zanni absolutely wrecks and warps the well-meaning 5^th dimensional imp Nite-Mite. This turns the latter into a grotesque nightmarish figure wrapped around Titans Tower.

All of this is brought to stunning life by Soy. The imagery is dense and dark with flashes of lightness sprinkled throughout. Every single emotional moment and ounce of action is perfectly displayed through facial expressions, body language, and more. These characters have a full weighty presence upon the page, as the depth and detail are top notch.

That right balance of roughness comes into play to fit this particular story tone. It’s mixed with softer and smoother textures overall, still wonderfully choosing the right panel situation at every given moment to maximize storytelling potential.

Darker shades are apparent everywhere in the shadows, with more subdued natural color palette choices for the settings. As always, this creates a space that feels authentic color wise to what we see around us regularly. It’s also really fitting for the tone of the current run overall. This allows the more vibrant colors of the hero, the fantastical entities, and more, to really burst for our eyes.

Nite-Mite and the other Imps often bring with them a jovial or lighter tone, despite an inherent darkness in their abilities, their disconnect from our dimensional reality, and more. Watters plays into that so well with this arc. It ties together the Nightwing #1 superfan imp and the ongoing plot of the Zanni, breaking the fourth wall expertly including references to how many issues it’s been since we last saw Nite-Mite back in the previous series run.

There is a ton going down in this issue that has been building over the run so far. It happens at a rapid pace with a lot of question marks still surrounding things. Yet, none of the mystery remains feels grating or ill-placed. The pacing that Watters has employed mixed with tight character work helps keep the mysteries engaging and enthralling.

Crafting a voice for Nightwing in the current era has been a team-effort through these two runs. Maintaining that voice in a visual sense has fallen to Abbott for most of these last two creative runs, matching the needs of the story beat for beat, giving Grayson’s voice it’s power, authority, and emotional bandwidth every single time.

This allows the audience to hear it all impeccably as we replay the story in our own mind real time wise. It dips in here or there with the right visual modifiers to give the voices those subtle but overt pushes.

Nightwing #127 is now available from DC Comics.