In this review of Nightwing #123, pressures mount on Nightwing’s mayoral sister as he is drawn deep in the web of the Flyboiz.
Nightwing #123 main cover by Dexter Coy (DC Comics)
Nightwing #123
“On With the Show: Part 5: Dropping Like Flies”
Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Dexter Soy
Colors: Veronica Gandini
Main Cover: Dexter Soy
Variant Covers: Dan Panosian, Gleb Melnikov, Giuseppe Camuncolo, Dexter Soy
Release Date: February 19, 2025
A sinister mayoral candidate named Biosgoni (linked to the Blockbuster gang) trashes Mayor Grayson-Lin (Dick’s half sister) for not being hard enough on crime, while the sinister head of Spheric Solutions collaborates with the current Mayor.
Nightwing visits the Teddies he helped last issue in his safe house, telling them to continue holding instead of fighting the other gangs. As he heads out to the city, Oracle alerts him that the Flyboiz are calling for Nightwing’s help. We get a brief history lesson on the Flyboiz gang – mad scientist Dr. Proboscis mutated his gang members with fruit fly DNA to gain control of the drug trade – and Dick goes to their headquarters, finding a lot of hugely mutated and dead Boiz in the old nuclear waste facility from Chemo’s explosion many years ago. As Nightwing penetrates deeper into the facility, he’s attacked by massive mutated bug-men. Finding a seemingly safe room, he’s confronted by a mutated bulldog and a woman calling herself Crystal, Dr. Proboscis’s lab assistant. She explains that Spheric Solutions gave them this lab to try to reverse Dr. Proboscis’s experiments, but demanded one of the Flyboiz perform a terrorist attack. Crystal begs for Nightwing’s help.
The issue ends with Mayor Grayson-Lin saying she’ll do anything for Spheric to protect Bludhaven.
Analysis: Dan Watters really digs into the worldbuilding on this issue with the Flyboiz. I’m very curious to see if he digs deep into the character of Crystal as well in future issues – it feels a bit simplistic that she’s just a victim of Dr. Proboscis, but it’s possible that she won’t survive the radiation or gang warfare in the next few issues. The dark sense of humor that Watters displays well in the title of this issue – “dropping like flies” – serves the wacky concept of a gang of bug-men nicely. A high point in the run so far, for me – avoiding the overly pathos-driven Teddies gang backstory (perhaps inherent to that concept), while still keeping the over the top energy of the concept.
On the Melinda mayoral through-line, I think her opponent feels a bit like a writing cheap trick, in having Melinda be antagonistic to the hero (Nightwing) but making her more sympathetic by pitting her against someone who is more dislikable. Hopefully Melinda’s character and arc will get some more straightforward depth soon.
It’s fascinating to see the Chemo nuclear disaster of Bludhaven being made into a pretty significant plot point – something that happened nearly 20 years ago and has been pretty much memory holed suddenly showing up does make my ears perk up.
Lastly, Dexter Soy continues to put in solid, consistent, and appealing work, supplemented beautifully by Veronica Gandini’s strong and moody colors. Nightwing is always a consistently enjoyable artistic package with this team.
Main series artist Dexter Soy’s cover provides a brilliant eye-catching (pun intended) image of a Flyboi reflecting dozens of Nightwings in his mutated red eye. Dan Panosian’s Nightwing and Batgirl image is nice, beautifully rendered, but a bit generic, and Babs’s neck seems a bit over-rotated. Gleb Menlikov’s variant highlights Nightwing doing a backwards handstand through security lasers – a nice enough image, but not at all connected to the story inside. Giuseppe Camuncoli’s Hush variant features Hush, his bandages flying in the wind, holding a finger to his mouth as Batman and Nightwing rush him in a graveyard. Lastly, main series artist Soy provides the 1 in 25 incentive variant, a nicely melancholy black, white, and glue piece of Nightwing looking sadly down on a gargoyle above the city – a lovely image, though once again not connected to the interiors.
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Final Thoughts
A return to the inventive worldbuilding and deep continuity constructions brings this issue to a solid score, alongside Soy’s consistent art…
