In this review of Nightwing #127, the third, fourth, and fifth dimensions get a workout as the next phase of Nightwing’s battle for Blüdhaven begins!
Nightwing #127 main cover by Dexter Soy (DC Comics)
Nightwing #127
“Other, Part 1”
Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Dexter Soy
Colors: Veronica Gandini
Main Cover: Dexter Soy
Variant Covers: Jorge Fornes, Juan Ferreyra, Serg Acuna
Release Date: June 18, 2025
This review contains spoilers
The young Teddie gang member Bryce Moran Nightwing rescued, along with the experimental animal dubbed “Night-hare” decided to enter the abandoned Titans tower in Bludhaven to prove themselves worthy of helping their protector.
Dick’s sister, Mayor Melinda Grayson-Lin, collapses dramatically at a press conference during her race for re-election. Dick suits up as Nightwing after talking to Babs about all the plates he’s spinning, and heads out. But just as he arrives at the hospital, Titans Tower is covered by terrifying purple biomass (with lots of eyes and mouths for extra body horror). The reader sees this as the result of a battle in the narration captions between a blue narration entity (which savvy readers of Nightwing for the past few years will likely recognize) and the mysterious and dark Zanni. After giving his sister’s caregivers at the hospital instructions, Nightwing dives right back into the fray, confronting Spheric Solutions’ leader Oliva Pearce at Titans Tower. Oliva shoots the purple biomass with fifth dimensional rays, then offers Nightwing a special suit to deal with the fifth dimension. Reluctantly putting on the Spheric suit, Nightwing heads into the purple mass, and discovers the tower inside is warped by the trapped Nite-Mite, the fifth dimensional imp who models himself after Nightwing.
Analysis
Dan Watters and Dexter Soy go full multidimensional body horror with this first issue in their new arc “Other”, suiting Watters’ style perfectly (for those who have read his indie work like Coffin Bound or his amazing miniseries Sword of Azrael. Playing with his own fourth-wall breaking villain the Zanni and the previous introduction by Tom Taylor of Nite-Mite, he takes the cute early-comics wackiness of the Mite concept and marries it to his sensibilities as a horror writer very intelligently. I’m still a bit disappointed that there’s still no direct link to the Night Terrors: Detective Comics miniseries written by Watters which implied that multidimensional beings like the Zanni escaped or were created during that event. But there’s still plenty of time for that link to be made!
One could sometimes wish Watters would break his narrative into A and B plot a bit more artificially. The relentless connection of every plotline directly to Dick’s POV leaves the actual reading experience feeling very linear and too quick, while simultaneously having so many plot threads dangling that it generates anxiety as when watching a juggler spin more plates than he has limbs to put them on. I cannot truthfully accuse Watters of overly simple plotting – though I think there’s a bit of unnecessary gish gallop quality to the continued adding of plot points without resolving any previous ones. That being said, the story is certainly compelling and forward moving.
Watters also gets a lot of fun character work in – from the doomed heroism of Bryce Moran the Teddie gang member who shot an animal-powered mech to save Nightwing lately, to Dick and Babs’s romantic banter which serves as a bittersweet motivation for Nightwing as he heads into the purple biomass to save her, to the madness of Melinda Grayson-Lin, to the creepy confidence of Oliva Pearce as she offers Nightwing a deal to handle the fifth dimensional problems her own colleague the Zanni created. Compared with the (to be blunt) sometimes tasteless flirting and sexcapading that Tom Taylor put Dick and Babs through in his run, Watters evokes a more classic His Girl Friday type of romantic tension and interaction style which works significantly better.
Dexter Soy’s artwork dives into the supernatural body horror many times throughout this issue quite adeptly, and the final page of Nite-Mite’s head trapped in his own purple biomass is a really striking contrast between cute silliness and pure horror. The standard superhero action stuff for Nightwing also works quite well as usual, proving that Soy is a big asset for this book in both talent and consistency!
Dexter Soy’s main cover shows the heroic Nightwing fighting the Spheric Solutions equipped cops with jet packs across a lightning-streaked sky – very stirring and matching the interior! Jorge Fornes treats us to a design-heavy cover – the city of Bludhaven upside down, a skyscraper with a yellow Nightwing symbol in window-lights, and Nightwing himself cheerfully jumping from building to building across the starry night sky – gorgeous and full of character, though not connected to the interior. Juan Ferreyra’s variant features a landscape view of angry Nightwing breaking through a criminal car’s windshield at full speed! For the 1 in 25 incentive variant, Serg Acuna provides a (butt) cheeky view of Nightwing’s back (in every sense of the term) looking up at a plant covered Titans tower as mysterious forces split the sky above – actually appropriate for what is going on inside (except for the butt stuff, phrasing intentional).
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Final Thoughts
Watters and Soy hammer out the start of a new arc with a huge number of threats and plotlines and a well executed contrast of comic book wackiness and terrifying body horror.
