In this review of Nightwing #139, as Nightwing wanders Blüdhaven, sleepless for days, bodies surface (literally) that tell dark tales.
Nightwing #139 main cover by Jorge Fornés (DC Comics)
NIGHTWING #139
Written by DAN WATTERS
Art by DENYS COWAN
Main Cover: JORGE FORNÉS
Variant Covers: BEN HARVEY, GABRIEL HARDMAN
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: 6/17/26
This review contains spoilers
Prosecutor Eastbourne, the lawyer suing Nightwing for the massive traffic accident that killed many people on the new Blüdhaven superhighway, holds a press conference after Nightwing visits her trying to tell the truth about the witch who caused the accident. She declares Nightwing is lying, calls him a hit and run felon, and challenges him to turn himself in, saying he doesn’t even know the names of those who died.
Meanwhile, as he searches for the witch, Nightwing remembers all of the names of those killed in the accident, feeling utterly alone now that Babs is in prison.
At the waterfront, Commissioner Maggie Sawyer and Detective Turpin find a huge mashed together group of bodies, surfacing because of the changed water patterns from the superhighway.
Instead of sleeping, Nightwing chooses to try to help separate, identify, and analyze the mashed together bodies from the water. Losing track of time, he’s joined by Dr. Sereika (from Watter’s series Batman: Dark Patterns), and together they solve cold case after cold case. With one body left, Dr. Serika forces Nightwing to leave, trying to get him to rest, but instead, he goes to the docks, and from there to a nearby church. The priest greets him kindly, and has him take confession. Deducing he’s Nightwing, he tries to give him comfort in the guilt Dick feels after the accident, and Nightwing deduces that the priest killed the last body from the waterfront. The priest confesses that he did, after the man had confessed to horrible evil. The issue ends with Nightwing trying to decide if turning the priest in would do more harm to his congregation than the justice for the murder he did.
Analysis
Dan Watters and Denys Cowan continue their horror-inflected series of one-shot mysteries, the forward thrust of each one propelling Nightwing further and further downward in his mental and emotional spiral after the loss of Nightwing Prime and Babs. This one works a bit better than the last two, featuring a much more sympathetic priest figure than the vengeful alien version of Starfire and the primitivistic snipers as the central actor. The addition of Dr. Sereika from Watters’ Dark Patterns series is an interesting one. A character shrouded in both darkness, hope, redemption, and murkiness from that murky miniseries, the pathologist seems like a good figure to place in Nightwing’s life during this extremely murky time. Hopefully he’ll get more development and plot action in the series going forward! That kind of character crossover between series is, of course, the benefit of long running writers getting to play around in the Batman and DC universe for a while, making connections that help deepen the world.
As for the issue’s self-contained mystery, there’s a similarity to “Wake Up Dead Men,” last year’s Knives Out film by Rian Johnson, which featured a similarly murky priest who still tried to stand for light in a dark world. There’s a bit of a sense of artificiality in the priest’s dialogue, but a sense that whether Watters himself has faith similar to the priest’s, he sees the heart and effect the priest has on his community. I’m very curious to see whether the resolution to Nightwing’s dilemma is featured in the next issue or the rest of the run (there hasn’t really been a lot of fallout from the other three Blüdhaven Lore cases so far), or whether the dilemma itself, in Nightwing’s completely exhausted and beaten down condition, is the point.
As befitting his DC legendary artist status, Denys Cowan’s work on the brightest Batfamily character in his darkest spot is beautifully rendered. Also fitting with Watters’s horror focus, Cowan’s rendering of the mashed together bodies and Nightwing’s physical state are clearly and starkly featured. Colorist Francesco Segala’s work, with a lot of watercolor and sponge painting effects, gives the grey, oppressive, weary feeling of the story perfect color complements. It is really nice seeing this kind of artistic consistency in DC’s line, after the two to three artist mess that was the Ram V Detective Comics run.
Main cover artist Jorge Fornés produces a cover featuring Nightwing being dragged into blood-soaked water by dead hands – a nice symbolic look at the story. Ben Harvey’s variant features a smiling Nightwing on a rain-swept gargoyle – a very nice image, though only the rain is connected to this particular issue. Gabriel Hardman’s variant, in contrast, captures the dark desperation of the issue much more strongly, with Nightwing hunched over in the rain, coming around a corner with harsh lights behind him creating a split and hunted effect.
Final Thoughts
Nightwing’s downward spiral continues, hopefully to reverse soon.
