Overview: In Nightwing #109, Dick Grayson tries desperately to save the life of the woman he once loved as Ric Grayson!
Title: Nightwing #109 “The Crew of the Crossed: FINALE”
Writer: Tom Taylor
Artist: Stephen Byrne
Colors: Adriano Lucas
Letters: Wes Abbott
Main Cover: Bruno Redondo
Variant Covers: Jamal Campbell, Dan Mora, Mike Deodato Jr.
Release Date: December 19, 2023
This comic book review contains spoilers.
As Beatrice Bennett sinks to a watery grave, stories above Nightwing (Dick Grayson) is wrestling with his sudden burst of fear from the thought of saving her. He recalls a time in his life when he nearly fell and had a brief fear of heights, but shirks that off and dives after Bea, leaving her would-be-killer/half-brother Dirk to start his takeover of The Hold.
In a flashback, we see a young Robin enter the Batcave. He is greeted by Alfred Pennyworth, who informs him that he is to learn how to sew up a person through combat medicine. Although somewhat nervous at first, young Dick takes the needle and begins learning the art of healing on a small pig. This carries us through to seeing Bea awaken from her near-death experience. Despite her injuries, she is determined to stop Dirk from seizing control of The Hold before the rumors of her death bend the people to his will. As recompense for saving her life, she releases Dick from his debt, but knowing the odds she faces (and despite his fear), he commits himself to assisting her anyway.
Arriving just as Dirk is about to set sail, Bea regains the allegiance of the Quartermaster Amanda. Dick – angry at Dirk’s betrayal and murder of First Mate Lucas – easily takes out all of Dirk’s men. Bea arrives on the scene and takes back command of her ship. Later, Amanda delivers Dick’s delivered package, which turns out to be surveillance camera footage of Tony Zucco messing around with the Flying Grayson’s trapeze the night Dick’s parents died. Anxious to get back to Blüdhaven, Nightwing dons his mask and starts the journey home.
After an increasingly well-paced series of issues, this concluding chapter ended up being a big letdown.
Everything has to do with the payoffs to what’s been established in the last couple of issues. While I presumed Bea would survive (however improbably) from her being impaled and falling from a killer height at the end of Nightwing #108, the fact that she’s up and running the very next day was exactly the kind of neat-and-tidy lack of consequences I’ve come to resent from Tom Taylor’s run. It makes the whole shock ending of the previous issue a big fake-out. Look, this is comics, and current DC has been working to get away from the grimdark era of the New 52 and the Geoff Johns/Dan Didio era of blood and guts that has permeated the company since the mid-2000s, but something’s got to give. Consequences from action have to take place, and while I can grit my teeth and accept Bea surviving the fall, having her carry on as if nothing happened two scenes later is almost insulting. Seriously, what is the point? I thought that the entire incident of her near-death was to push Nightwing on when confronting Dirk. That’s commented on, but not greatly. He leaves Dirk for Bea, and thinks to himself that the whole affair has ticked him off, but it’s told to us without much showing. Yes, it’s over an action sequence but not one rendered with any real sense of vengeance of added violence. Take away the thought captions, and it looks like business as usual for a superhero action sequence.
Pretty much everything I didn’t want to have happen in this conclusion came to pass. Bea – like I warned against after it was revealed she’s Captain Blud – just starts speaking like a pirate and not the down-to-Earth person we knew back during the Dan Jurgens run in the Rick Grayson era. Instead of contractions, we get lots of “will not” and “have been.” Maybe the idea is that due to her own crisis of identity with her half-brother questioning her place in Blüdhaven legacy, she’s carrying herself more like an archetypical pirate leader, but to me it reads like a less realized character. She’s just a pirate archetype now, not Bea the person. Also, the brief scene of her regaining Amanda’s allegiance sucked. This woman led Lucas to his death and nearly got Bea and Dick killed. Not only should they not be as forgiving, but Amanda goes back on their side because Dirk is a jerk. If someone is that flighty in a 24-hour time span, you don’t want them on your side. And screw her anyway, she led to Bea’s crew to getting captured.
There’s so much more. Dick’s mysterious panic attacks are revealed to come from a heretofore unmentioned incident when he was a kid. We don’t spend the flashback on this, nor do we even see when he realizes where his fear comes from. And though there’s dialogue about him struggling with it, it’s not rendered well by Stephen Byrne. Dick has expressions of total fright for a panel before they’re forgotten about again. Bea mentions that he’s squeezing the handles on his chair while they fly to confront Dirk, but we don’t see that. While it’s in character for Dick to push his problems out of his mind, this issue should’ve seen him struggle more and more with what’s going on in the back of his head, but it simply pops in at random times and clears out for more plot exposition. There’s 2-3 pages about the origin of Blüdhaven and how Bea came into the Crossed Keys that feel out of place with the rest of the sequencing.
Let’s Talk About That Tony Zucco “Revelation”
Finally the big revelation of Dick’s mysterious package at The Hold is video evidence of Tony Zucco being present the night his parents died. Tom Taylor has Dick say this provides what couldn’t be proven years ago when Zucco was originally captured by Batman and Robin. I really dislike this. Every single published retelling of Robin’s origin has Zucco rightly arrested for the murder of the Graysons (or he dies of a heart attack in Batman: Dark Victory, but not before they have the goods on him). In 1940, it was traces of acid used on the ropes. Other retellings go back and forth between evidence that the ropes were cut and acid. But Zucco didn’t get away with killing the Graysons. That’s why he was in prison in Nightwing #100! The point is, it feels as though Taylor is trying to take credit for the idea that Zucco can be a lawfully proven killer, but that goes against every Zucco story the character has appeared in. Why write as though this is a new idea? It also chips away at what separated Bruce Wayne and Dick for so long. Much of Bruce’s history had Joe Chill escape justice for years and years, and sometimes Batman didn’t even know who killed his parents. Dick had that part of his life wrapped up right away, thus differentiating him from Bruce in a real way. But now, apparently, they never proved Zucco killed the Graysons. I don’t understand the point.
Which leads to the point of this entire arc. While there was some interpersonal drama with Dick and Bea, it didn’t go very far once the Dirk character came into the story. Learning that Bea’s been a pirate the whole time and even influenced Dick’s work in Blüdhaven was a surprising reveal, but by the end, it reads more like the sneak introduction of a new character rather than a revelation about an old one. The whole conflict of Dirk wrestling control over the Crossed Keys and The Hold is solved in a mere few pages. Dirk is said to have told everyone Bea is dead and is well on his way to conquering everything, yet Dick and Bea beat him in mere minutes. We’re told in the last two issues that other pirates resent Bea, but that doesn’t play out with anyone else. Taylor is trying to make commentary on discrimination and prejudice but takes it nowhere when it only comes down to one guy. There’s no actual conflict that has the characters run up into a brick wall. Amanda is back on the team, everyone loves Bea, and Dick gets his package…which turns out to show him that Tony Zucco killed his parents. What, did he not know that before?
Editor’s Note: DC Comics provided TBU with an advanced copy of this comic for review purposes. You can find this comic and help support TBU in the process by purchasing this issue digitally on Comixology through Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.
