So far, we have seen:
Blockbuster, a.k.a. Captain Obvious, threaten our hero’s loved ones.
Nightwing have a nervous breakdown and allow wannabe vigilante Tarantula to shoot Blockbuster in the face.
Even though anyone with the IQ of an old boot could have come up with about a dozen alternative ways of handling the situation.
In the first five seconds.
Tarantula rape our near-catatonic hero.
Yes, really.
Tarantula continue to control and manipulate Nightwing in the name of true love.
Which makes everything totally okay, didn’t you know that?
Nightwing too depressed and guilty to tell even his closest friends what has happened.
Tarantula about to be on the painful end of a well-deserved walloping at the fangs of Copperhead.
And now, back to our show.
I am not even going to bother yelling at the cover to issue ninety-five even though it deserves it, because it will only make me mad, and I have to save my energy for the actual content.
We pick up right where we left off last time, with Tarantula facing off against Copperhead in the church. The art kinda makes it look like she’s about to stab herself in the chest, which would be the nicest thing this comic could possibly do for us, but instead, we get this brilliant line of narration from our “heroine”: “I just want to see him smile.”
…Well, it’s vague, I’ll give them that. Is she talking about Copperhead? Why would she want to see him smile? Or is she talking about…? …Oh. I don’t think I like where this is going.
The fight continues, as does the narration. Tarantula explains to us about how she knows she’s no hero and that Nightwing isn’t really hers (the first intelligent thing to ever come out of her mouth), but that “I just happen to think it’s all worth it.” Oh, good, the comic wasted no time in piling on the stupid. Let’s see. In the course of the first two pages, the comic is not only trying to make Tarantula a sympathetic character by showing how she is never going to get what she wants no matter how hard she tries, it’s also trying to justify all of her actions—past, present, and future—by saying that, even if the means are shady, her intentions are honorable (“I just want to see him smile”), and that doesn’t make them quite as bad… somehow.
Allow me to let you in on a little secret, comic—no reader in his or her right mind is going to sympathize with a rapist. EVER. I do not care how much you try to sell the rapist as a nice person. I do not care what reasons you give for the rapist’s actions. The point is SHE IS STILL A RAPIST. Any attempts to make her sympathetic are going to fail (not to mention make you look like a clod) due to the horrendous and unforgivable nature of her crimes. You are supposed to be making us sympathize with the rape victim, and I have to say, you aren’t doing a very good job of it because you refuse to acknowledge that the rape even happened! And no matter how hard you pretend that it didn’t happen, IT DID, and I don’t think your readers are going to forget what went on a mere two issues ago!
Just as Tarantula is about to have her face bitten off, Nightwing decides to show up after all (fer pity’s sake, man, would you just once let her get what’s coming to her?!!). He takes over fighting for Tarantula, and then we get this:
Ew. Ew ew ew ew. EW!!!! What did I just get through telling you?! Rapists do not likable characters make! This dialogue reads like she’s in the girls’ high school locker room talking about her crush on the school football star! And I know they’re trying to make her look all beautiful and goo-goo eyed and lovestruck as she watches Nightwing beat up Copperhead, but all I see in those eyes is craziness and stalker-crushing and it is making me feel gross just looking at it! In fact, you know what this reminds me of?
This is from Identity Crisis #2, and I don’t think I’m spoiling it for too many people when I say this occurs right after Dr. Light rapes Sue Dibny, the Elongated Man’s wife. In fact, Identity Crisis #2 came out the exact same month as Nightwing #95 (it was not a good month). In Identity Crisis, we have Dr. Light watching his icky little light projection/reenactment of the rape, grinning gleefully at the sight of his victim. Let’s just say that Light gets what’s coming to him pretty quick. In Nightwing? The grinning rapist IS THE CHARACTER WE ARE SUPPOSED TO IDENTIFY WITH. As for whether or not she gets punished for her actions? I think we all know the answer to that, but I won’t spoil the surprise for those of you who haven’t guessed yet.
Tarantula continues to talk about her “love” for Nightwing, but I’ll spare you the sordid details. Nightwing ultimately captures Copperhead and then yells at Tarantula for going after him by herself. He also asks what precisely is in the tranq dart she used on the drug lord/would-be murder victim (just because she didn’t want him dead doesn’t mean she wanted him getting away), and she says this:
Comic: “Like her, darn you, LIKE HER!! Can’t you see how adorable and awkward she is?! Nightwing even accepts her as a hero, so WHY WON’T YOU!!!”
Tarantula suggests they go out for dinner (with a bunch of candles floating in the background for no reason—lazy artwork at its finest) and almost manages to get a kiss in (now I’m feeling gross again) before, for the very first time, he rejects her. Hallelujah! He turns away, grumbling about Copperhead and how they have to find out who hired him to kill that drug lord. We never find out, by the way, at least not in this story arc. Unfortunately, the scene ends with Tarantula hugging Dick and begging him to just let them “be real people for a few hours.” So basically, this whole scene was meant to build up more sympathy for Tarantula by showing how hard she’s trying to keep Nightwing’s attention and emphasizing how much she doesn’t want to lose him. Is it too late to take my “hallelujah” back?
Before we get to hang out at the bar with Dick and Cat (darnit, I could use a drink), we get a brief interlude at the Blüdhaven Police Department where Amy Rohrbach is trying to cover up Nightwing’s involvement in Blockbuster’s murder by pawning the case off on an inexperienced detective. And that’s it for now. Okay then—off to the bar!
Catalina spends most of the time demonstrating her hitherto unknown mind reading skills by telling Dick all about himself and his life. As it turns out, she is doing this to depress him into drinking with her, even though she knows perfectly well that he’s a teetotaler and has a very low tolerance for alcohol. After he’s had a shot, she convinces him to follow her to who-knows-where, even though she knows perfectly well that he doesn’t trust her.
…What’re you looking at me for? I’m not going to rant about that. I’m going to wait until we see where she’s taking him before ranting again.
Back at the BPD, the greenhorn that Amy assigned to the Desmond case turns out to be more competent than she expected and notices that a crucial interview is missing. Captain Rohrbach is well aware of this, since she’s the one who stole that interview, so she just scares the pants off the detective before dropping the interview down a storm drain. Litterbug.
In the last scene, we find out that Cat convinced Dick to go with her to Atlantic City so they can get married.
Aaaand cue rant.
WHAT PLANET IS THIS AUTHOR FROM??? There is no possible way to misconstrue the interview—it’s VERY clear that Devin Grayson likes Tarantula and expects us to at least sympathize with her situation; she even provides the excuse that Tarantula doesn’t know Nightwing well enough to realize how “shell-shocked” he is right now, which is a ragingly stupid excuse because “don’t touch me” means the same thing regardless of whether the person saying it is shell-shocked or not. In spite of this, in the span of three comics, Tarantula has shamelessly raped Nightwing while ignoring his attempts to push her away/tell her to stop, manipulated him into breaking into a motel and X’hal only knows what else, belittled him and dismissed his issues one minute before clinging to him and demanding a date night the next, demonstrated that she doesn’t care about being a superhero as much as she seems to pretend to, manipulated Dick into drinking alcohol by making him feel even worse about himself and his life, AND used his depression and half-drunkenness to try to get him to MARRY her (with the implication she’d get to continue raping him forever, whoop-de-doo), and we’re not even done with the story arc yet!! This isn’t a person—this is a monster! Despite the comic’s best efforts, there is nothing even remotely sympathetic about this character. She is a selfish, conniving, repulsive little psychopath who would have been locked up in Arkham ages ago if this comic had any sense, and I genuinely have to question anyone who finds this character the least bit appealing. There is absolutely nothing that could possibly justify Tarantula’s actions and thus make her a sympathetic character because there is no justification for rape. In ANY circumstances.
Thankfully, before Dick can sign the license, Bruce Wayne calls up and tells him to get his butt back to Gotham because there’s trouble a-brewin’. (Well… he didn’t quite put it that way…) Dick merrily runs off, abandoning Catalina at the altar… er, county clerk’s desk… whatever. The end. Next!
Issues ninety-six through ninety-eight are part of a crossover event, called War Games, with the other Batman-related books. All I know about the War Games event is what’s in the wikipedia article, and I don’t particularly care to learn more as it looks almost as dumb as this comic is not relevant to the rest of the Nightwing story arc. All we need to know is that a massive gang war is tearing Gotham City apart, and Batman has called in Nightwing to help out. The issue begins with Nightwing arriving in his old home city. Batman’s first sentence upon seeing him is “Thank you for coming.” His second sentence is “What’s wrong with you?”
Okay, that’s good. We have Batman taking all of three seconds to just look at Nightwing and realize that something is wrong. Alright then! Promising start. Sadly, that’s as far as it goes, because Nightwing is still too afraid to fess up. This part may give some readers hope that the rape isn’t being completely swept under the rug, as Nightwing’s inner monologue here about his fears and guilt is tantalizingly vague about what is making him feel so horrible, but I’ll just rain on your optimism parade right now—a later scene in this issue (“…As long as what went down in that final fight with Blockbuster remains a secret…” [emphasis mine]) and issue ninety-seven make it explicit that Nightwing is only reacting to Blockbuster’s death. Phew! For a second there I thought this comic was about to be coherent.
Batman, meanwhile, says nothing about Nightwing’s obvious distress. Well, okay, not quite nothing.
Grade A parenting skills right there, folks. Batman clearly knows that something is wrong with Nightwing—and given he’s the World’s Greatest Detective, he darn well better. But does he do anything about it? Does he tell Dick to come back to the Manor later so they can talk? Does he launch a Bat-style investigation into what could possibly be bothering him? Of course not! Look, I know Bats is busy with the gang wars and all that, but it has been an established fact since Dick’s earliest days that he is Bruce’s son in all but blood and one of the most important people in his life. So why is Batman only concerned with Dick’s problems insofar as they might make the situation in Gotham City worse? How do you go from this…
…to completely ignoring the crises that child is going through? And while we’re on the subject, how does Batman not know what’s wrong with Nightwing already? If he really was the World’s Greatest Detective, shouldn’t he already know that the circus and the apartment complex were destroyed, etc.? Oracle knows that Blockbuster is dead and that Tarantula (Nightwing’s “girlfriend”, as far as she’s concerned) might have had something to do with it. Later in this same issue, we see a gang running away from Nightwing in abject terror because they know he was involved in Blockbuster’s demise. So why doesn’t Batman know all this? Why is he even asking “What’s wrong with you?” when he should already know and be making some kind of effort to help his own son?!!
As you can see from the panel I posted up there, a certain member of the arachnid family has decided to grace Gotham City with its presence, and it ain’t Spider-Man (though that would be substantially more awesome). Tarantula stops a gang called Latino Unified from killing two police officers, and she takes control, telling them they’ll be taking orders from her from now on. To prove that she is strong enough to control a gang, she informs them that she is the one who murdered Blockbuster with “a little help from my partner.” For the love of X’hal, woman, STOP CALLING HIM THAT! I just got through washing off that icky feeling you gave me from the last issue and now I’ve gotta do it all over again!
Meanwhile, Nightwing (who’s finally shaved!) has been ordered to go to the Thompson Clinic to interrogate the bodyguard of one of the gang lords who was injured at the start of the war. He instead meets with a different bodyguard, Onyx, a reformed assassin and trusted assistant to the Batman Family who was working undercover. (We can debate whether calling a black woman “Onyx” is better or worse than naming a black guy “Black Lightning” some other time.) She explains how the gang wars got started and everything, but it’s really much more relevant to the War Games plot as a whole instead of the Nightwing books, so I think we can gloss over it. Same goes for the next page, which is a conversation between Tim Drake and his father Jack about how Tim’s “days as Robin are over.” Which is just going to confuse people, because on the cover of the very next issue, we see Tim back in the Robin costume with no apparent explanation for the sudden change of heart. I’m assuming they explained this in one of the other Bat-books, but it only serves to mildly irritate those of us who didn’t read them.
We finally get back to the Nightwing-relevant stuff when we check in with the Oracle, who really has her hands full keeping track of all the stuff coming in on the police scanner. One report tells of the attack that Tarantula broke up. Oracle, being the good little Bat that she is, immediately informs Batman that an unknown vigilante with a gun is running around, and she attempts to suggest that she sweep the area to locate her. But Batman just tells her to “stand down” and immediately calls up Nightwing, apparently having figured out from the vague details he got from Oracle that the mysterious “armed female vigilante” in question is, in fact, Tarantula. Oh, sure, when it comes to Tarantula, the man is omniscient. When it comes to his own son, he couldn’t care less. Nice. And then it gets better. Batman asks Nightwing about Tarantula, to which Nightwing says this:
One: maybe it’s just me projecting my expectations and prior knowledge about Nightwing’s personality onto the situation, but for some reason, I always hear that being said in a vaguely flippant tone of voice. Being stalked by a crazy rapist/murderer is not funny. Two: why are you apologizing when SHE is stalking YOU? Okay, so maybe as an expert superhero you should have checked a little better to make sure nobody was following you to Gotham, but let’s face it—the man hasn’t been at the top of his game lately. This line of dialogue probably wouldn’t bug me so much if Dick wasn’t busy taking the blame for every single other bad thing that’s happened in the entire world in the past few days, but as it stands, it’s just a reminder of all the really awful things about this comic.
Nightwing ends the conversation with Batman when the gang members he was trying to confront (before they ran away from him) are attacked by wee tiny tomatoes.
Seriously, what is that? Paint balls? Eh, never mind. Apparently it’s not relevant, because we skip to Tarantula. She happens to be in a junkyard when Nightwing finds her (make your own jokes about the appropriateness of this setting for the character), and she’s with Latino Unified, whom she has redubbed “Las Arañas” (“the Spiders”—get it???). When Nightwing goes to talk to her, she… tries to punch him? She explains (while attacking him) that it’s all part of this big master plan she’s cooked up to train this particular gang in the art of self-defense, and she wants Nightwing to pretend like she has hit him so that she’ll look good in front of the gang. Apparently, they remind her of the kids she grew up with.
On one level, I want to say this plan makes some kind of sense—train the gang to fight defensively rather than offensively so that a) they’ll have a better chance of surviving the gang war and b) the Batman Family won’t have to worry about what they’re doing so much anymore because they’re busy doing something constructive. On the other hand, Tarantula is just kind of assuming that all of these gang members deserve her protection, and I’m sure there are a number of kids in this gang who would like to get out. I’ll even grant you that a good-sized chunk of them are decent people caught in a bad situation, but the fact is, another good-sized chunk of them are probably not. And now, by training them to fight, Tarantula is blindly trusting them not to use their newfound skills to do even more damage than they were before. Because there is no way that this plan can possibly backfire, now is there? “Okay, Arañas, I’m going to teach you all of the self-defense moves that I use myself and then set you loose in the already-chaotic Gotham City where the police are hopelessly distracted and the Bats are totally swamped with work, but only if you pinky promise to use your training for the powers of JUSTICE!” Although, with the number of times she’s needed Nightwing to pull her fat out of the fire, Tarantula obviously isn’t much of a fighter. So there’s probably not much to worry about.
Nightwing seems to think Tarantula’s plan is good enough to go along with it and then basically recommend to Batman that Tarantula be allowed to keep doing what she’s doing. I say “basically” because he never endorses her in so many words. Batman asks for recommendations on what to do about her, and Nightwing hems and haws a bit, saying “I kind of owe her this.” NO. NO YOU DO NOT. Batman, YOU tell him!
I don’t know why I bother.
Next time: No man is an island… except Nightwing, because he’s got thick-headed self-absorbed jackasses for relatives. As a bonus, Tarantula changes her name from Catalina to Mary Sue.
Images from Nightwing #95, Identity Crisis #2, Nightwing #96, and Batman #20
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