So far, we have seen:
Tarantula become an honorary member of the Bat-Club.
A lot of scenes that have nothing to do with the storyline.
That Batman still has no clue that Nightwing was raped.
Ditto for Robin.
Ditto for Oracle, but she’s such a catty witch that she probably wouldn’t care anyway.
More scenes that have nothing to do with the storyline.
Nightwing get shot and collapse on a fire escape.
And now, the conclusion to our categorically creepy and contemptible chronicle!
Okay, we’re in the home stretch—just two issues to go! And according to the cover of issue ninety-nine, Alfred gets in on the fun today. *sob* Please don’t do it, comic—please spare my Alfred!
The first thing you notice when you open this issue is that we’ve got a new artist. And that he’s even worse than the last guy.
This is painful. Everyone is so… I guess “crooked” would be the best word to use, right after “icky.” They just aren’t put together right. And we’re also back to unshaven Nightwing, so that’s another minus. I guess Alfred was too busy cutting those extra three inches of hair off his head to worry about shaving him.
The next thing you notice is that Dick is having a nightmare about Blockbuster’s murder. Guess we can go back to the PTSD symptoms I posted in the last review and check “bad dreams” off the list. He abruptly wakes up from this dream to find himself back at Wayne Manor, his gunshot wound having been tended to by Alfred. Dick tries to tell him about “the other thing with Blockbuster” but sort of conks out before he can really say anything.
In any case, it’s about here that I should mention—the scenes in this comic are terribly short, a couple of pages at the most. We bounce between the Manor and Tarantula so often that I’d end up saying nothing but “then Tarantula did this, then Nightwing did that” the entire review, so I’m not going to discuss this issue in chronological order the way I did with the others. Instead, I’m going to discuss each strand separately—first all of the bits at the Manor, then all of the bits with Tarantula. Hopefully that will make the review flow better.
The next time we see Alfred, he’s talking to Bruce on the phone about Dick’s condition and about how “I honestly have no idea what I’d tell” Dick if he asked about… something. (We find out later it’s Spoiler/Stephanie Brown, whose recent death Dick is unaware of.) The biggest problem with this scene is that Alfred is having this discussion right outside Dick’s bedroom door. And the door is open. Seriously, man, if you don’t want to tell someone about something, you don’t discuss it where they can easily wake up and hear you! And, surprise surprise, Dick does in fact overhear the conversation, but when Alfred returns to check on Dick, all he will reveal is that Batman is the only crime-fighter left in Gotham City right now. Dick tries to ask specifically about Barbara, and Alfred responds with the greatest face ever drawn in the history of comicdom.
Anyway, Alfred tries to calm Dick down and tells him that Barbara’s whereabouts are currently unknown but that she left the city of her own accord, which means she’s okay. Dick’s a bit upset that Babs left without saying good-bye to him, and then he wonders to himself about Stephanie. Alfred tries to hide his teary reaction to Steph’s name, but Dick notices, asks about it, and gets deflected. That’s kind of the way this entire arc has progressed, come to think of it—“Are you okay?” “*suspicious silence* Yes.” “Oh. Okay! *skips away*” I think the Bats could do with some family therapy. If that is not the next story arc, I will be extremely disappointed.
Dick tries to leave the room so he can go look for Barbara, and after ignoring Alfred’s orders to siddown one too many times, Alfred straight-up yells at him. This makes Dick realize that something really is the matter (pity nobody returns the favor), and Alfred goes on to tell Dick how worried he is about him in prose so purple it only shows up in ultraviolet.
“Luminosity of spirit”??? You have got to be kidding. I hate to say it, Alfred, but you either accidentally swallowed a thesaurus or have been reading too much fan-fiction written by half-witted thirteen-year-olds. That goes on for a couple of panels, but this is pretty much the end of Dick’s individual arc for this issue.
Meanwhile, Tarantula is out on the mean streets of Gotham, tailing some random thugs even though Alfred just said that Batman was the only hero left in Gotham. Unless he’s the only one intelligent enough to realize that Tarantula is not a hero and excluded her on purpose, which I doubt. Great—not only does Alfred talk like some demented poet, he’s now a liar as well. STOP RUINING MY ALFRED.
Tarantula tranqs one of the thugs, and the others chase after her. And they chase her some more. And then whoops, looks like there’s a lot more thugs than she counted on. Oh, isn’t this terrible. And then this happens.
So Mr. White Suit threatens to kill her (no don’t do it she doesn’t deserve to die oh the humanity), and after a fight scene with the rest of the gang that lasts all of one panel, he pulls a gun on her. Tarantula manages to escape (isn’t that always the way with spiders?) and hides behind a dumpster, gun at the ready. But nobody attacks her because they’re too busy being beaten up by someone else to even think of coming for her. As it turns out (steel yourself for a shock), the Batman has come to her rescue, and he does that Batman-y thing he likes to do and spontaneously appears behind her without making a sound. He also makes it a point to take her gun away from her, which I found a bit odd. He had no problem with her using a gun when Oracle told him about the “armed female vigilante” in issue ninety-six, so it’s a bit late to be taking an anti-gun stance now.
Tarantula tries to stammer an excuse but Batman just wants to know “Why are you out here?” Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you gave her free run of the place two issues ago?!!! And if he did tell her to knock it off and go home in another book, then the comic should have told us that. Tarantula then launches into a long rant about how Batman thinks that stopping crime means stopping the crimes themselves instead of understanding the desperation that may drive a person to do something illegal in the first place, and that hard work doesn’t always get you the American dream. When I first read this, I started despairing over how I’d actually have to give Tarantula some credit for having a good idea, but thankfully, the comic has already taken care of that for me. If she believes this strongly that crime is the result of desperation and that slapping people around won’t help, then why was she just shooting tranq darts at a bunch of guys and trying to beat them up without even trying to talk them down like she did with Latino Unified? In one panel she flat-out insults them, saying “Alright, you miserable babosos, let’s get this over with…” If she wanted to get on a soapbox about the politics of crime, she should have done it back when she went all bleeding heart over Latino Unified and not right after she got through doing the same thing that she’s now criticizing Batman for.
Batman tells her that she’s got some “interesting” theories, but that she’s kind of incompetent. Oh, sure, NOW he notices. Tarantula responds by challenging him to train her, and Batman leaves. So even though he finally notices this woman’s got no clue what she’s doing, he still doesn’t take the time to throw her out on her ear? Mary Sue Syndrome strikes again!
The last four pages take place in the Batcave, with nary a cut in sight. Batman arrives at the Cave to find Dick waiting for him (how’d he get away from Alfred?). Dick starts yelling about how Batman is pushing everyone away, so Batman, tactful soul that he is, responds in the only logical manner.
Holy left-fielders, Batman! Where’d that come from? And since he’s already on the subject, Batman goes on to explain how the big gang war they just fought was all Stephanie’s fault for reasons we’re not going to get into here. Let’s just say that a good chunk of it was also Batman’s fault and that he’s an idiot for not admitting/recognizing that fact. Dick, flabbergasted at first, finally finds his voice and monologues a bit about how he doesn’t know where “the line” is anymore and how he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Good, that makes two of us.
Okay, dangit, I’ll admit it. Bruce’s dead-eyed zombie stare aside, the gesture of wrapping his cape around Dick is actually… sweet. Now if you could back it up with a long heart-to-heart talk about everything that’s happened lately, maybe some good could come from this comic. But of course that’s not going to happen—Batman is, yet again, far more concerned with protecting Gotham than with finding out what’s been bothering Dick all this time. Dick, rather understandably I thought, gets up and leaves the Cave.
Hey, y’know something? These past two issues haven’t been quite as bad as the others. Granted, the art was terrifying, and considering that the best art was in issue ninety-three, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s some kind of inversely proportional relationship between the quality of the drawing and the offensiveness of the writing. But I’m no good with numbers, so I’ll let you guys figure it out.
This FINALLY brings us to Nightwing #100, the last issue in the story arc. It sure feels like it took us one hundred issues to get here. The artist from #94-#97 is back, thank goodness, so at least this will be tolerable to look at, if not to actually read. And it’s looking as though my inverse proportions theory might be more accurate than I thought, because this issue instantly returns to the stupidity in truly spectacular fashion. Just look at this tagline:
We start the issue in jail. Oh, good, is Tarantula finally—oh, wait, it’s Dick who’s in jail. Nut bunnies. Dick thinks back to how much Bruce has changed his life and how much all the years of training have meant to him. I kind of like this bit of reflection, or at the very least, I can’t find anything to criticize about it. But the introspection is interrupted by a couple of cops who come and tell him that his boss is here. Dick thinks it’s Bruce at first, but when he finds out it’s a woman, he thinks “At least I know it’s not Catalina. I dealt with her earlier this evening.” This leads to a flashback during which he tells Tarantula that they’re going to go back to Blüdhaven. She seems happy enough to do whatever he wants and gives him a hug, but Nightwing pushes her away. He then says something that I found very interesting.
Could it be? At long last, are they acknowledging that Tarantula forced Dick to touch her, in other words, that she raped him? After all, saying “have to” indicates that Dick never wanted to touch her in the first place, which means that he does remember what happened! That can only mean that she’s finally about to get what’s coming to her, right?!
…I hope nobody thought I was serious with that bit. Because that was sarcasm. Angry, horror-struck, where-do-I-sign-up-to-hit-Devin-Grayson-with-the-clue-stick sarcasm. Microsoft Word really needs to come up with a font for that.
After expressing his disgust with Tarantula, Nightwing immediately changes tactics and asks “What happened to you, by the way? You look pretty worked over.” And when I say immediately, I mean it. One second he’s swinging his crutch at her and yelling, then Tarantula makes a <:( face, and then he asks if she’s okay. All in the space of three panels. This is what I was talking about back in issue ninety-three with the mood whiplash, where the characters are ranting their heads off in one panel and then immediately become calm and even comforting in the next. I’d call it shockingly terrible, but after eight issues of this codswallop, I think the shock has worn off.
Nightwing informs Tarantula that he is taking her to jail, to which she reacts by running away crying. Nightwing goes after her, and they fight for the next few pages. The dialogue is still dazzling, by the way (“I’m gonna kick your crippled butt!” “I don’t think so, Cat. I think it’s gonna be the other way around.”—seriously, was any effort put into this banter?), and Nightwing talks about a lot of things, most of which make no sense. He says that he wanted to believe someone as amateurish as Tarantula could become a hero because she reminds him of what he himself could have been had Bruce not taken him in—and by that, he means he would have been “wild and impulsive and audacious”, not a sociopathic rapist and murderer, just to be clear. But then he says that after she shot Blockbuster, he “needed to believe it. I needed to believe there was nothing I could have done.”
…That does not even begin to make any amount of sense. Before the shooting, he wanted to believe Tarantula could do good. After the shooting, he needed to believe “it”—“it” presumably referring to Tarantula doing good—which would in turn mean that he couldn’t have stopped Blockbuster’s death. How what why…? Does he mean that Blockbuster’s death would have been justified if Tarantula could do good? Well, yeah, Blockbuster’s death was always justified in my opinion, but that doesn’t preclude the fact that Nightwing easily could have stopped it if he’d had his head screwed on straight.
Tarantula then decides that the best thing to do would be to pull a gun on Nightwing and threaten to shoot him if he tries to turn her in. Nightwing tells her that he’s going to turn himself in too, claiming that he is just as responsible for Blockbuster’s death as she is. (Yes, he’s only turning her in for the murder, not for sexual assault, despite the fact that he seems to remember exactly what happened to him. Charming.) Tarantula does shoot, but like an idiot, she does it with her eyes closed and misses. Nightwing finally takes her down, saying “Stop trying to protect me from myself, Tarantula.” ARGH. We are STILL trying to make it look like Tarantula has Nightwing’s best interests at heart? Really?! I guess I should just be grateful that Nightwing has finally turned against Tarantula (sort of), but I can’t help but wonder what prompted this sudden change. His last line of dialogue from issue ninety-nine was “I’m lost”, and then he leaves the Batcave in the middle of Bruce’s remarkably unhelpful speech. And then all of a sudden it’s issue one hundred and he’s throwing Batarangs at Tarantula. Where did he get the confidence and motivation to turn Tarantula in for Blockbuster’s murder? Did he just decide to turn off the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and reassume his normal personality?
Oh, and guess what Dick’s first thought is when the flashback ends.
Stockholm Syndrome is generally defined as a condition wherein the victim of a crime (kidnapping, domestic abuse, what have you) begins to identify and/or agree with the victimizer. According to the RAINN website, symptoms can include but are not limited to seeing things from the attacker’s point of view, sympathizing with/assisting the attacker, showing undue concern for the attacker’s safety, and taking blame for or minimizing the bad things the attacker does to the victim. Sound like anyone we know? Someone who agrees with Tarantula’s master plan to train gangs how to fight, sympathizes with Tarantula’s audaciousness, insists that she must be more careful when fighting crime, and blames only himself for Desmond’s death and, presumably, his own rape?
However, unlike with PTSD which I firmly believe he does have, I don’t think Nightwing really has Stockholm Syndrome in-story. Rather, it’s just the horrid writing that makes it look like he does. After all, Nightwing’s not the only one who cares about Tarantula’s well-being despite her shall-we-say “flaws”—Batman acts much the same way. He lets her patrol in Gotham despite later admonishing her for having no skills, he utterly ignores the fact that she regularly uses guns even though that’s a big no-no as far as he’s usually concerned, and then he just turns and lets her go even though he should be well aware that she is a killer by now. I highly doubt the words “Stockholm Syndrome” even crossed Devin Grayson’s mind—she was so focused on forcing Tarantula the Wannabe Hero down our throats that everybody else’s brains and personalities sort of got tossed to the wind. As a result, it just looks like Nightwing has Stockholm Syndrome. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than if he actually had it.
On a lighter note, why is Nightwing wearing the bandage on the outside of his pants leg? I’m no medical expert, but I think his leg is going to need protection against infection and further injury much more than his pants will.
So anyway, now we know how Dick landed in the hoosegow. Which makes exactly ZERO sense, because it has been emphasized since AT LEAST issue ninety-five that NIGHTWING is under suspicion in Blockbuster’s murder, NOT Dick Grayson. All of Amy Rohrbach’s scenes in that issue showed her trying to protect Nightwing from being implicated in Desmond’s murder. There are witnesses who will swear that they saw Nightwing brawling with Blockbuster right before he died, and that pretty much the only way the killer could have escaped was if he was a vigilante.
 |
| From #95--a witness statement incriminating Nightwing. Nightwing, not Dick Grayson. Amy finds it so threatening that she ends up throwing it into the sewer. |
With all this suspicion aimed right at Nightwing, why would Dick Grayson turn himself in for the murder?! Did he think that nobody would notice the difference? This isn’t the ‘60s Batman show—you can’t get away with stuff like this anymore. Is he always this careless with his secret identity? Because that would explain a lot, actually…
Anyway, Dick has been allowed to make a phone call. He chooses to call Barbara, and even though he gets her answering machine, he tells her all about how he has a plan to “make things right” and that he loves and misses her. Aww, ain’t that sweet. Now if only he knew what she has to say about him…
On second thought, he’s depressed enough as it is.
After the phone call, Dick has another flashback to younger days and compares his dad’s parenting style to Batman’s. Both are shown to be firm with him, but his biological father is a lot nicer about enforcing the rules than the Bat-jerk. Back in the present, two police officers come in to talk to him, referring to him as “Detective Grayson.” This confuses Dick, as he was fired from the police department. He tries to correct them, but it turns out that Amy Rohrbach was the “boss” that we heard about earlier, and she’s already told them that Dick was working undercover for the BPD at the time of Desmond’s death. As a result, no charges are going to be filed against him. Tarantula, on the other hand, will probably be spending the rest of her life behind bars. Dick, thankfully, doesn’t cause a scene trying to defend her and instead asks to see Amy. Since Dick wanted to go to prison to make up for his role in Blockbuster’s death, he is not at all happy with Amy for letting him off the hook. He lets her have it—again stating that it’s his fault Tarantula is in this mess—and Amy lets him have it right back… for about three seconds.
Clearly everyone in this comic has dissociative identity disorder. Amy proceeds to follow the formula set by every other moron in this comic and makes no effort to understand Dick’s behavior whatsoever. She just yells at him some more before he leaves. On the way out, he passes by a man in a cell who offers him his business card and Dick, for reasons known only to himself, takes it. Yes, this does become important in later comics. No, you aren’t going to like it.
Then there’s a voiceover of Barbara calling Dick back and talking to his answering machine. She tells him that someday they might be able to get back together and that she loves him too. (She sure has a funny way of showing it.) As this voiceover is going on, we see scenes of Wayne Manor and, eventually, the Batcave, where Alfred has discovered Nightwing’s costume lying discarded on the floor. Maybe he’s decided to practice some gymnastics routines naked. That would explain Alfred’s horrified expression, anyway. The comic ends with the words “the end” with a question mark after them. NO! PLEASE! NO QUESTION MARKS!! LET IT DIE, LET IT DIE!
So. Much. Rage. The past two issues are, well, bad. Issue ninety-nine is almost as jumpy as the War Games issues, but at least we’re jumping around in the same plot this time. Additionally, there is little to no justification for the extra-sizing of issue one hundred. Most of the extra pages are eaten up by the flashbacks to Dick’s early days and the Nightwing vs. Tarantula fight, which only makes Tarantula look like a better fighter than she really is because Nightwing should have been able to take her down in about a page, gunshot wound or no.
The story arc as a whole is an absolute catastrophe on all levels. The plot is ridiculous and full of holes, the writing is a train wreck, the artwork varies from good to atrocious, everybody, including the characters who aren’t even here, is wildly out-of-character in the worst possible way, the blatant shoehorning in of the War Games crossover did no favors for either storyline, and the whole thing is made worse by the fact that the writer is an idiot who makes the characters agree with/support the most despicable person in the story for the flimsiest of reasons. How this manages to get ignored on 90% of the internet’s “worst comic ever” lists is a mystery to me. Now granted, I may be somewhat biased, as Nightwing is my favorite character (in case you hadn’t picked up on that by the fact that every review for the past two months has had him in it). But given the sheer scale of this unnatural disaster, I have a hard time believing that only the Dick Grayson fans are cheesed off at these comics. Oh, and would you like to know what was up with that business card Dick was given at the jail? It belongs to a Mafioso, whom Dick decides to work for as a mob enforcer. And the nonsensical plot points continue! Yay!
But y’know, in spite of the PTSD and the angst and that mob thing, Dick is just fine. You see, it turns out I was wrong this whole time. He wasn’t raped at all. Of course not. Just ask Devin Grayson:
“For the record, I’ve never used the word ‘rape,’ I just said it was nonconsensual (I know, aren’t writers frustrating? *smiles*)”
Oh you thought he was raped?! Well isn’t that the funniest misunderstanding LOL!!!1!!!!1! And that wasn’t even the end of it:
“What happened with Catalina immediately following [Blockbuster's death] was almost an allegorical physical possession -- he's already gone against the nature of his soul, and then his body is sort of used against his will.”
Sort of? SORT OF?!! Just for one second, think how readers would have reacted if this had been Brad Meltzer responding to a question about Dr. Light raping Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis. “Yeah, Sue’s body was sort of used against her will.” Think it would fly? And yet Ms. Grayson somehow finds it acceptable to be all coy and cute and evasive when Nightwing—a character she claims to be extremely fond of—is raped by Tarantula. Quite frankly, she comes off as a thoughtless, insensitive twit every time she opens her mouth on the subject. Just try to get through that interview without wanting to throw a blunt instrument at the screen. My personal favorite, aside from the Sarah Palin-esque rape/nonconsensual comment, is the bit where she says the comic won’t deal with the rape because she wants to tell a story instead of giving a public service announcement. By her own admission, the rape is completely gratuitous, because at no point did she intend to do anything with it. She just threw it in there just because. Yeah, you stay classy there.
Oh, but wait, it gets better. Remember that bit in #97 where Oracle is yelling at Batman for allowing a murderer to run loose through Gotham?
Yeah, that one. Let’s think about that for a second.
Batman just allowed a murderer to fight crime in his city. He just gave the person who killed Blockbuster total amnesty. He does not care that Tarantula killed Blockbuster. He is letting her do what she wants without so much as a lecture.
If Batman really cares that little about the fact that Blockbuster was murdered, if he will let the person who murdered him completely off the hook, then why is Nightwing so utterly terrified to the point of such intense self-loathing of what Batman will do when he finds out about “what happened with Blockbuster”? Batman knows what happened with Blockbuster, or at least he knows part of the story, and HE. DOESN’T. CARE! The entire premise of this plotline, which was already pretty forced, has officially gone up in smoke—all because of Tarantula. Alert the media, people, the Ultimate Mary Sue has not only been achieved, it has just rendered every bit of tension in the entire storyline COMPLETELY POINTLESS!!
This comic could have been brilliant. Nearly every rape I have ever come across in a comic book is a) added for shock value, b) treated like it’s no big deal, or c) some bizarre combination of both. (Identity Crisis added the rape for shock value, but they really didn’t think Sue’s long-term reaction to it was important? Really?) Nightwing #93 could have been a shining exception to the rule. If this had been a story about a hero struggling to acknowledge, accept, and move on from being raped with the help of his family and friends… if we had seen Nightwing’s and everyone else’s honest reactions to the attack… if Tarantula was ever punished specifically for the rape… and if all of this had been done well… I would have welcomed it. It wouldn’t have been a cheerful story by any means, but it could have been thoughtful, moving, and interesting. But instead of all that, we got a jumbled, nauseating story that doesn’t use the rape scene for anything. It’s treated as an unimportant detail that maybe adds some spice to the story but certainly isn’t worth mentioning ever again. Devin Grayson, the editor who let all of this go by, and DC as a whole should be ashamed of themselves for this debacle. This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most disgusting and offensive bunch of comics I have ever had the displeasure of reading, and I’ve read Rise of Arsenal. At least that one gave us a few funny moments before completely going belly-up.
This comic could have been brilliant. Nearly every rape I have ever come across in a comic book is a) added for shock value, b) treated like it’s no big deal, or c) some bizarre combination of both. (Identity Crisis added the rape for shock value, but they really didn’t think Sue’s long-term reaction to it was important? Really?) Nightwing #93 could have been a shining exception to the rule. If this had been a story about a hero struggling to acknowledge, accept, and move on from being raped with the help of his family and friends… if we had seen Nightwing’s and everyone else’s honest reactions to the attack… if Tarantula was ever punished specifically for the rape… and if all of this had been done well… I would have welcomed it. It wouldn’t have been a cheerful story by any means, but it could have been thoughtful, moving, and interesting. But instead of all that, we got a jumbled, nauseating story that doesn’t use the rape scene for anything. It’s treated as an unimportant detail that maybe adds some spice to the story but certainly isn’t worth mentioning ever again. Devin Grayson, the editor who let all of this go by, and DC as a whole should be ashamed of themselves for this debacle. This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most disgusting and offensive bunch of comics I have ever had the displeasure of reading, and I’ve read Rise of Arsenal. At least that one gave us a few funny moments before completely going belly-up.
 |
| Oh, wait, was I supposed to take this seriously? |
I’d go so far as to argue that Nightwing is in some ways far worse. In Rise of Arsenal and its predecessor Cry for Justice (and Identity Crisis, while we’re at it), the bad guys are actually depicted AS bad guys. They’re irredeemable louses who get what’s coming to them in the end, and we’re glad about it when they do. On the flip side, the victim is depicted AS a victim; we are supposed to feel sorry for the people whose limbs have been lopped off and whose loved ones have been killed, not the ones responsible for those crimes. In Nightwing #93-100, the bad guy is constantly touted as a naïve but well-intentioned hero tolerated by all except the bitter ex-girlfriend, while the victim is almost entirely ignored—in his own comic book.
Final thoughts? Just one: I need a shower.
Next time: Phew! Gonzo needs a break from DC (not to mention the weekly posts) for a bit. Why? Well, I know it’s sort of my job to talk about superhero stuff now, but these last few weeks have been pretty tough and I hope that we can go back to discussing more positive interpretations of superheroes for the next few weeks because… hey… you sly dog! You got me monologuing!
Images from Nightwing #99, Nightwing #100, Nightwing #95, Nightwing #97 and Rise of Arsenal #3
WHY DO MY FONTS KEEP CHANGING ON ME??? Grrr.
WHY DO MY FONTS KEEP CHANGING ON ME??? Grrr.
No comments:
Post a Comment