Memo to Marv Wolfman
For awhile now, we’ve been on a sort of Nightwing Watch here at the Legion of Doom. He should have died in Infinite Crisis. Everybody agrees on that now. Instead, Dick moved to New York, acted like a Grade A Asshole and fought some pointlessly retarded villains. Instead of a real conclusion to the story, DC disappeared Bruce Jones and brought in old-time Teen Titans scribe Marv Wolfman. Now, here’s a guy who knows Dick Grayson.
Nightwing #125 came out this week, Marv’s first stab at rehabbing Nightwing, who was fast on his way to becoming an utterly worthless hero. So, what did we get?
First, the best parts: Tops were the mysterious voice telling Dick that he should have died in the Crisis. I have no clue where this is going, but it’ll be interesting to see. Also, Dick’s alter ego, Captain Cockhead, is nowhere to be seen. Hooray.
Now, the bad: Wolfman and artist Dan Jurgens desperately need to realize it’s not 1986 anymore. You sort of have to read the book to get the complete feel of this (and I’m too lazy to scan pages), but this book felt like something I pulled out of the quarter bin. It has the now rarely used thought bubbles – “This is great. I want to enjoy it, but the more I try to think about things other than crime fighting, the more I can’t stop thinking about it.” It has a hokey new villain – Raptor, who’s strikingly familiar to Spider-Man’s Killer Shrike. It has numerous encounters between Dick and two random hot chicks living in his apartment that seem right out of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
And, while both Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund are decent enough artists on their own, somehow together they turn in one of those standard ’80s type books that almost reminds me of why Rob Liefeld was popular when he first came on the scene to shake things up. Everyone wears ’80s clothes, most notably the aforementioned hot chicks (an orange sports bra and purple bicycle shorts???).
And yet, the main thing to say about Nightwing #125 is that it’s infinitely better than the series’ previous run.
Bingo. I like it a lot. The thing is, I also loved the 80s, and I like hot chicks in orange sports bras and purple bicycle shorts. If chicks still dressed that way today, I’d be happy as a clam. Instead, I’m left having to use my imagination, which drives me mad as a hatter.