Nightwing 5: Setting Son

Comic Info

Nightwing (2) #25

Reprints Nightwing (2) #25-30 and Annual #1 (December 2013-July 2014).  Dick Grayson is finding living life independently in Chicago isn’t always easy.  When he learns a woman named Marionette is trying to find freedom from the Mad Hatter, he discovers himself in an uneasy alliance, and the death of a girl’s parents could bring back the old memories of Dick’s own past that he tried to forget.  As Dick tries to settle his life, the arrival of the Crime Syndicate on Earth could change Dick’s life forever!

Written by Kyle Higgins (which additional writing by Tim Seeley and Tom King), Nightwing Volume 5:  Setting Son is the final volume of the Nightwing New 52 relaunch.  Following Nightwing Volume 4:  Second City, the collection features art by Will Conrad, Cliff Richards, Russell Dauterman, Jason Masters, Daniel Samperer, Vincente Cifuentes, Javier Garron, Jorge Lucas, Mikel Janin, and Guillermo Ortego.  Nightwing (2) #25 (January 2014) was part of the Zero Year event was also collected in DC Comics Zero Year.

I always feel bad for Nightwing.  It seems like DC is always against him.  He gets to be Batman; he gets degraded.  He guards Bludhaven; DC history is written.  Now, he gets to defend Chicago…and then has his world yanked out from under him.

The collection starts out with an “untold tale of Dick Grayson” which takes place during the Batman Zero Year storyline.  It has Dick learning the importance of teamwork (which is kind of ironic since this book is largely about making Dick solo) and also has him realizing the importance of masks (which also is ironic since his great unmasking is what throws his life into turmoil).  It is a quick and simple story that doesn’t really add much to the mythos in the big picture.

Nightwing (2) #28

With the Chicago stories, Higgins was kind of trying to do what Bludhaven did in the first series.  It gave Dick some distance from Batman and allowed him to be more than a sidekick.  There were some ok stories (they never were the best), but it was nice to have Dick being a more solo show…if nothing else it felt more like Spider-Man than some of the other Nightwing stories.  There was a nice little “family” being built around Dick that was just starting to be explored.

Unfortunately, Forever Evil happened, and Dick was picked as the fall-guy for that series.  Dick’s identity was exposed worldwide, and he “died”.  It feels like Higgins really might not have been up-to-date on this turn of events because Nightwing just kind of stops (which I guess is kind of realistic since I doubt Dick thought he was going to get his identity exposed and die).  The result is that a lot of the side characters built up in the series just fade away which feels a bit cruel.

Nightwing 5:  Setting Son isn’t the strongest Nightwing book because it jumps all over the place due to the event series that intersect it.  Nightwing continues to get all the tough breaks and this by far might be the toughest that DC threw at him.  Following this collection, Dick Grayson goes undercover with Spyral as an agent of Spyral in a series which features him more like a Nick Fury than a member of the “Bat Family”.  Nightwing 5:  Setting Son was followed by Grayson 1:  Agent of Spyral.

Related Links:

Nightwing 1:  Traps and Trapezes

Nightwing 2:  Night of the Owls

Nightwing 3:  Death of the Family

Nightwing 4:  Second City

Forever Evil