Maybe we don’t think of ourselves as villains anymore. That doesn’t mean we’re good enough to be heroes.
In this second trade paperback of the Rebirth Nightwing series, we collect issues #9-15 and, after a brief cameo by Superman, Nightwing heads to nearby city Bludhaven, apparently an even worse hive of scum and villainy than Gotham. Sure enough, there’s a pack of second-tier villains forming their own team over in Bludhaven, but what exactly are they up to? And then there’s that pesky serial killer to be tracked down. And Dick’s never been to Bludhaven before, so what exactly did Superman mean when he said he “remembered” that Dick would end up in Bludhaven?
I enjoyed this one quite a bit more than I enjoyed the first volume in this series. I’m a sucker for serial killer mysteries in my superhero comics and this one enjoys showing his victims their true “reflections,” which is suitably creepy and disturbing. And I liked the team of second-tier villains too; the whole premise of that team and what they were up to was really cool. And with these two plot threads, we got to see Dick being an actual detective, solving actual mysteries, which I always enjoy. And I said that I liked the new character of Raptor in Vol. 1; well, Vol. 2 has a new character as well, Defacer, and Defacer is even cooler than Raptor. Like . . . WAY cooler. I even dug the new romance subplot and this coming from a long time Batgirl booster. And this book has a nice cliffhanger that really got some dread going. Though maybe that’s just dread on a more meta-level because I think I see where this romance subplot is going and I’m not happy about it. No spoilers, but if, you know, you need to get something out of the fridge, you might want to do it now, if you know what I mean. Everything else about this one I really, really liked. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – fun cameos, a serial killer mystery, Dick in a new city and a romance subplot that actually works; is this what good comics are like? 3 ½ stars.