Nightwing #136: Something Rotten in Blüdhaven

Nightwing #136 is literally a street level story as Nightwing hops in a sports car to investigate strange happenings on Blüdhaven’s new super highway. Watters sticks to the supernatural with the beginning of this new story arc, but he keeps the story self-contained on just Nightwing and the woman he picks up wandering along the highway. The issue is almost entirely a dialogue exchange as Nightwing attempts to discern who the woman is.

The quiet, single setting issue is a welcome respite after the major events of the previous two issues. Nightwing #136 isn’t a breath of fresh air exactly–in fact, it’s a very tense issue. But it’s a more introspective issue overall. The dialogue is somewhat on the nose throughout. Watters doesn’t overload either character with much subtext. This works surprisingly well, especially given Nightwing’s self-doubt at the end of the issue.

Watters’ smartest move with Nightwing #136 is to move well beyond the events of the previous two issues. The story doesn’t linger on rebuilding Blüdhaven. Rather, it announces a new status quo with the new mayor who is already set up as an antagonist and a city rebuilding effort that is well underway if not already complete. This allows the story to be heavily character-driven as opposed to built around the plot of cleaning up the city.

Blüdhaven’s super highway plays a big part in Nightwing #136 and, based on what happens here, figures to play a big part in this new story arc. The super highway is a visual blight on the surrounding city. It first appears as a massive interchange on a splash page. It dominates the portion of the city seen on that page. Obviously Blüdhaven is bigger than the four small quarters depicted there. But the outsize introduction of the super highway makes it feel like a metastasized cancer.

This is further reinforced by the coloring on the page. The color scheme for the super highway is all black and gray with the only hints of brighter color representing car headlights and tail lights. The rest of the city is more alive–a bright white and yellow downtown, green fields of grass, a large section of trees in browns and straw, etc. This art and coloring provides a good visual representation of the menace the super highway represents as built up through the dialogue and Nightwing’s inner monologue.

Cowan’s work on Nightwing is much less successful than the detailed art that creates the moody highway surroundings. Nightwing’s expression barely changes through the issue. The character hardly emotes, his mouth and eyes seldom changing shape. Nightwing’s lack of clearly expressed feeling is saved by Watters’ very on-the-nose dialogue. If Watters was going hard with subtext in the issue, Cowan’s art would not be very supportive.

Abbott unsurprisingly uses a blue fill for Nightwing’s caption boxes that matches the blue on his costume. As logical as this is, it results in these caption boxes getting lost in the issue’s early pages where Segala’s night time color palette relies heavily on darker blues. It is more successful later in the issue when it is contrasting either bright colors or, in the final pages, reds and oranges of explosions and fire. It’s an unfortunate case of the most logical lettering choice working against the surrounding art and color.