A Year of Cool Comics

CBR

A Year of Cool Comics - Day 171

By Brian Cronin

Published Jun 21, 2010

Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel's return to Nightwing, the six-part "Nightwing Year One" that was in the top ten on the Greatest Chuck Dixon Stories Ever Told list!

Enjoy!

Co-written by the great Scott Beatty, Nightwing #101-105 featured the return of Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel to the book that they produced for nearly four years together.

The book opened up strong by showing how Robin and Batman had drifted apart from each other, and how that distance has affected Dick's role as Robin...

Particularly once the action is seemingly over....

At the end of the issue, Alfred debuts Dick's NEW Robin costume (a nod to the Earth-2 Robin)...

but before he can use it, Batman basically fires him as Robin...

Dick takes some time off re-discovering himself, and Dixon and McDaniel do a nice job giving the Nightwing costume a background by showing that Dick's father once was a solo acrobat whose costume inspired Deadman's outfit, and when you look at it...

so in a story similar to the old Batman tale when we learn that Bruce's father once dressed like a bat, we see the basic inspiration for Dick's Nightwing outfit....

I liked it - I think it worked pretty well, and the tying in the Deadman mythos was cute.

Later on, Dick encounters the new Robin while Jason is on The Gauntlet (the final Robin test - something that Dixon had previously used in a graphic novel showing Dick's Gauntlet).

Dixon and McDaniel then throw in an homage to their acclaimed "The Boys" one-off issue of Nightwing (with Dick and Tim Drake) by showing Dick doing the same with Jason Todd...