Nightwing 34 Preview/Discussion

[Rakiduam]

Why people always think the worse? Nothing suggest that Raptor is Dick's Father.

Mary and Raptor had a thing when they were younger, it's pretty simple and straightforward. She moved on, he did not. Although, Raptor still was someone special in her life, so she choose his name for her son. It's not like Mary couldn't had any relationships before John.

Previous experience. With DC "the wost" it's a pretty sure bet.

If Mary is naming her kid after her ex she hasn't really moved on.

If my wife wanted to name our son after one of her former boyfriends I'd think that would be really weird. Before we thought that only Raptor was romantically interested in Mary, but the kiss seemed to imply that the romance was mutual, which changed how I looked at their relationship. It is just the way the two reveals in the issue were done, with Mary/Raptor being romantically involved and Dick being named after Raptor, made it all come across that way I think is all.

It makes no sense to have your son named after your spouse's ex, unless it's your brother or father but that would be a different kind of mess.


The whole thing ended being underwhelming; the cool villian is out, bludhaven and it's things are staying. Future is looking very lackluster.

[K. Jones]

Why people always think the worse? Nothing suggest that Raptor is Dick's Father.

Mary and Raptor had a thing when they were younger, it's pretty simple and straightforward. She moved on, he did not. Although, Raptor still was someone special in her life, so she choose his name for her son. It's not like Mary couldn't had any relationships before John.

His name is Richard John Grayson, so he's named after his dad, too, obviously. (Just realized that "John" is another connection to the ersatz Robin of Dark Knight Rises). But yeah, I didn't see anything wrong with naming the kid after her longtime friend. We learn that Raptor was still at Haly's Circus watching over Mary even on the night they died, which means he was often around all throughout Dick's life, but came and went, and ghosted, and didn't really make himself "part of the family" or anything like that. But if he was around for that long, which we know is 12-14 years, it seems like 1. John didn't hate him, 2. Mary probably talked about him a lot and he was just this weird old friend of hers that swung into town awkwardly every few years, and 3. Twelve years earlier when they had Dickie, they might've even wondered what happened to Raptor or believed he was missing or dead or something, and named Dick in his memory. I also never got the sense that Mary reciprocated Raptor's feelings romantically.

But anyway, my only counter to the notion is that if Raptor is Dick's DAD it means he's not some stupid Court of Owls Chosen One Cliche Lineage Would-Be Talon. If there's one thing I could live with it's the notion that Dick isn't some Predestined Chosen One Archetype.

That said, I'm a lot easier on the whole Chosen One storyline for him now that it's been retroactively revealed to be rooted in the same cyclical time-travel BARBATOS shenanigans as Doctor Hurt "Creating Batman" and all that. I like the "Chosen One" trope a lot more when there's a time-traveling Demon trying to manufacture "Chosen Ones" to be you know, Chosen Sacrificial Lambs.

We now know that there is indeed a connection between Doctor Hurt and the Court of Owls (so presumably Lincoln March, too). And it's ancient ... and perhaps a re-read of that Nightwing arc is required to understand what Hurt was trying to accomplish - maybe his hollowing by the Hyper-Adapter and black hole link to Darkseid gives him cosmic awareness to understand just what Barbatos is and that to kill a demon bat you need some kind of demon Owl, and maybe Dick is the key to it.

Which would be rather apropos, since "Robin always has been the key to banishing Batman's darkest fears." And you know, because the Snyder run started with Grayson.

Anyway, we know there's a connection - BARBATOS - but we don't know the exact history. I'm not sure we're to the point where we can piece together a timeline, and I'm not sure how useful that is, getting into like Doctor Who fan territory, because it's a timeline that involves historical Gotham eras in sequence, but then visits to the past from the present out of sequence, and the future for a spell, and Crisis-level timeline hijinx just seems to compound the issue and add more conspiracies to the history of Gotham and Batman.

But that's the nature of Barbatos, right? A storybook idea-demon that time travels and generates dark secret histories that attack Batman in the present. The ultimate enemy of a detective - a never-ending conspiracy generator.

[Rakiduam]

His name is Richard John Grayson, so he's named after his dad, too, obviously.

You are referring to John here, right?

I don't think Dick was ever a chosed one, the Talons basically unwilling sacrifices.

[Badou]

Yeah, Bruce Wayne is the chosen one. He's the one that the Court and Barbatos have been interested in and revolve around. Dick has always just been a pawn for the Owls. A solider. I don't think they view him as being this super important figure to them. I have no idea if Dick will even do anything else in Metal since it seems like he is out of the way now that the Gotham Resistance story is over and the JL characters are off doing everything, but I dunno.

[Drako]

Previous experience. With DC "the wost" it's a pretty sure bet.

If Mary is naming her kid after her ex she hasn't really moved on.

Well, he did play a part on her life. Probably helped her with some inner demons or something. They were probably close friends and had a thing at some moment of their lives, like Tim and Cassie. I don't think it's a big deal. I also don't think they gonna explore this anyway.

[Frontier]

Pigeon going all Cthulu-esque was...random. Like, it's probably never going to be followed-up on so just throwing that in there just felt so out-of-place, even for a Seeley book.

That whole Raptor reveal was weird. Like, not only were he and Mary romantically involved but Dick was apparently named after him. Even if Seeley really didn't intend for any doubts as to Dick's parentage (I imagine Mary had Dick with John long after she had separated from Raptor), it just felt kind of odd combing those two reveals like that. While I guess it was interesting to see that Mary did reciprocate his feelings at some point, I think I preferred just thinking she was completely oblivious to Raptor being in love with her.

That was kind of anti-climactic end for Blockbuster but I like how Dick ultimately beat him.

It feels like all of Dick's major relationships end because there's just too many strong and volatile feelings involved. Dick loves too much and people end up loving Dick too much.

[byrd156]

Pigeon going all Cthulu-esque was...random. Like, it's probably never going to be followed-up on so just throwing that in there just felt so out-of-place, even for a Seeley book.

That whole Raptor reveal was weird. Like, not only were he and Mary romantically involved but Dick was apparently named after him. Even if Seeley really didn't intend for any doubts as to Dick's parentage (I imagine Mary had Dick with John long after she had separated from Raptor), it just felt kind of odd combing those two reveals like that. While I guess it was interesting to see that Mary did reciprocate his feelings at some point, I think I preferred just thinking she was completely oblivious to Raptor being in love with her.

That was kind of anti-climactic end for Blockbuster but I like how Dick ultimately beat him.

It feels like all of Dick's major relationships end because there's just too many strong and volatile feelings involved. Dick loves too much and people end up loving Dick too much.

Dick just has that effect on everyone.

[CPSparkles]

spoilers:

WHAT!!!!!? Is Raptor dead? No Way

end of spoilers

[Fergus]

Well that's it for Seeley and quite a lot to unpack. This has been a highly enjoyable run even if this final issue is something of a baffler. I don't like Mary and Raptor as one time lovers, the fact that Dick was named for him or the fact that Robin came from him.

[DGraysonWorldsGreatestSpy]

Too many retcons and too weird, it was the end of a run for a Villain who died, I don’t think it will stick. Seeley has a good run but my criticism of his run are Not Allowing the God Garden/Spy World to be developed more since it was his and Kings creation all of that could have been added in continuation of Grayson but his Reasons for going to the city are a Death Dream and Superman telling him about a prior universe, his reason for becoming Nightwing was mentioned in passing. Shawn and the Pregnancy plot derailed the series by not remembering that this is a 78 year character and things like pregnancy for a character that has his own Ships would draw much attention which he wasn’t ready for. If Seeley allowed the plot for Grayson & The Parliament Of Owls to be merged into the Bludhaven realm since he was given control and given a legitimate reason for being Nightwing the story would have developed more but I think Editorial Control & Fan Attention got to him and let him influence his writing style and he eventually couldn’t take it anymore. Raptor was good but died in the end and overall this Nightwing run has not established him in a legitimate way that could be packed into a movie or series because it is too filled with continuity complexities and no solid footing of a career path. I hope this supposed new job Humphries gives him is something legitimate.

[WonderNight]

maybe nightwiing needs a writer that doesn't care about shipper criticism.

[Black_Adam]

Very good run from Seeley I quite liked the Run-Offs and Blockbuster in this and even Tiger-Shark made a surprise appearance. Wish they had followed up more on the visions Dick saw when he was stabbed by Dr Hurt, especially as others have said it looks like he is done in Metal.

What was that with Raptor dying though, did Roland do some crazy anime attack? He is fine one minute and literally breaks apart the next, seemed really out of place IMO.