Nightwing #9

I see Dick has a lack of knives in his chest now.

Last issue, Nightwing was kneeling on the ground with his chest full of the Talon William Cobb's knives. The Talon is an ancestor of Dick Grayson's. He is to kill Dick because Dick failed to become a Talon as he was supposed to many years ago. Dick Grayson just discovered the truth of all of this when Batman knocked out one of his teeth that contained a concoction that was prepping Dick Grayson's body for an afterlife of servitude to the Court of Owls. Now, Nightwing needs to fight for his life during...

THE NIGHT OF THE OOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWLS!

The Talon begins the issue with a story. It's an old story. Some might say it's the only story. It's a brief two pages but it has a little bit of love, a little bit of adventure, a little bit of class warfare, a single owl, a smattering of chess and no goats. It turns out that William Cobb is nothing more than a black pawn in the white king eyes of Amelia's father, Burton Crowne. He's simply a poverty stricken nobody that works in a circus. How dare he have intentions toward someone as high up the societal ladder as Amelia. And no matter how much he could dream or hope that things would change, he was merely deluding himself until the time would come when he and Amelia would be forced apart. Except while deluding himself, he's also having sex with her, so he's not going anywhere until forced to, amirite?!

Okay, back to the present! Nightwing pulls the knives from his chest and tackles William The Talon Cobb out of the window. I'm not sure why he doesn't tackle him through a wall! Come on, Nightwing! Be like everyone else and break a wall or two! Nightwing does the Bat Grapple thing to break his fall although he gets pretty beat up from the impact. The Talon simply falls on a car to break his fall, as well as most of his bones, and then he gets up and regenerates. Ta da!

And then the shit hit the fan and it was over and Cobb had to start deluding himself with the bathroom door locked.

Dick doesn't seem too badly affected by his fall or the knives in his chest. I wonder if Nightwing has always had a little bit of a healing factor due to the chemicals in the tooth Batman knocked out? They must still be working. Those knives were lodged in his torso pretty deeply. But then Cobb is a master knife thrower and he probably placed them to wound so he could brag about fucking Amelia when he was alive.

It says, "Don't fuck with The Batman, bro." Ugh. The that word, "bro." I hate the trend where people stick "bro" or "man" on words to testosterone them up. All those horrible words should be collected in a dicktionary. Have ultra-feminists ever demanded a cuntionary?

Nightwing realizes he probably can't defeat this guy so he does that thing Batgirl and Robin both did: he strings the Talon up by the neck using his Bat Grapple. While Cobb swings over the city by his neck, Nightwing stumbles a few feet away and collapses.

The Talon returns for the unconscious Dick so that he can tell him his evil plan. He must have the Skill, Reveal Evil Plan. That's a skill that The Evil Mr. Smarty Pants Fantasyer has in my Places & Predators Roller Playing Game:

The Evil Mr Smarty Pants really is smart and he wants everybody in the world to know it. He probably suffers from a lack of self-esteem brought on by years and years of hot chicks not doing it to him so he overcompensates by talking too much. This can be a real problem because he just can’t let an opportunity go by to let people know how smart he is, even when he should really be working on his nearly successful plan to kill The Hero and do it to The Virgin instead of giving them time to get away.

Guess what's going to happen while The Talon tells Dick all about his past and why Dick hurt a lot of bad people with his non-existent choice to not become The Talon! I'm not sure how he's going to get away while William Cobb tells his tale. Maybe he'll kick Cobb in the undead balls. Or maybe one of the dozens of Bat Heroes in the city will stumble upon this scene and save him. But that would rely too much on luck. Nightwing needs to buck up and rescue himself somehow. Maybe he'll use his acrobatics!

Cobb's tale explains why Dick's last name is Grayson. The Court of Owls declared themselves the "gray" of Gotham which allowed them to keep order. Cobb realized that the Court would need a champion after he was gone, so he stole his son back from the Crownes and gave it to the circus to raise as Gotham's gray son. But I guess this Grayson wasn't ready to become a Talon when it became older so Haly's Circus had to give the Court of Owls the radiation burned girl from Batgirl as a replacement until Nightwing was old enough. But then Nightwing ran off to not be a Talon and Nightwing's friend was tortured and tried to be forced to become one. But he only became Saiko! I wonder if someone has a list of the Talons across the years from this Night of the Owls crossover. I'm not going to fucking bother!

Turns out William Cobb's speech took long enough for Nightwing to recuperate. Even though, you know, he was out on his feet due to his loss of blood. But I think Nightwing really does have some slight regeneration ability. I'm going to believe that from now on anyway. It makes more sense when he rallies back after being near death. The Talon finishes chastising Dick for never becoming a Talon (even though he was never offered the job!) just as Dick pulls himself from the subway wall and reveals his plan to Cobb.

The Court of Owls and their Talons crave power and order. But Nightwing and Batman crave justice and knowledge. I think they know Gotham a little bit better than those so-called wise owls.

Nightwing ruptures the lines and the Talon stops working again. Nightwing's okay mucking about because he puts on his breathing apparatus and his body temperature has already plummeted dangerously low from lack of blood. So he's already acclimated to the cold. Or, you know, something. The Talon stops moving and Nightwing carries him off spouting something about not believing in destiny. Which is true from the correct point of view. When a baby is born and someone says, "This child is destined for greatness," that is a big fat lie. Nobody is destined for anything. But when that child is an old man and, just perhaps, he's become great (by inventing candy, probably), then it could be said that he was destined for greatness. Because the facts are in! He became great! Now you can say it because it didn't turn out any other way and it wouldn't have turned out any other way because things turned out the way they turned out!

But still, I'm with Nightwing. I hate when people believe in "destiny" or "fate" or "God's plan." It's all random chaos, people! And if you think it's any different, you're just another member of the Court of Owls trying to control everyone around you so that you feel safer. See, that's why Batman is better. He's just trying to limit the chaos by taking out Gotham's most chaotic. But the Court of Owls are trying to control every single thing in the city to make things more orderly. Maybe they see that as safer or better. But they're fucking meddlers! And the worst kind of meddlers are those that believe too strongly without consideration that they may be wrong. Kind of like the Operative in Serenity. Boy, that guy was a literal tool, wasn't he?

Nightwing #9 Rating: No change. It was a good comic but Nightwing is like the employee that always works hard and never gets rewarded for it because everyone expects a high level of competency from him. And I hate that attitude so I should give Nightwing a +1 Ranking for being consistently good, shouldn't I? Well, maybe I did and maybe didn't give Nightwing a +1 Ranking. It's not like anyone reading this remembers where Nightwing was in the Rankings before this was posted! How does anyone even know I ever change them at all? That's a lot of busy work and I'm too busy for busy work.