Grayson #2

The logo looks like a font I would have designed in third grade.

You know how I begin most of my reviews bullshitting about anything except the comic book? I've run out of stuff to ramble about. So I need readers to send in finished pieces that I can pretend I wrote and add them to future reviews. You won't get any compensation or notoriety or acknowledgment from me that you put in some extra work that I pawned off as my own. But if you're tricky, you can make the first letter of each word spell out your name! I probably wouldn't notice anything so subversive. I might add the word "fuck" to your piece a half dozen times so that it actually sounds like I wrote it. Just think of it as charity! I am a poor orphan down on his luck and out of ideas, and you're a noble, rich, sexy wordsmith that has plenty of great ideas oozing out of your butthole which you'd love to drip into my waiting maw! Mmm! Succulent stories! Nutty themes! Steamy and profound philosophical arguments!

Maybe you'll get a certificate of some kind that says you helped out! You can join the "Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea And I!" Club! Man, that's clever! I didn't know I could get more cleverer! But there it was! I did it! "Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea And I!" Genius!

Oh was it, Batman? It would have been nice to have been invited as opposed to having to just look at black and white art of the event.

The Midnighter has taken a leave of absence from Stormwatch to get his head back together after some accident defeating some jerko named Paragon. He's busy spying on Spyral for some clues to fix his brain and his number one target is Dick Grayson. He doesn't know it's Dick because Spyral has anti-facial recognition software that makes their agents faces look like reverse beer goggles.

Dick and Helena are busy searching for a guy with a cybernetic stomach somewhere in the English countryside. I don't know how they're supposed to find it. Maybe the guy's stomach pings instead of growls? Perhaps he eats batteries? Maybe Dick is going to go around punching everybody in the stomach until he breaks his fist? Or maybe he'll just stand around looking like an awkward, obvious foreigner until the woman with the metal stomach finds him, lures him into her lair, and tries to eat him.

Who are T.H.E.Y.?

Instead of battling the superspeedster cannibal, Dr. Ashemoore, Helena Bertinelli offers her a job working for Spyral. They'd have to take her stomach, of course. But she'd get a lab and all the funding she needs for her experiments. Dick wants no part in hiring a cannibal so he falls unconscious or something. It's all very technical and spyey.

And after all that spy stuff happens in which Spyral gathers up another piece of the Weather Satellite, Batman laughs.

How dare they laugh at Alfred after all he's done for them!

Grayson #2 Rating: No change. This feels like a comic book that would have been just fine if they'd let some other hero have the starring role and just left Dick Grayson alive and happy to run around as Nightwing. So they'd have to change two pages where the hero isn't able to act so familiar with Batman on the radio. Big deal! If Nightwing were still around, we'd have plenty of pages of Batman and Nightwing having touching conversations! We could even have some poignant Dick and Alfred moments. But not now! Nope! Dick's dead! Okay, he's fake dead right now. But The Midnighter is after him so it won't be long until he's real dead.