Nightwing #145

I like where the story is going overall and even though I find some of it overly-wordy (did we really need that much explanation of how the "Mother Of Champions" was giving so many births, and did you ever expect to read the word "vaginally" in a Nightwing comic?) it's a solid story that keeps me wanting to find out more. Some small things bug me, like I still hate the new hang glider Nightwing is using. 140 issues without it, and now all of a sudden it seems to be on every page. It just seems forced & corny, like the only reason he has it is a "gimmick" because his name is NightWING ... it just rubs me the wrong way. But, it has no real impact on the actual story which is kickin' ass, so it's not a big deal.

It's cool to see Nightwing finally having a good writer/artist team on the book after so many bad years, and his character might finally be getting some of the respect he deserves -- in this issue he took down four flying dudes with sub-machine guns (and horrible aim), each with the strength of twenty men -- Dick is a bad-ass. He led the Justice League at one point (as a sub, but still ...) and people forget things like this. This dude is no joke. This title is finally what it hasn't been in a long time -- a solid superhero book with worthwhile adversaries.

I thought the art in this issue was a little off the mark, and not up to Rags Morales usual very high standard. It was still good, but look at the panels of Batman for example -- yuck. Rags can (and usually does) way better than this, but maybe it's the inker? I'm not sure how these things work exactly.

One last thing I loved about this issue -- the way Ra's escaped his "drug prison" with the Keith Richards style, full body blood transfusion. Awesome.