Nightwing 35-37

Story- Ahhhh... I miss the days when comic book story lines lasted no more then 3 issues or so, unlike the 6 or more issues now a days. Anyway, onto the main feature. These comics take place under the "No Man's Land" banner, which has to do with the aftermath of the earthquake that shook Gotham City to the core. Batman asks Nightwing to enter Blackgate prison, which houses several of Gotham's nut jobs, and take control from the Batman appointed warden, Lock-up. Batman feels that Lock-up may realize he has an army of criminals under his command and may cause trouble in the practically lawless streets of Gotham. Nightwing isn't necessarily pleased this task has fallen to him, since he has his own life and troubles back in Bludhaven, but The Batman isn't the kind of guy you can say no to. Nightwing tries to infiltrate the prison, hoping to replace himself with one of the criminals to observe the best way to take back control, but his plan goes awry, when he is discovered and defeated by Lock-up and his cronies, The Trigger Twins and the KG Beast. Lock-up decides to toss Nightwing in "The Hole" which is a twenty foot pit in the ground that the rest of the prisoners of Blackgate were located. Lock-out figures the criminals will tear Nightwing apart, but Nightwing instead convinces them he is there to help them escape. The criminals buy his story and he begins to concoct a plan of collecting old gunpowder from the walls, since The Hole used to be a weapon storage location, to use to blow up one of the walls in The Hole. His plan comes to fruition just as Lock-up decides to drown all the criminals in The Hole by flooding it. Nightwing and the criminals escape from the hole and Nightwing is able to climb some chains to leave The Hole and return to the main floor of the prison. After getting to the top, he seals the way out, so the criminals can't escape after him. Next, he manages to defeat Lock-up and his cronies by dumping several hundred pounds of supplies on them. He then manages to call the Gotham Police for clean up before escaping to Barbara Gordon's place to promptly collapse.

Overall- Since I'm still (relatively) new to collecting DC comics, I'm not really sure what was going on during the rest of the No Man's Land comics. I also wasn't really sure why Batman would put a nutcase like Lock-up in charge of a prison. On top of that, why does Batman have the authority to place a prison warden in the first place? Who is he, the mayor?? I was fine with most of the story, but I couldn't help but think that once Nightwing was thrown into The Hole the criminals should have torn him apart no matter what he promised them. Most of them were locked up there due to a member of the Batman family, so I found it really hard to think these crazy cons would be willing to overlook that fact on Nightwing's far fetched plan to spring them. Other then that, these comics told a pretty good story of Nightwing using his brains to work his way out of an almost impossible situation.