Nightwing #84

Overall- Well, Devin Grayson has been writing this comic since I think issue #71 or so, so that would amount to roughly 2 years. I can honestly say that I haven't really enjoyed the way this series has been going with Devin at the helm. A lot of the stories have been illogical, with events occuring out of the blue, case in point, this issue.

At the end of the last issue, Dick finally figures out that it was Tarantula who killed Chief Redhorn. As this comic begins, we are in the middle of a fight between Dick and Tarantula... How??? How did Dick find her? Why were they fighting at an oil refinery? What is going on here? None of these questions are adequately answered during the course of this issue. So, Dick and Tarantula fight, and during the fight, Tarantula manages to nick Dick in the face with a drugged dart, which knocks him out. Before he passes out though, Dick manages to knock Tarantula unconscious with a swift kick to the face.

Next time we see Dick and Tarantula, Dick has her handcuffed, and is ready to take her in. Before this happens, a black limo arrives and Tarantula jumps to the limo while some goons climb out of the car shooting at Dick. Tarantula makes her escape, and Dick throws some knock out gas at the goons to take them out of the picture. Then, inexplicably, Dick is suddenly drugged out of his mind again! How the hell did that happen?!?! He was fully coherent one second, then he was completely out of it the next. That is just one of the MANY weird things that have been happening in this comic since Devin took it over. At the end of the issue, we discover that Tarantula was working for Blockbuster. Well, OK, I not sure where that came from...

Also in this issue we still have that reporter, Maxine Michaels, trying to dig up some dirt on Nightwing. While looking into Nightwing, she runs into Nite-Wing(Ugh)who is more then happy to tell her that Nightwing is out to get him, because he does a better job ridding the streets of criminals then Nightwing does. Nite-Wing also takes credit for the murder of Chief Redhorn, while talking to Maxine.

To put it simply, I miss Chuck Dixon's writing work on this series. Most of the stories since he has left have really been all over the place and hard to get into because of that. For a score here, I guess I'll go with a 4 out of 10...