Nightwing #1 (Oct. 1996)

Seeing that I just reviewed the latest Nightwing #1 from DC a few weeks back, now is as good a time as any to review the first issue of Nightwing's first ongoing series. Nightwing is one of my favorite DC characters, so this SHOULD be good... Hopefully...

Nightwing #1:

Summary: This issue gets started with Batman bringing Nightwing into a morgue in Gotham City. Bats tells Nightwing that over 20 mobster's bodies had floated up the river from Bludhaven and that somebody had to take a look into it. Able to take the hint, Nightwing heads to Bludhaven and tries to figure out who had the most to gain by killing off rival mobsters. To that end he heads to the home of reputed mob boss Freddy Minh where he finds Minh's men shooting it out with members of Black Mask's gang. Black Mask's goons steal a refrigerator and load it up on a truck, which leaves Freddy's wife sobbing about her babies. Mask's men take off and Nightwing follows after them since he wasn't about to let Mask kidnap Freddy's wife's babies. Anyway, Nightwing makes it onto the truck and manages to beat up most of Mask's men, at least until the refrigerator begins to slide off of the truck. Nightwing grabs the refrigerator and pulls it back onto the truck, opening it to reveal a suitcase(?!). Distracted by that turn of events, Nightwing is knocked out by Mask's men. A bit later Nightwing wakes up and finds himself handcuffed to the refrigerator with Mask's men surrounding him. The leader of Mask's goons opens the suitcase and reveals that it contained eggs from Freddy's wife... Yes, THOSE kind of eggs! It seems that Freddy's wife intended to create children from the eggs with in vitro fertilization some day... Man, that's kind of weird... Anyway, Dick manages to kick the suitcase out of the goon's hands, at which time it falls into the river. The goons angrily toss Dick and the refrigerator into the water as well, figuring he'd drown. Dick manages to use a magnesium flare to cut through the cuffs, at which time he grabs the suitcase and swims to the surface, discovering that Mask's men had left. From there we head to the headquarters of the Bludhaven police department and meet Chief Redhorn, who was complaining about the prospects of a masked vigilante(Nightwing) operating in Bludhaven to one of his inspectors. While the two men were discussing ways to rid themselves of Nightwing, Nightwing walks into Redhorn's office to hand over the Minh eggs. Redhorn takes the suitcase and grabs Nightwing's hand, cuffing him, while the inspector draws his gun and aims for Nightwing's head.

Thoughts: I'm just going to come right out and say it... It was odd that this entire issue revolved around Nightwing saving Freddy Minh's wife's eggs... Granted, this was still a good comic with a great cliffhanger, but yeah, that was weird... Chuck Dixon did a really good job of setting the scene here, with Nightwing describing Bludhaven as a place even worse than Gotham, which is kind of tough for any Bat-fan to buy, but whatever. On top of that, you could see that Nightwing wouldn't be leaving Bludhaven anytime soon, seeing as that he still has to deal with the mob troubles, and as the cliffhanger here showed us, a dirty police department. So all in all this was a really good first issue set-up wise, it was just the main part of the story weirded me out a bit...

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.The best thing about this issue? Dick finally loses that horrible ponytail...