Review: Nightwing Vol. 5: Time of the Titans hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

Oh, it’s so, so frustrating.

Look, yes, Tom Taylor’s Nightwing Vol. 5: Time of the Titans is a perfectly satisfactory Titans tale. If, like me, you’ve been through some angsty Titans times when you wondered why they couldn’t all just get along, this is the Titans getting along. They are professional, they are capable, they save the day with smiles on their faces. Time of the Titans is the epitome of the Titans coming into their own.

The commonplace next line would be to say “But they’re deeply boring,” but that’s not it either. There’s surprises, and Taylor’s got some unexpected cameos in there such to delight my post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint DC Comics heart. But I will say, from the Nightwing perspective, the Titans have just announced they’re laying roots in Bludhaven, the Justice League has charged them with protecting the Earth, and their first mission is … protecting a child already in their care.

It’s small, to begin with, and hardly advances the overall Nightwing story at all (the final chapter of this four-issue book moves the narrative by inches). And so we find ourselves where we’ve found ourselves constantly through Taylor’s run — it’s a superhero story, it’s good, it’s funny, there are surprises, but the stakes are really nil and the characters never quite seem challenged or in any real danger.

I grant what Taylor’s got here is a backdoor pilot for his Titans title that arrived at the same time, and so maybe a broader story is called for before the other title gets into specifics. Even in that view, though, I think this is small, and further, that I’ve had this same criticism at almost every turn of Taylor’s Nightwing makes me think the Titans aren’t really the issue.

Oh, it’s frustrating, because who doesn’t like the Titans together? I’m just still waiting for this title to venture below the surface.

[Review contains spoilers]

The previous volume, Nightwing Vol. 4: The Leap, consisted mainly of a four-part story culminating in Taylor’s Nightwing #100. I noted at the time that Leap had an unusual structure, a heist story followed by a magical comedy tale, followed by a pirate-themed issue and then a big superhero team-up. Taylor demonstrates good range with Nightwing, and impressively those disparate elements still add up to one cohesive tale, but it’s interesting the ways Taylor makes Nightwing subtly episodic.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

We see it, too, in Time of the Titans. All of this is about saving the soul of the young daughter of Blockbuster from the demon Neron, but within, the Titans are solving a mystery at their old tower, then there’s a fight with doppelgängers, then the Titans infiltrate Hell, and then finally an issue where Nightwing temporarily gains superpowers on his way to defeating Neron. Some writers would make six issues out of any one of these, and good for Taylor for not padding it out, but it leads to a book whose big ideas sometimes seem underdeveloped.

Take, indeed, Neron’s bupkis plan to give Nightwing super-powers for two hours, certain that will be sufficient for Nightwing to set aside his morals and give up the child Olivia’s soul. Not anyone, I think, actually believes Nightwing might be swayed by this, which makes Neron seem a paltry villain. Nor does Taylor even sell it — the extent of what Nightwing does with unlimited power besides saving the Titans is, one, stop a flood with the Flash (in a single page) and, two, go shake Superman’s hand and chat with him in space for a minute. Nightwing isn’t torn about this, the reader is neither torn nor made to feel torn about this; the idea that Nightwing can actually shake Superman’s hand without Superman holding back (much) is heartwarming and cool, but heartwarming and cool has overridden suspenseful and gripping.

Still, of course, Taylor knows how to get me. When other writers would have turned to Etrigan as essentially the only demon they know outside Neron, Taylor uses the Superman Triangle Titles' Blaze(!) as his rival devil du jour. Also, it’s wholly a throwaway line, but that that mother of Blockbuster’s daughter Olivia is Jezebel Jet, who came and went in Batman RIP and related stories, is an excellent deep dive by Taylor when he could have as easily elided the mother in the plot. And we can’t deny Taylor is funny, whether the recurring “I fly now” joke or Cyborg’s dismay at the computers in hell (“I’ve never seen so many icons on one desktop”), Neron and Trigon bickering, and on. (Also “Mr. Hole.”)

The book ends with another of Taylor and artist Bruno Redondo’s gimmick issues like the “continuous panel” one, this time depicted entirely from Nightwing’s point-of-view. That’s clever and drawn well, no doubt, though the team makes an odd choice with Nightwing’s word balloons, blue-tinged and differently shaped than everyone else’s. I take it that’s to side-step aiming Nightwing’s word balloon stems at the reader, but it could be equally be read like Nightwing’s voice was tinny or electronic. I didn’t know the POV issue was coming — had no way of knowing that the gimmick was the only gimmick — and so the whole time I thought the word balloon indicated Nightwing was in a virtual reality or hallucination or something. Still, as mentioned, this was the only issue to move Nightwing’s overarching plot along, finally revealing the villain Heartless' place among the elites of Bludhaven.

Look, in Dick Grayson’s alarmingly Nightwing-themed bedroom, Tom Taylor’s got the “Best to Robin from Superman” piece of metal gifted almost 40 years ago in John Byrne’s Action Comics (though, weirdly, wasn't Jason that Robin?). This is a book that gets me, and that’s even aside from Taylor writing a Donna Troy who’s not a berserker warrior. But a character compliments Nightwing on the “wonderful work [the Titans] do in the city” and, reader, who exactly knows what they’re talking about? As always, there’s a certain “just go with it” aesthetic to Taylor’s Nightwing, and you’ll have fun if you do, but I find myself increasingly hungry, nay starving, for details.

[Includes original covers, 17 variant covers]

Rating 2.25