DC Comics reviews 11/29/22 – Nightwing Annual 2022 #1, Justice Society #1

Nightwing 2022 Annual #1

The Nightwing annual reinforced the notion that Tom Taylor’s successor on this title is going to have a very hard act to follow. It might be the least enviable job in comics at the rate Taylor is going.

For the main story, Taylor and artist Eduardo Panscia detail the origin story of Heartless. It’s a strong villain origin and sets Heartless up as a solid antithesis to Dick Grayson in how he was raised and his vigilante path. Panscia’s art is always reliable, and the clean layouts, expressive characters and sequential flow make for an easy to get caught into visual style. Adriano Lucas’ colors provide some continuity from the regular art style and retains the color tone readers are accustomed to with the series.

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Other backup stories put the spotlight on Haley and Dick’s mentorship of Jonathan Kent from creators Jay Kristoff, C.S. Pacat and Inaki Miranda. The stories are fine, but it does feel like that special spark Taylor infuses into the scripts is missing.

Nightwing fans should definitely grab this issue thanks to the Heartless backstory, which felt a little overdue and got neatly addressed here. The side stories are good enough to not make this feel like a pricier standard issue in the series.

Rating: 9 out of 10