Scans_Daily

Out of the three Dixon/Beatty Year One storylines, I think that I might like Nightwing: Year One best.

Now, general consensus is that this is the least liked of the three - but more often than not, those complaints tend to be about elements that I can't really bring myself to care about (the Teen Titans, Kory vs. Babs, Jason, etc.). Plus, there's the art - in my mind, Scott McDaniel is the Nightwing artist, and though the loss of his usual Nightwing inker Karl Story is regrettable, I still consider it leaps and bounds over the art of the other two.

(That's not to say I hated the art on the other two - but often, it struck me as a poor man's Bruce Timm or Darwyn Cooke. Still, there's a really nice scene from Batgirl: Year One that I need to post here sometime, that really shows off the benefits of minimalism.)

Chapter four, in particular, is probably my favorite. Dick's back in Gotham, going out and about and getting in the faces of every lowlife he can find - gotta spread the new Nightwing identity somehow. Throw in a date with Babs-as-Batgirl, plus a slew of appearances from villains that Dixon always writes beautifully (in other words, Two-Face and Freeze are nowhere in sight), and you've got one gem of an issue.

Sadly, since this issue is so popular here on scans_daily, I will not be able to post the awesomesauce Penguin sequence. It's somewhere on the Internet, though - you'll have to find it yourself. Instead, let's skip forward to Arkham Asylum, where a certain green-haired clown is about to join in on the fun.

( Everything old is new again... )