By its cover, “Nightwing: The New Order” looks like a certain kind of book and to a degree it is. But it sets itself up to potentially be more than its contemporaries and covers make it out to be.
Written by Kyle HigginsCover by Trevor McCarthyIllustrated by Trevor McCarthy
Colored by Dean White
Lettered by Clayton Cowles
NIGHTWING: THE NEW ORDER is the story of a future world without “weapons”—where superpowers have been eliminated and outlawed. The man responsible? None other than Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Nightwing, now leader of a government task force called the Crusaders who are charged with hunting the remaining Supers. But when events transpire which turn the Crusaders’ aim toward Grayson’s own family, the former Boy Wonder must turn against the very system he helped create, with help from the very people he’s been hunting for years—the last metahumans of the DC Universe. Don’t miss this bold new vision from the team behind the New York Times bestseller BATMAN: GATES OF GOTHAM!
The lag time between creation and release in art can be a fickle partner. While endemic to the core themes of the franchise, aspects of the War for the Planet of the Apes(2017) have a wholly different resonance compared to when co-writers Mark Bomback and Matt Reeves wrote the script, and later when Matt Reeves directed it. The same goes for former “Batman Beyond 2.0” duo writer Kyle Higgins and artist Trevor McCarthy and their new Elseworld miniseries “Nightwing: The New Order.” While any miniseries dealing with a popular character, especially one of Romani heritage, fall to fascism would be controversial its placement in a post- “Secret Empire” context gives it a different resonance.
Elseworlds are one of the more interesting aspects of superhero stories, in exploring the multiverse writers are able to create new variables and play off the multiversal constants of characters or challenge those perceived constants all together, creating a spectrum of understanding. Elseworlds let creators show how a small ripple effect can have large consequences (Superman landing in Russia instead of Kansas) or act as points of genre fusion like throwing the Justice League into the Old West. The scary aspect about “New Order” is revealed with McCarthy’s art, it really looks like a future of DCU that never experienced a “Flashpoint.” His inks maybe a bit thicker and colorist Dean White’s blends maybe a bit too smooth but the overall aesthetic is reminiscent of DC comics from 2005-2011. If you took out the first two pages and started on the opening street chase between a badge wielding Dick Grayson and Dr. Light, it’d be hard to imagine something being wholly wrong with the state of things. The Batmen themed police even gesture towards a visual continuity with “Batman Beyond.” While this Dick maybe getting a little gray in the temples, McCarthy’s acrobatic spread that tracks the grace of Grayson against the unathletic Light shows that it is still the Dick readers know. Like many excellent Elseworld stories, so much of Dick’s actions in this book read as mainstream Dick Grayson … there’s just something rotten about this whole situation.
The opening pages to “New Order” reveal the conceit of the series: a decade earlier Dick Grayson set off some kind of Dominator-esque metabomb and took out the vast majority of the world’s superhero community and “saved the world.” Just to be slightly pedantic, “meta” in this series appears to be used euphemistically for “super powers” of all kind because Superman and Wonder Woman are shown being affected by it and they’re an alien and demigoddess respectively. In response the U.S. Goverment has instituted authoritarian policies to police the remaining meta human population and Dick is their willing front man. Yes, “Nightwing: The New Order” is another exercise in dark future, overtly fascistic, superheroisim.
“The Dark Knight Returns” reveled in the Dark Knight’s surgical brutality and ability as a non-state actor to affect and control a chaotic world. “Secret Empire” attempts to have its cake and eat it too with inevitable cosmic cube powered timey whimey macguffery. There’s the dark future hinted at in the recent “Batwoman” #6. In all of these cases the darkness that created their dystopic present is always treated as a natural occurrence. Thankfully Kyle Higgins puts forth a relatively novel twist in the examination of the fascism that stiches together the super heroic figure. Higgins first creats an immediate release valve for the tension and notions developed by the covers, various marketing materials, overall context “The New Order” finds itself in, by powering the story through the retrospective narration of Dick’s son Jake. This narrative choice creates distance and allows the series to be viewed through the thematic lens of fatherhood, parental relationships, and idolatry. Jake’s narration (which gives things a mythic Road Warrior vibe but get a little too cute for its own good after a while) sets this story up not to be a revelatory or even cautionary experience, but a human one.
Continued belowHiggins via Jake sets up the emotional stakes and journey of the series in its opening pages, this is about “how even good people can come to believe in really terrible things.” And the realization of that failing. In a climate where the vast majority of society correctly and loudly proclaim that Nazis and fascism to be “unacceptable” and “the worst,” and a storytelling tradition that deals in symbolic extremes very quickly, there isn’t much room for nuance. Which is why Jake’s narration sets up this series to potentially be more than the standard fare. This narrative introspection plays into Robert Paxton’s model for understanding fascism, first published in the paper “The Five Stages of Fascism” and later refined in his book The Anatomy of Fascism. Paxton argues that the development of fascism isn’t natural, the byproduct of a coherent political ideology, but an unnatural outgrowth from another polity. Fascism, as Dan Harmon emphatically put it recently “is cancer.” Dick Grayson isn’t endowed with evil, he learned it.
The humanity in this in human environment comes out in Trevor McCarthy’s art. Besides the opening spectacle, there isn’t much action. The issue is largely driven by interaction, seeing how McCarthy draws Dick in these moments, it’s hard not to see mainstream Dick in there. He is charming. Beyond being the instigator of the meta purge, it makes sense why he’s the one talking to the press about the authoritarian system he helped put in place. Who doesn’t love Dick?
Charming and human he maybe, McCarthy doesn’t shy away from capturing the disappointment on people’s faces for his actions. An Alfred that’s already outlived a Bruce is sad, but his conversation with Dick carries with it the weight of history and made all the more heartbreaking. There is the kind of history that hangs over it, an assumed history based on years of storytelling and multiversal interaction. There is also the specific history that is referenced that makes the barbs cut. It’s in these extended dialog moments that Jake’s narration can feel a little cumbersome, the art and present dialog are already laying into the subtext the narration just obliterates that subtext.
On its face, there likely is never an opportune moment to put this kind of story out. When it’s going to be one of roughly 3 stories of that same type, it could appear overdone. But Higgins and McCarthy start this first issue out on a strong foot and do a good job differentiating it from its contemporaries. This appears to be like a late sequel reversed Starship Troopers, the kids are now adults and realize they joined the Nazis and now have to do something about it for the sake of their children.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – Elseworlds and this kind of stories can often come off as gimmicky. And with the covers that this series is set with, it’s hard not to see the gimmick. But this mini is on the right path to be more than the covers imply.
