Knight Terrors: Nightwing #2 // Review
Dick Grayson is in a cell in Arkham with Dr. Jonathan Crane, A.K.A. The Scarecrow. It’s a nightmare. It’s not a cell. It’s not Arkham. And it’s probably not the Scarecrow either, but it quickly becomes a nightmare-within-a-nightmare when he takes a look at the map of Arkham Crane has sketched. Things get worse in Knight Terrors: Nightwing #2. The writing team of Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad dive deeper into the hero’s nightmare brought to the page by artist Daniele Di Nicuolo and colorist Adriano Lucas. Nightwing must work to escape Arkham within in a well-written issue.
Nightwing and Scarecrow have to eat. They make it off to the mess hall and find everything a bit off. Babs is a half-human AI cyborg Oracle. Selina Kyle is an anthropomorphized cat. Oswald Cobblepot is an anthropomorphized penguin. And so on. And the correctional officer is Harley Quinn. It’s not going to take long for a fight to break out. If Nightwing can find a way through it all, he may be able to rescue Babs and make it out alive, but this IS a nightmare, and there’s no telling what might happen.
Conrad and Cloonan construct a tight, little nightmare for Nightwing that clings to the confines of Arkham Asylum. The nightmare visions that Nightwing finds himself in DO suggest deeper concerns over the similarities between the monsters and the heroes that hunt them, but for the most part, it’s an issue that seems to be playing with the surreal horror of a nightmare that Nightwing is going to have a hell of a time escaping from. It’s a fun combination of elements that cast the hero in a distinctly heroic light while embracing his inner darkness on a deep level.
Daniele Di Nicuolo has a tricky balance between the surrealism of the dream and the genuine fear that drives it. More so than many of the rest of the titles in the crossover, Nightwing’s Nightmare is a fusion between actual reality and something more profound. The artist manages an even-tempered balance that allows a subtle horror to slowly creep across the page amidst more obvious horrors that lurk in plain sight. Daniel Di Nicuolo tends to make Arkham seem cramped AND cavernous with the aid of darkness and darker tones drawn to the page by Lucas’ colors.
Grayson finds his way out of the nightmare and into something new. It’s fun watching Conrad and Cloonan work with him, but the little bits of the extended cast in the periphery feel a bit stronger. The cameo with the Batgirls is excellent fun and a painful reminder that they no longer have their series. Cloonan and Conrad have added a nifty little corner to the Knight Terrors crossover event with a fun pair of issues that help round out one of the more satisfying summer events in recent memory.
