Why Grayson Is A Smash Hit

Chris Barnes Chris Barnes
Contributor
June 29th, 2015

I'm a 35 year old Canadian living in Ontario. I read comics, I love to draw and I collect comic art. I also teach karate, play hockey, and am a dad to 3 girls! My comic book passion lies with Batman and his pals with Nightwing taking a very close #2 favourite position. I began collecting comic art in 2013 and I have several commissions done by Ken Lashley and an amazing Francis Manapul Batman. As well I have sold a few of my own creations!

Why Grayson Is A Smash Hit
Comics
0

Grayson is smash hit for DC, and we're here to break down all the action for you on ComiConverse.

If you are not reading Grayson by DC Comics, you should be.  I mean that in the same way people say you should be wearing a parachute when you go skydiving.  Tom King, Tim Seely and Mikel Janin are doing fantastic work on the Grayson series, so much so that they have taken the death of Nightwing, and turned it into something I never though possible: a character I care about even more.

Grayson should be on your monthly pull list.  Period.

Nightwing was/is one of my favourite characters.  I think it's because I grew up with Dick Grayson.  As a child I watched him be outrageously campy on reruns of the 60's Batman series (which at the age of eight I thought was super serious).

As a teen I watched Dick come into his own on Batman: The Animated Series going from a slightly goofy sidekick to punching Batman in the face and leaving town, only to return as Nightwing.

As a young adult. I got to read Nightwing's adventures first hand as A Knight in Bludhaven was one of the first trade paperbacks that I ever bought.  When the New 52 launched, Nightwing and Batman were the two titles I threw down the cash for so I could have a monthly subscription right to my mailbox.  For now, at least, the Nightwing era is over and we get Grayson every month.

I'm pleasantly surprised to have found out that I love this evolution of Dick Grayson just as much as the previous one.

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What strikes me right away about this series is how different it is from the previous Nightwing material.  King and Sealy took the core attributes of what made Nightwing great and applied them to Dick Grayson, now Spyral Agent 37, and made it seem like a natural progression.

This is coming for someone who had been a fan of Nightwing for more than 25 years!

I was sad to see the Dick's alias killed-off, but this re-application of Grayson's skills and personality is nothing short of best-seller material. Gone are the mask and tights, but the acrobatics, the quips and the heart of Dick Grayson are still present in each and every issue. For those of you that have not been picking up the title, you are missing out on some really great character driven stories that venture more into James Bond territory than they do the capes and masks sort of variety.

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What really pulls it all together though, as you can tell from the images throughout this article, is the art by Mikel Janin.  They are really fantastic images and the layouts flow together perfectly.  His artistic interpretations of the scripts from the writers is great, from the varied use of line weights and dynamic action sequences to the variety of viewing angles and breaking the walls of the panels it's all great.  I should also mention the colouring of Jeremy Cox here, as his work can really make the images jump off the page, or pull the reader into a more intense moment.

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All these factors combined have actually turned this book into one of my favourite titles, even when I was ready to hate it at the outset as it was replacing my monthly Nightwing subscription.  If DC wants to bring back Nightwing and shelve Grayson I can only hope they use the same team because these four guys have proven they have what it takes to make an amazing comic book with a compelling story and fantastic art.

What was your opinion of Nightwing being killed?

Is this how you figured it would turn out?

What's your opinion of Grayson as a book?

Let us know what you think!  We love to #ComiConverse!

Chris Barnes is a Contributor to ComiConverse. Follow him on Twitter: @Chrispy47

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