Nightwing: Leaping into the Light — Tom Taylor & Bruno Redondo — #Comicaday (74)

Comix
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Dick Grayson does what internet critics always say Bruce Wayne should do and starts using his new found wealth to fix Blüdhaven.

Cover of Nightwing: Leaping into the Light showing Nightwing moving through an urban landscape

An underappreciated feature of DC’s Compact comics line is that, like manga, you can read them with one hand, leaving the other free to eat your support frex. A more obvious advantage is that you get to sample new writers or artists for the low price of ten books. I bought this because I like Nightwing (I have always been a New Teen Titans fanboy). I hadn’t heard of either Tom Taylor or Bruno Redondo before.

Based on this though I’d like to see more of either. Taylor is a fun writer, able to give Nightwing a sense of humour without it becoming irritating while Redondo has a clean, well flowing art style that in his faces reminds me of Steve Lieber or Kevin Maguire. His fight scenes are assured too and I love the way he draws the city of Blüdhaven, seventies NYC by any other name. It has been a while since I’ve read such an assured, competent superhero story like this. Something that isn’t yet another event tie-in, nor trying to say something profound about what being a superhero is like.

No, this is just a collected slab of Nightwing continuity with all the pluses and minuses this brings with it. Nightwing: Leaping into the Light collects NightwingSuperman: Son of Kal-El 9, also written by Tom Taylor. This collect the start of Taylor and Redondo’s run on Nightwing, on which they stayed until issue 118, a rather respectable run for any creative team these days.

You’ll notice that there’s a three issue gap in the middle of the collection, so it’s not quite a straight forward chronological run. Nor is the plot line in the crossover with Superman: Son of Kal-El resolved; you have to buy that series’ collections if you want to know what happened next. Finally, much as it was easy to get into it, this isn’t quite a clean start: things happened to Nightwing recently that are still refered to, but you really don’t need to know more about them then what Taylor already tells you about them…

Calvin asks why superheroes do not fight more realistic threats, to which Hobbes responds that would be boring. 'Quick, to the batfax!'

What Taylor and Redondo do with Nightwing is basically taking this old Calvimn & Hobbes gag seriously: what if Bruce Wayne/Batman stopped beating up costumed weirdos and put his vast wealth to work making Gotham City better? They do this by making Dick Grayson a billionaire in their very first issue by having him be the heir to Alfred “Batman’s butler” Pennyworth’s wealth. (He also adopts a dog: Haley, aka Bitewing). Having done some soul searching and having come into contact with Blüdhaven;s large unhoused population he decide that this is where he’ll focus his efforts first. When asked why this particular issue, he answers that it will get colder soon.

If based on this you’re expecting a semi-realistic comic about the difficulties setting up a charitable foundation or the like you’ll be disappointed however. Dick Grayson’s plans infuriate the criminal rulers of Blüdhaven and they immediately put a price on his head, the resolution of which is the main plot in this volume, as a series of increasingly dangerous assassins come after him. What I liked about this is that Nightwing doesn’t faces these dangers on his own. Both his team mates in the Titans as well as members of the extended Bat family come over to help him, most noticably one Barbara “Batgirl/Oracle” Gordon, with whom Dick rekindles his long running off and on relationship. I like that sense of a wider world and superhero community, it reminds me of the Bronze Age superhero series I grew up with.

I Am from Bosnia – Take Me to America

Football, Music, video
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If we have to have quick cash grabbing World Cup tie-ins, make them more like this:


Turns out Dubioza Kolektiv is actually a pretty right-on ska/rock band from Bosnia-Herzegovina, active for all sorts of leftwing causes, if we can believe their Wikipedia page. They originally recorded this song under its proper name, U.S.A. for their 2011 album Wild Wild East. Then it was intended as a satirical take on the desire of many Bosnians to, well, migrate to America. But then Bosnia-Herzegovina actually qualified for the World Cup for the first time ever, by beating Italy even and so…



As the report from TRT above shows, there’s a history behind all this that makes both Bosnia’s appearance at the World Cup and this song so poignant. Today they’re playing their first game at the finals, so it feels fitting to post this. That it’s a skanking ska song makes it even better.

Smoking Is Hot — Tayutau Futari — Friday Funnies

Comix, Manga
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Always the sign of a good scanlation group when it bothers to explain things like this on their credits page:

A panel from the first chapter is compared to the painting it is a homage to: Grande Odalisque

Tayutau Futari (translated here as A Couple Drifting in the Wind) is a girls’ love/yuri series with a simple premise: hot woman is hotter if she smokes. That’s certainly what first year college photography student Fujino Kaori thinks when she first meets Momochi. Kaori’s berating her lack of friends and exciting youthful college life when she falls asleep on a bench in the college grounds. When she wakes up it’s because Momochi, or Momo, a tattooed second year art student just back from a year traveling around Japan sits down next to her. It’s not hard to see why Kaori immediately fancies her and wants to take her picture.

Momo lying on a coach, her back turned towards the camera, looking back at us, a cigarette in her hand from which smoke circles up in the air

Handsome, butch and with an unconventional attitude — girls are not supposed to smoke in Japan — Momo looks to be everything Kaori might wish she was as well. By the third chapter they’ve decided to be room mates, by the fifth Mom is comfortable enough around Kaori to walk around naked in their apartment, to the latter’s deligh^wdiscomfort. And in each chapter Puebro (a pseudonym referencing the Pueblo cigarette brand) hides a homage to a famous painting. Sometimes, like the one from chapter one above are easy to recognise as references, some, like the Vermeer one in chapter two, are more hidden. Kudos to Sappho Scans for always recognising and explaining them.

Anime girl wearing a deer stalker and face mask thinking to herself about her crush: As much as it pains me to admit, she really is something else. Compared to her, I'm nothing mor than your run-of-the-mill beautiful genius.

By chapter six things get a bit more complicated as the girl above, Setsuna, aspirant Youtube streamer, joins the cast. Like Kaori she’s infatuated (to the point of stalking) with Momo, but once she learns of her relationship with Kaori she ships them immediately. The second volume of Tayutau Futari opens with ehr introducing herself to Momo and Kaori and it seems some hijinks are imminent, but sadly Sappho Scans stopped their scanlation with chapter eight. Their reason? Seven Seas will release the series in English. That will be in December, so reserve your copies now.

Not even Gundam is this realistic — Panzer World Galient

Anime
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Let Panzer World Galient show you how to prepare a proper artillery barrage:

This is a level of realism that I haven’t seen before in any mecha anime. The way in which these artillery panzers deploy their support pylons before firing to guard against recoil for example, giving a good idea of the heft and weight of them even if they seemingly fire bolts of light. Or how we see them correct their range and angle by first moving the missile pod they’re firing with and then correcting their mecha’s position, all using mechanisms that a real artillery piece could’ve used. That we see them firing ranging shots and have them corrected by an artillery observer actually using a stereoscopic rangefinder. A level of (correct) detail that lends verisimilitude to a scene with shows giant robots launching bolts of light from their shoulder pads, bolts that only explode a second after they land.

Galient comes charging in, its sword held to its side, straight at the camera

The irony is that Panzer World Galient is a super robot show at heart. The titular Galient is an ancient mecha, an Iron Giant that will manifests whenever evil rules over the world, to cleanse it again. Once it’s discovered in the second episode, it’s piloted by the twelve year old Jojo, the only son of the slain king of Volder, a country conquered by the evil Mardoul on the same day Jojo was born. A faithful retainer escaped the palace with the baby and trained him to fight while searching the world for Galient. Now it’s been recovered Galient and Jojo are the only hope for the world of Arst to be free. Arst being one of those medievaloid worlds with inexplicable pockets of high-tech littering it science fiction is fond of. Mardoul’s goons use blasters while their opponents use swords and spears. Mardoul has artillery mecha, the rebels have to use catapults and other ancient siege weaponry. Only Galient and JojJo are able to fight on an equal footing. If that isn’t a super robot setup I don’t know what is.

Giant centaur mecha carrying jousting lances, completely dwarving the lizard riding cavalry next to them

But there’s a grittiness to it that I haven’t found in other such shows like Giant Gorg, which came out the same year, 1984. Mardoul may use more advanced technology than the good guys have at their disposal, but the way his army uses it is still rooted in Medieval thinking. Those blasters are shaped like halberds and used as melee weapons as often as they are as rifles. They have artillery mecha but no APCs: their infantry either walks or has to ride some sort of giant lizard thing. Their cavalry mecha are giant centaurs using jousting lances as their main weapon (though they do have a laser mounted in their stomach too). You get the feeling these people only barely understand what they’re using. And this is partially explained in episode 5 when it’s revealed that their mecha aren’t build, they’re excavated from the ruins of a previous civilisation. In general, there’s an utility and logic to how these mecha are used that’s missing with e.g. Doctor Hell’s mechanical monsters in Mazinger Z. Each has a function and is used like such. Nobody just goes on a rampage, there’s always a reason they fight the way they do.

Ten episodes in so far and I love this series. Like Giant Gorge, which I watched before this, this is a kids’ show from the same era as a G. I. Joe, but it’s much more honest about the cost of battle. People die when they are killed, even people who pilot cool robots. A super robot show with a real robot mentality.