Warning: contains spoilers for Nightwing #79
While he rarely saves the universe as often DC's biggest superheroes, Nightwing's latest comic proves that he's becoming everything Superman was originally supposed to be. Though still lovingly embellished with all the trappings of modern superhero stories, Dick Grayson's latest adventures see him tackling modern issues in a way that has rarely been seen since the Golden Age of comic books.
Created in 1938, the Superman first envisioned by creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster was very different from the one modern readers know. Instead of facing off alien invaders or armies of talking gorillas, Superman faced threats that were all to real to young readers at the time. Superman's first villains were corrupt politicians, slumlords, and organized crime. It's no understatement to say that these early Superman stories were a direct response to the Great Depression, with Clark himself representing a sort of New Deal optimism that the era's structural problems could be fixed. While this fight for progress and social justice colored the majority of Superman's early appearances, that quickly changed with the growing popularity of supervillains. Quickly, the Golden Age grittiness that made characters like Batman and Superman so relatable gave way to the kind of Silver Age goofiness which would see Batman fight crime as a baby.
While the modern age of comics has certainly abandoned the Silver Age's ridiculousness in favor of something far more gritty, the Silver Age's world-ending threats have remained. The Superman readers see in Modern DC Comics might be depicted as relatable, but the problems he faces are anything but. This makes the character undoubtedly a far cry from Siegel and Shuster's champion of the common man. Luckily for readers, the Golden Age Superman's spirit is alive and well in the DC Universe, and it resides in Nightwing.
Coming from the creative team of Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo, Nightwing's rebooted solo series sees him returning to Blüdhaven after a series of increasingly ridiculous plot points had taken away Dick Grayson's memory. Far from Batman's brooding or Superman's boundless optimism though, Nightwing's return is clouded by doubt. After receiving an unexpected windfall from Alfred, Dick is left questioning the entire nature of superheroics. He says that he never thought Batman did enough with his money and then wonders whether punching criminals would really help the poverty-stricken Blüdhaven at all.
Though Taylor and Redondo never have Dick outright say it, the problem he's brushing up against is that Blüdhaven's problems are structural. Gentrification and slumlords make finding affordable housing difficult, corrupt politicians and cops ensure that the burden of justice always falls on the poor and never the rich. Certainly, Nightwing could do a lot of good following Batman's method of patrolling for crime, but at the end of the day, that's not fixing the broader problems that work to keep the people of Blüdhaven down.
The new Nightwing series is only two issues in, but it's already shaping up to be a refreshing throwback to a gone-by age. One of the strongest moments in the new series comes when Dick buys an entire community of homeless people pizza. While this isn't exactly solving poverty, it already shows that Dick Grayson is willing to do more for the world's most vulnerable people than Batman or Superman currently do. It's telling that Dick's next big villain goes by Heartless because it's needless cruelty and greed that are Blüdhaven's true villains. Nightwing might not have Superman's powers, but his new series shows that he understands real-world problems more than the Man of Steel has in decades.