Nightwing Annual #1 (DC, 2025)

Nightwing is my comfort character so color me shocked that this books is sheer perfection without him appearing at all. 

NIGHTWING ANNUAL #1, written by Dan Watters, art by Francesco Francavilla, and letters by Wes Abbot.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to First Issues Now, the weekly show
posted daily ish about only the newest first issues released
by insert comic company. Here this week, I'll be looking
at the comics released for the week of July thirtieth,
twenty twenty five. I wasn't exactly positive about the last
DC book I covered, but this is Nightwing. He's my

(00:20):
comfort character in this neck of the woods. So here's
night Wing Annual number one. Written by Dan Waters, art
by Francesco Francavilla, Letters by Wes Abbott. Commissioner Maggie Sawyer
digs into the past crimes of the mysterious Olivia Pierce
and discovers far more than she bargained for when she

(00:40):
uncovers the stance of a strange and terrible entity. What is
the Zannie, where does it come from? And what are
its true plans? For night Wing? That is a solicit
copy And I'm just gonna say this right now, ahead
of everything else, go and get this damn comic right now.
Spoilers Nightwing pulls the surnout appearing in this film at
all during this but oh my god, this issue is amazing.

(01:04):
The reason I read this list it was because originally
I actually went beat by beat and cover and talked
about everything, and this was actually a fifteen minute script. However, honestly,
it doesn't actually matter. It matters in the enjoyment, but
it doesn't matter in discussing it, especially when the plot
is essentially discussing the discussion and backstory for the Circuit

(01:28):
de Sin and more importantly that Olivia Pears, who's definitely
got something going on with a creepy pointed nose clown
being kind of talking with her. But truly, there are
actually two great comics wrapped up in this, and none
of them are a mainstream superhero book. Firstly, I absolutely
love the Maggie Sawyer side of this comic. It is

(01:50):
a detective story where Maggie is actually investigating to figure
out what the hell's going on. It is great, and
I really want Dan Waters to just get thrown onto
like a Gotham Central style book. Hell, give him a
slam Bradley limited in the Absolute Universe even so you
can go and just get gold. But that's great regardless,

(02:12):
and the art is just perfect to get my indie
crime book hairs standing on end. The other end, the
big end, the end that I think makes this a
must own book is that this is a huge meta
commentary on comic books. No, it's not the Grant Morrison
Final Crisis meta narrative that barely masks his message of
fuck the editors and just fapping on the power of

(02:34):
stories that kind of hurts cohesive storytelling. It's literally, actually,
I may not be saying this right because it's neither
meta nor commentary. It is directly stating using the seduction
of the innocent spirit in comics time that would eventually
lead to the creation of the Comics Code Authority and
scoring over comics for a few decades. I bring it
up in a lot of the then and nows that
I talk about. Anyways, it directly uses that to tell

(02:58):
this story. Designing is a character or creature about stories
about archetypes where they use the Grey Ghost and wonder
Boy in lou of Batman and Robin during that time.
The discussions alone in this book are top notch and
some of the best discourse in mainstream comics about its
own history. That isn't just isn't Superman cool? That's exceptionally

(03:21):
funny because the last issue I covered from DC had
me feeling a bit more Oh great, they're doing another
time travel all universe event. What the hell? It was
a breath of fresh air. So my verdict here is
collect it. Collective means that you should have a digital
copy of this to read, a physical copy to also read,
and all the varying covers, and of course that is

(03:44):
also retroactive. That you should totally be reading the current
run of Night Win, which is very much worth checking out.
In fact, all of this volume is just worth checking out.
Dick Grayson is the best BAT fan member and I
won't even hear a discussion about it anytime. Anyway, go
and get this now. But maybe I'm wrong. Let me

(04:07):
know what your thoughts of this issue or even if
I missed an issue over on Facebook at the Comic Archivist,
on Twitter at AGC Underscore does it all? Or Blue
Sky at AJAC does it all without any Underscore, don't
forget a like share of follow and do all the
other stuff that I'm being told is important to continue
doing these shows, and more than anything though, Stigold and

(04:28):
Inklings