Nightwing #97
Nightwing #97 is the pivot-point issue that opens Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's second major chapter of their celebrated run, shifting the series' focus from the defeat of Blockbuster to the power vacuum his death creates across Blüdhaven's criminal underworld. Its lasting narrative significance comes from the final-page cliffhanger: the shocking return of 'Ric Grayson' as an apparently autonomous entity physically separate from Dick — a deliberate act of continuity reclamation that recontextualized one of the most critically maligned stretches in the character's modern history. The issue also meaningfully advances the Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon romance, with Taylor threading genuine emotional stakes into their working relationship in a way that reviewers across the board singled out as unusually grounded for superhero publishing. Arriving three issues before the milestone centennial, it serves as a carefully constructed on-ramp for readers catching the series ahead of issue #100.
In "Power Vacuum Part 1," Nightwing and Batgirl are tasked with protecting Boss Maroni as he’s relocated to Gotham under heavy guard, following Maggie Sawyer’s push to bring down Blockbuster’s criminal empire. With Maroni now a key witness, the city’s underworld is on high alert—and the stakes for keeping him alive are higher than ever. Written by Tom Taylor and illustrated by Bruno Redondo with colors by Adriano Lucas and inks by Caio Filipe and Geraldo Borges, the issue features a cover by Bruno Redondo.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo took over the Nightwing ongoing with issue #78 in March 2021 as part of DC's Infinite Frontier relaunch, and their run continued into the Dawn of DC initiative. Issue #97 falls within what DC collected as the 'Battle for Blüdhaven's Heart' arc and sits at the opening of the second omnibus volume of their run (Nightwing #97–118, published 2026). Art duties were split between Redondo and Geraldo Borges, with inks by Caio Filipe, colors by Adriano Lucas, and letters by Wes Abbott — a division that several critics noted gave the issue's high-speed action sequences a slightly different visual texture than Redondo's solo pages.
Trivia · 9 facts
- Published October 18, 2022 (cover date December 2022); written by Tom Taylor, pencils by Bruno Redondo and Geraldo Borges, inks by Caio Filipe, colors by Adriano Lucas, letters by Wes Abbott.
- Story title: 'Power Vacuum.' Directly follows the death of Blockbuster (Roland Desmond) at the hands of Heartless in Nightwing #96.
- Blockbuster's death leaves Blüdhaven's criminal underworld destabilized; his exposed dossiers put Boss Maroni at mortal risk, driving the issue's central plot as Nightwing and Batgirl must protect Maroni during a dangerous transfer to Gotham City.
- Renée Montoya, serving as Gotham City Police Commissioner, personally leads the transport of Maroni — a scene that also reunites her on-panel with Bludhaven Commissioner Maggie Sawyer, her former GCPD captain from the Gotham Central era.
- The issue's final-page cliffhanger features the return of 'Ric Grayson' — Dick's amnesiac alternate persona, originally created when the KGBeast shot Dick in the head during Tom King's Batman run — arriving at a hidden Bat-safe-house as what appears to be a separate, autonomous being rather than an overwritten identity.
- The Ric Grayson persona had been broadly dismissed as one of DC's most controversial recent storylines; Taylor's decision to bring him back as his own entity was widely read as an attempt to find dramatic redemption for the character rather than leave him as an embarrassing footnote.
- Haley (the three-legged dog introduced in Taylor/Redondo's first issue, #78, and later given the name Bitewing) appears in the issue per the Grand Comics Database character index.
- Dan Turpin appears interrogating Maroni alongside Maggie Sawyer in the opening scene — his role as a Bludhaven detective established earlier in Taylor's run starting around issue #94.
- Issue #97 opens Taylor's second omnibus collection of his Nightwing run (Nightwing #97–118 and the 2022 Annual), published in 2026.
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Reprinted in Nightwing Infinite #3 (2023), Nightwing #5 (2023), Nightwing #4 (2024), Nightwing #4 (2024)
Key issues in Nightwing
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