Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #11 – “Blüdhaven (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, getting the idea from Alternate Superman, who told Grayson that Alternate Nightwing made his home in Blüdhaven, Regular Nightwing sets up camp in Regular Blüdhaven. He gets bored fast trying to not be Nightwing, so after going out and being Nightwing for the first time, the Tourism Department Office catches wind and decides that Blüdhaven needs a superhero to bring in the masses.

Dick Grayson goes to the Community Center to volunteer helping Troubled Teens. His interviewer, Shawn Tsang, turns out to be Blüdhaven’s greatest ne’er-do-well! THE DEFACER!

What she does is spraypaint boners onto statues. I don’t think Nightwing will be able to handle this one.

Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #11 [February, 2017]
Written by: Tim Seeley
“Blüdhaven (Part 2)”

Let’s start with a flashback, shall we? Batman and Robin, accompanied by Lieutenant Jim Gordon, discover a warehouse full of defaced statues. “Gotham’s lost history,” proclaims Batman. And this brings their mission to a close.

A woman wearing stupid feathery wings calls the three of them “sheeple”. “You worship at the feet of patriarchal icons! The narrative you defend enslaves you!” She calls herself The Pigeon. She is the Defacer’s sidekick. Rewriting history by destroying its monuments to the past is the name of their game. So I’m guessing the Defacer spraypaints the statues and the Pigeon shits on them?

Anyway, Pigeon gets hauled out by the police. Robin wonders what will happen to Defacer, who is a minor. Some sort of justice will be served, that’s for damn sure. Like a paddling. Robin doesn’t think it’s very fair. “She just had the wrong mentor. Without Pigeon’s manipulations, her only crime is being angry.”

Flashfoward to the present where Shawn Tsang is yelling angrily at Nightwing for attempting to ruin everything. She tells him to get the fuck out of here. She tells him to go eat shit. All the things that I want to say to Nightwing, she says to him.

So much for going to Blüdhaven to get away from the superhero shtick. “You’ll ruin everything we’ve worked for if the Run-Offs see you,” Defacer yells shortly before a Run-Off pops into the room and elbows Nightwing in the back. Stallion is his name; a former pro football player who works for the Penguin. He wears a stinky cowboy hat. “I did four years in Blackgate cuz a’ you!”

Stallion is about to pound Nightwing into ground sirloin, but Defacer tells him to stay cool. He’s not the monster in the mirror, he’s the man on the inside! Stallion looks at a shard of mirror on the floor and frowns sadly. “Stupid stupid stupid! Why can’t I get it through my thick head?! Why am I so stupid?!”

She’s right. The world is lousy with superheroes and they’re all better off dead. That’s what she means, right?

The crying begins, and Defacer blames Nightwing for reducing the Stallion to a blubbering mess on the floor. It’s always fuckin’ Nightwing and Batman and all the rest of them! “They all came here to escape you,” Defacer yells, pointing a finger at him.

Dapper James Nice walks into the room with a small gaggle of costumed motherfuckers, telling everyone to just stay calm. I’m sorry, it’s Jimmy Nice. He looks like Conan O’Brien or something. Welcome to the support group for former Gotham supervillains! Thrill Devil. Mouse. Giz. They’re all here, and they’re all traumatized from Batman and Robin sending them to Arkham for their criminal crimes. “I should have known that hoping for simplicity would lead me into this tar pit snare trap of a situation,” Nightwing thinks.

Defacer grabs Nightwing’s arm with the intention of hauling him out of there, telling the group that he got lost on the way back to Gotham where he belongs. Mouse chimes in quietly about how much Nightwing could actually help with “the conspiracy”, but then she clams up and looks embarrassed. Nightwing looks around the room and sees just a pile of sad-sacky individuals with various emotional problems. “Okay. I’m leaving,” he says, defeated.

“Nightwing! Wait!” yells Jimmy Smits Nice as Nightwing exits the building. “Before you go… I know your reception up there wasn’t very welcoming, but I wanted to tell you… I’m here, because of you. You helped scare these people straight. That’s why we do need your help.”

Great. These are going to be the Troubled Teens, then? That’s more than Nightwing bargained for. Fuck that noise. He’s got other fish to fry. Peace.

Jimmy continues his sob story about how the Run-Offs saved him from a life of even more crime.

…

“Okay. I’ll help Grimm. But then I have to walk away, okay?”

Gorilla Grimm isn’t worth helping, but whatever. Waste your time.

I can’t! I have a casserole in the oven at home!

Jimmy tells Nightwing a bit of Grimm information, so to speak. He had been to Meadowdale Mall. “If you know anything about Blüdhaven… you know nothing good ever happens there.”

Ahhh, Meadowdale Mall. The illegal street market. Black market internal organs and hacked PS5s are the most popular items there! The cops tolerate it because they keep it out of the rest of the streets. And since Gorilla Grimm was a weapons dealer, maybe Nightwing can tie him to dead-as-a-doornail Paulie Paterno.

Nightwing slips a rather grumpy man a finsky for some Grimm details: if he wants to know about “the monkey”, he’s gotta go see “Jane”.

Nightwing goes to see “Jane”, a prostitute whom Grimm hired once a week for “King Kong” scenarios. It helped him stop menacing humans for real, so it was almost like community service, if getting an ape’s rocks off counts. And for an extra $25, Jane will show Nightwing where Grimm lives…

The Redhorn International Shipping building in the harbor. He’s not here now, but was he here when Paterno got shot? After setting aside some extra time to think about how much he wants to bone Shawn Tsang, Nightwing does cartwheels and flips into the building to try to hack into the security camera footage. After noting that a segment of the video is missing, he runs through the visitor check-in list. The very top name is smeared and illegible, and here’s the kicker: it’s smeared by a liquid that smells like a horse! Isn’t that some godawful stupid shit right there? “Like it or not, my instincts were right… Grimm was framed.”

OH NO, SOMEONE WANTS TO TAKE THE GORILLA OUT OF THE PICTURE? I SURE CAN’T WAIT TO FIND OUT WHO zzzzzzzzzz…

Back at the Blüdhaven Convention and Tourism Bureau, a man named Simon is snoozing at his desk until Cherry rousts him awake. She sucks down a 5-Hour Energy and gives him the skinny on what she came up with to save their pathetic city from tourism failures:

He looks like a twerpy little nerd, Cherry. We are so fired.

Nightwing returns to his shitty apartment at sunrise. “At least I was smart enough to realize that living above a home for the blind would be useful for when I decide to slip into my place at dawn, still in my night-tights,” he says. Yeah, how very fucking convenient, huh?

“What am I doing?” he asks himself. “I came to Blüdhaven to get to know myself without a mask and code name.” And what’s he doing instead? He’s masking and code-naming all over the place! Just jizzing gallons of masks and code names.

Grayson strips down to his sexy boxers and flops on his second-hand, stainy couch. Maybe it’s time that he accepts the fact that he needs to talk to someone. That he needs therapy. That he needs a boatload of Xanax.

Down at the Community Center, the former supervillains are in the middle of a restorative group therapy session. There’s a lot of emotional outpouring and friendly claps on the back. Thank you all for coming to the make-up session after last night’s unpleasantness from You-Know-Who. Everyone have a safe ride home! Don’t do crimes!

After everyone leaves, Nightwing slinks out of the shadows. Shawn sarcastically praises him on waiting until everyone’s gone to have his own personal therapy session. “I came here because I was having trouble trusting people. Because I wasn’t sure what the next step in my life was. I realize now, that makes me a lot more like the Run-Offs. It makes me a lot more like you.”

Stop, stop, you’re embarrassing yourself with all the blubbering! Nightwing continues spilling his guts unprompted before letting Shawn know that he knows Gorilla Grimm is innocent and that he’s going to help him with or without permission.

…

“You know,” Shawn says, “back in Gotham, all those years ago… when they were taking me away, you and I shared this curious little glance. I was so mad then that I couldn’t see it.” Basically, what if they met under normal circumstances? What if things were different? What if they leaned in for a kiss out of nowhere?

Get a room, children.

The cops roll in to break up the near-kiss. Shawn walks down the steps with her hands up. The cops, these pigs, they tell her that she’s a suspect in a murder and that she needs to come downtown with them. Nightwing’s all like “WHAT?!”, and then the cops tell the punk to back off. They don’t need “heroes” in this town, remember?

“You can just go back to Gotham, Nightwing,” the cop says, pointing to the Tourism Board’s newest billboard behind him. “This is a job for the police, not for ad campaigns.”

Later, the TV news reports on Blüdhaven’s newest sad-sack superhero as a suspect is taken into custody. A man turns off the TV and turns to his friends in the room. “Up until now, the Blüd’s been unexplored territory for superheroes. So we gotta make sure they know coming here can kill you. Lucky for us, the Whale Enders got you, Grace.”

A giant man-orca is revealed. He goes by “The Orca”. He looks like an orca. “Our very own sea monster,” the man says befuddingly.

Final Thoughts

What’s this shit, now? Nightwing’s going to have to fight a giant orca man without genitalia? Here’s the stupidity I’ve been waiting for!

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #10 – “Blüdhaven (Part 1)”! In the previous installment, a Skeletor-looking baddie named Dr. Destiny is able to infiltrate Nightwing’s mind and make him have bad, bad, scary dreams! Superman helps Nightwing enter Dreamland (and, by extension, a town in Superman’s alternate reality world called Blüdhaven where his Nightwing spent a lot of his time) via a very elaborate machine that seems to only serve a single purpose, so that’s rather convenient. In the end, Nightwing defeats Dr. Destiny with the help of all his DC Comics superhero friends.

Now Nightwing is going to check out Blüdhaven to see what all the fuss is about. They probably have a beer garden and a bowling alley. And a Guy Fieri restaurant.

Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #10 [February, 2017]
Written by: Tim Seeley
“Blüdhaven (Part 1)”

Look out Blüdhaven, Nightwing’s about to strut through your mean streets with the tightest buttocks in town.

Robin stands untethered and unsupervised atop a gargoyle near the top of a huge skyscraper. “TO ME, MY TITANS!” he bellows. Batgirl, who has been sneaking on the kid, makes her presence known. She startles little Damian Wayne, who is like “uhhhhh, uhhhhhhh, I knew you were there the entire time!”

Batgirl hasn’t seen Robin since Tim Drake’s funeral. She wants to know how the little squirt is doing. She’s also trying to grab some information about the unusually silent Nightwing. Robin reminds Batgirl that she told Nightwing to go to hell…

And what a Hell it is! Blüdhaven looks like an even shittier Gatlinburg, Tennessee, or Branson, Missouri. A man named Paulie Paterno at the ol’ Import/Export office is jabbering on the phone about how Blüdhaven is being sold as “family-friendly” these days. The cops are paying so much attention keeping the tourists safe that all the illegitimate business happenings have been much, much easier lately.

On his way to answer a buzzing doorbell, Paulie lets the man on the other end of the line know that he’s got eighteen truckloads of the good stuff coming. Yeah, baby.

Paulie answers the door and gets fucked up. Just another day in family-friendly Blüdhaven!

Paulie’s sleeping. Go talk to Silvio.

Dick Grayson has found his way into the Blüdhaven Community Center where he intends to volunteer for the “Teens Affected by Violence” program. He sits there during the interview with a short-sleeve polo that shows off his rippling biceps and a smug, self-satisfied grin. The interviewer asks Grayson “why Blüdhaven”? Why not Gotham? What are you, high?

Grayson’s got an apartment at the ol’ Blüd for a few months. In short, he wants to “trust people again”. He starts talking about Raptor and how their relationship messed him up a little bit. And he’s just telling this fucking lady all about Nightwing and Batgirl and Batman and Bruce Wayne and secret identities and running away from Gotham to get it all out of his head and…

…but he doesn’t actually say all of that. He wanted to, but he doesn’t. What he actually says is “That new tourism campaign really worked on me. I just can’t wait to ‘Get My Blüd Up’.”

The interviewer did a little research before her visit with Mr. Dickhead Grayson. His parents were circus folk, huh? Died tragically, right? Orphaned until Bruce Wayne took him in? Sounds like a Teen Affected by Violence to me, son! Welcome aboard!

I know where to find the best blowjobs in Blüdhaven! There’s this grandma on W. 21st Street who takes her teeth out and–

“You can call me Dick,” he says to her, forgetting that it’s the 21st century and no one wants to be called Dick anymore. A man named James Nice enters the office and he doesn’t seem very Nice to me. He seems like a Rascal. He’s the City Budget Analyst, and he pretty much tells Grayson that there are some great strip clubs in the area! Grayson declines like a true beta male and leaves the office.

Now that James and the interviewer – Ms. Shawn Tsang – are alone, James wants to talk about “them” wearing the costumes tonight. Shawn says it’s too soon. James disagrees wholeheartedly! Grace, for example – a woman named Grace – who is named Grace – never looked in the mirror and saw the monster she had become. She listened to the wrong voices, and she fell into the dark side. Something to that effect. James and Shawn are shifty. Let’s move on from them and never speak of them again!

Grayson sets up his apartment with furniture and Flying Grayson posters. He has never lived alone before, and he has never been financially independent before, and he’s barely doing the latter! But he doesn’t want to depend on Bruce’s money anymore, so he dipped into his savings and set up a Blüdhaven home base. The master plan here is to not be Nightwing for a while. Get to learn who Dick Grayson really is, what his hobbies are, his interests, his disgusting sexual fetishes. “Time to remind myself what they are,” he smiles.

Then he gets bored quickly trying to read and watch TV. By 8:40pm, he’s climbing the fucking walls. Join a chess club or something, Grayson. Throw an ax or two.

In the Office of the Mayor of Blüdhaven, the titular Mayor himself points at a picture of a whale leaping out of the ocean and tells the tourism board members sitting in his office to sell this shit if the casinos keep leaving town. One member of the board points out that their social media presence is really booming! The kids say it’s “on fleek”!

The Mayor all but slaps this woman. Tourism is down because Blüdhaven is a shithole. Make it not into a shithole or he’s going to slash the tourism budget and FUND THE POLICE! And nobody wants that! Except the sexy, bastard police.

Helicopters blare sirens and zip by the building. Grayson hears it way over in his apartment and seizes the opportunity to put down his penis and squeeze into the Nightwing costume. “I mean, you can’t get to know yourself all in one night, anyway.”

Nightwing sets the frequency of his, uh, mask, to the police scanner. Homicide suspect south of Dixon Park. The victim, Paulie Walnuts Paterno, was found with 39 broken bones. We think that a giant gorilla committed the crime. More news at 11.

Why Blüdhaven, indeed? Because it’s just like fuckin’ Gotham, that’s why.

Yeah yeah yeah, that’s what all the talking monkeys say…

Guess what? I was right about the gorilla! This monstrous, stupid-looking ape wearing a ball cap, a tank top, and green shorts leaps at Nightwing with all the ferocity of a giant gorilla wearing clothes. “Gorilla Grimm. A former resident of Gorilla City.”

Pfffft.

Gorilla Grimm is usually stationed in Gotham, but Batman and Nightwing kicked his ass a few million times. He’s been “incognito” for a few years, but I think they meant “AWOL”. “Never expected him to show up here.”

Nightwing smashes the ape against a wall and tells him that he’ll be going to prison tout suite! But Grimm claims his innocence. He’s trying to straighten up and fly right, that’s why he relocated to Blüdhaven! He swears it on his monkey mother’s monkey grave.

The helicopter SWAT team shows up to tell Nightwing to move along. They don’t like superheroes in Blüdhaven. Hit the road.

Gorilla Grimm is crying about a set-up while the SWAT team puts their knees on his fucking neck. Grimm hastily grabs Nightwing’s shoulder: “Ask Shawn. She knows. Talk to Shawn Tsang–”

Grimm gets cattle-prodded and gets marched away by the Feds, leaving Nightwing alone and confused.

Back in the Tourism Office of Blüdhaven, Cherry the Board Member catches a whiff of Nightwing running around on TV with the caption “GOTHAM HERO AT SITE OF MURDER SUSPECT CAPTURE”. Cherry beams. “What better way to say Blüdhaven is hip, sexy, and safe than with our very own superhero?”

After hours at the Community Center, Shawn gets out a briefcase that presumably contains a costume of sorts. “You can do this, Shawn,” she says to herself. “You can confront your old face.”

Tipped off by Grimm, Nightwing shows up to the Community Center to have a little talk with Shawn, but she has already put on her costume. She looks like a street clothes hooligan holding a can of spraypaint.

“DEFACER?!” Nightwing exclaims. Like I’m supposed to know who the fuck that is.

Final Thoughts

Get My Blüd Up, Bonerfuckers! Local criminal Defacer is going to paint penises on very important government buildings such as Mayor Tourism’s office and that statue of famed Nazi leader Adolf Something.