Nightwing (Vol. 3), Issue #2 – “Haly’s Wish”

* Part 2 of 7 of the Traps and Trapezes storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Nightwing (Vol. 3), Issue #2 – “Haly’s Wish”! In the previous installment, Dick Grayson had returned to Gotham to cover Bruce Wayne’s Batman shift while Bruce left town for unknown reasons. After a year as Batman, he finally gets to be himself again. He finally gets to be…

*trumpet fart*

Nightwing.

Also, Grayson used to be a cartwheeling circus boy, and Haly’s Circus is in town for a few days. He visits his old friends, but on the way home some unknown cop-killing assailant hunts him down and claims that…here, what was it again…oh yes, “Dick Grayson is the fiercest killer in all of Gotham. And he doesn’t even know it.”

Intriguing right? Hardly! But let’s see how this pans out anyway.

Nightwing (Vol. 3), Issue #2 [December, 2011]
Written by: Kyle Higgins
“Haly’s Wish”

GOTHAM CITY — CURRENT VENUE OF HALY’S CIRCUS

Ughhh. Ok, look, how is a circus story arc going to be anything but lame as shit? It’s the CIRCUS. For fuck’s sake, people, it’s the stinky circus. Is there anything badass about a circus??

We see the villain holding Nightwing over the edge of the building, so I guess all the water from the water tower DIDN’T actually push him off and send him to a swift death that ends this series prematurely. Rats! I guess I’ll have to keep reading.

“You know, that’s a really nice suit you got there.” Nightwing tells him while undressing him with his eyes. “Is it insulated? ‘Cause mine is.” And then he grabs the villain’s arm, which electrocutes him nicely. And I’m not exactly sure where this electricity actually came from, but just go with it, ok?

Oh, it’s answered in the next panel: “Whole costume’s wired to deliver a 150,000 volt shock.” Wow. Yeah, cool, not dumb at all.

Nightwing thinks he took this guy out, but the villain does a pretty backflip onto a ledge and continues fighting. He launches a rocket out of his cool and believable rocket-launching wrist mechanism, which bypasses Nightwing and explodes on a car passing by on the road.

Oopsy-Daisey! Heh heh.

“Gotta get the people out of the car, even if it means the killer gets away.” Nightwing says as he flings his fucking sticks into the car’s windshield, breaking right through it, undeniably killing both people in the vehicle if the villain hasn’t done so already! So, that’s funny. And now he’s leaping on the car’s hood, sticking his hands through the holes he made in the windshield, grappling blindly, and I guess pulling the driver and the two passengers out to safety? It is absolutely impossible to tell for sure based on how these panels were illustrated. I mean, goddamn.

The villain got away. So Nightwing goes home.

An hour later, Dick Grayson shirtlessly answers his apartment door. It’s Raya, the Magnificent Red-Haired Circus Woman, and she needs to go to Atlantic City NOW! RIGHT NOW!! “Something’s come up, Dick. Something I need your help with.” She’s worried and frantic like three giant mobsters are rounding the corner, ready to smash her tibias with a sack of doorknobs!

Keep it in your pants, homeboy.

He asks her “What about the circus?”, and she says she has the next two days off anyway. “I have to get there tonight…and I don’t have a car. Can you give me a lift?” she pleads with her sad green doe-eyes. And because Dick Grayson’s life is controlled by his boner, he smiles dopily and, like a dumbass, agrees to help her.

Now here I was thinking “Dick Grayson doesn’t have a damn car either!”, but on the very next page he’s treating her to a ride on Bruce Wayne’s private jet. Raya speaks in air quotes like an Internet Boomer, asking Grayson if “his boss” doesn’t mind him “borrowing” the jet, and if he’s trying to “impress” her. And I’m like, yes Raya, he wants to “plow you” with his “erection”.

Grayson asks her what this is all about, and she deflects by telling him that it’s complicated. And, since he thinks good things might happen to his boner, he asks her to explain anyway. Her answer to him is “Mr. Haly wants to see you.”

That answer is too complicated for Grayson to follow because he has more chromosomes than IQ points. BUT, it sounds like Mr. Haly is desperate for Grayson’s presence in Atlantic City and this sounds an awful lot like Mr. Haly stone-cold angered the mafia and needs Grayson to be a sexy distraction while he skips town! I hope so, that would really turn things around here.

But no. After Grayson says that he could have talked to him on the phone, Raya tells him that Haly’s dying. And Grayson’s face is all “BZZZORRTT” about such terrible news!

Yuck, sir. You look disgusting. Don’t talk to me anymore.

Now this is funny! Haly wants Grayson to meet him at some ramshackle abandoned warehouse that, surely, since this Atlantic City, 76,000 homeless people are currently squatting in. It’s dark, dingy, and full of crates and circus shit, including, but not limited to, skeletons, cages, and stuffed lions, rhinos, and elephants.

Old Man Haly emerges looking tumor-riddled and waxy and gross and, like, melting. “I need to make sure you have this before the cancer finishes the job…” and here, alone, in the middle of a weird abandoned mansion in the middle of the night, Old Man Haly shows Grayson a “tumor-riddled, waxy, gross, melting penis”.

And by “tumor-riddled, waxy, gross, melting penis” I actually mean “a rolled up sheet of paper”. And it’s the deed to everything circus-related in the warehouse and currently on the road. “It’s all yours, kid.”

Grayson’s face is all “BZZZORRTT”.

After insisting that he cannot take the whole stupid circus, Haly says “Can’t why? Because you’re too busy as a big-time ‘hero’ now?” Haly admits that he’s always known. The kid danced around the trapeze like a magnificent swan! Of course he’s a cocksuckin’ superhero.

Haly has amassed a lot of regrets over his life, but the biggest one was the series of events that led to Grayson defecting from the circus. Dead parents, that kind of thing. He should have stayed. It’s who he is. Take the fucking circus, loser.

This flight manifest tells me…that ONE OF US shouldn’t even be on this plane!…

Grayson and Raya don’t even stay in Atlantic City to piss away thousands of dollars or get drunkenly married at the casino. They fly home as quickly as they flew there. Grayson sits in his lavish, roomy, first class seat frowning heavily at the piece of paper the dying old man foisted upon him. Foisted! Raya asks if he’s ok, and he’s like “FUCK NO, I WAS JUST HANDED A CIRCUS.” She apologizes for not warning him, but once they both got on the plane she had panicked. She thought about how different life had been for him anyway, she didn’t want to topple the Jenga tower with, like, the “dying old man is giving you the circus” block.

And then they flirt and kiss and fuck on the plane, yaaaawwwnn. Boring. Heterosexual intercourse? How embarrassing for everyone.

Grayson is conflicted. Circus or crime fighting? Crime fighting or circus? How about neither, sir, are you kidding me with this right now?

So, uh…you guys fuckin’ in my plane?

The pilot, who has the expression of a man who most assuredly watched the two of them bone for however long it took Grayson to orgasm (four seconds), hands him the phone. It’s the villain from Issue #1 catching up with his good buddy Dickie Dickface Grayson! “I’m not normally one to give my name to a person I’m about to kill…but I’m willing to make an exception for a certain ‘hero’. You can call me Saiko…if I can call you Nightwing.”

The pilot is very nosy, being about four feet away while Grayson chats with his new friend. Saiko is also involved with the circus, and he admits that more pieces of the puzzle are fitting together with Grayson’s involvement with all this. He knows about Bruce Wayne, Batman, Robin, Nightwing, all from Old Man Haly…after torturing him, of course! Tee hee!

Grayson asks what he wants. “For you to watch me kill the old man, Dick…right now. That is, of course, unless you can stop me?”

Don’t worry, she’s used to you being quick.

So Dickie tells the pilot to do a three-point turn and head back to Atlantic City. He tells Raya that Haly was on the phone and they need to fly back to go over one more detail about the deed. He’ll be quick, because THIS TIME…*gruff voice*…IT’S PERSONAL…*cough*

So, as Nightwing, he goes back to the warehouse where Saiko is waiting, and they fight for a spell. Saiko launches more wrist rockets and blows a bunch of stuff up in the warehouse. Things are on fire now. Nightwing’s primary mission is to find Old Man Cancer Circus and make sure he’s ok.

He finds him pretty quickly in this giant multi-roomed warehouse. He’s hunched and bleeding on the floor against a large bookshelf, wheezing and apologizing for giving Nightwing up to the bad guy. Funny! That’s kind of funny. Sorry. While Nightwing is distracted by Haly’s sorry state, Saiko sneaks up behind him and SLASHES HIM IN THE BACK! Haha! Ouch!

Saiko is disappointed in this kid. He’s pretty clueless for a gruesome killer! Yeah, that’s right, “Dick Grayson – Fiercest Killer in All of Gotham!” The ceiling is starting to crumble. A piece of it lands hard with a shattering “FA-KOOMBLLLEE” (lol), and Nightwing doesn’t want to stay another second in this stupid smelly burning circus warehouse. He grabs the useless old man and gets the hell out of dodge.

Nightwing successfully carries this frail old heap of a “man” out of the burning warehouse. As they await the fire trucks, Nightwing keeps glancing back at the building wondering if Saiko got out alive. Haly quivers and whimpers, apologizing for causing all this because of the circus’ secret.

“What? You know what this is about?” Nightwing frantically asks.

“About what the circus…really is. The answers…in the heart of it, kiddo…answers in…the heart…”

Dead.

BZZZORRTT!