Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Nightwing (Vol. 3), Issue #7 – “Turning Points”! It’s the final issue of the story, baby. In the previous installment, Raymond and Raya help prepare a tribute show in Gotham City in honor of Grayson’s dead mom and dad. It’s a trap to kill him in front of thousands of people.

So the tribute show is prepared. Saiko shows up. Nightwing and Saiko fight in the rafters, near the ceiling, above the tribute show. Saiko reveals that he is GRAYSON’S OLD FRIEND RAYMOND! Nightwing is confused! And he’s confused further by Raymond’s still-unclear motives.

Raymond presses a button and the circus blows up lol

So this is the aftermath. It’s been quite a ride?

Nightwing (Vol. 3), Issue #7 [May, 2012]
Written by: Kyle Higgins
“Turning Points”

“Saiko’s last act…the death of Dick Grayson!” Yeah, let’s get this show on the road, I’ve got waffles in the toaster.

Grayson starts getting meatheadedly philosophical again. He’s talking about turning points and forks in the road in life. It’s about as deep as his butthole.

ANYWAY, he’s thinking about his parents cracking their heads on the ground again for the zillionth time as he swings around the stadium watching the inferno below. The sprinklers don’t do anything since it’s a chemical fire. Saiko has locked all the doors, trapping everyone inside. “Come on Dick – you’re supposed to be an improviser. Start acting like it.” Grayson tells himself, as if anyone has ever confirmed his self-appointed “improviser” status in his life.

Saiko “Everybody Loves” Raymond starts taunting Grayson about the speech he made before the show started. Asks him if he regrets leaving Haly’s Circus in the first place? I mean, that’s why all this is happening, isn’t it? ISN’T IT??

Grayson is confused! What the fuck is Raymond’s problem, anyway? And Raymond finally reveals his murderous motivations…

…Grayson left the circus!

And now he tells his EXCITING story.

Better watch yourself or the Circus Mafia will come and getcha.

So, as you can see, Mr. Haly used all those hours of watching the Sopranos to good use! This circus owner hired some goons to drive a car into a river. And then he kept Raymond locked in a wardrobe for months surrounded by daggers and knives until he went nuts. And then he made him climb a barbed wire rope!

So this sounds cuckoo nutty, right? Well guess what, chumps, Haly’s Circus isn’t a circus at all! It’s a front to GROOM YOUNG MEN TO BECOME KILLERS AND ASSASSINS by DESTROYING THEIR LIVES AND THEIR SANITY!

Cool, huh?

But, with Raymond, he kind of sucked at it. All the torture and whipping and name-calling and constant Stouffer’s dinners weren’t doing the job very well of making him feral and mean. So they threw him in a forest to let birds peck at his eyes for a bit, until he died.

BUT YOU WOULDN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT, WOULD YOU? DICK GRAYSON? YOU FUCK.

Fear my fiery hot magnesium! *ptnk*

And Nightwing is just like “look, creep, I don’t care HOW many Stouffer’s dinners you had to eat! This sounds cuckoo nutty!” and they continue fighting for a little while longer. “Killing all these people isn’t going to help anything.” Nightwing tells him, always the muted voice of reason.

This is the part where the villain starts talking too much and giving the hero valuable information to use against him. In this case, Psycho Raymundo tells Nightwing that it’s a magnesium fire! Ha ha ha ha ha! Well, lookie here toots, Nightwing has encyclopedic knowledge of magnesium fires after having started forty of them at high school before getting expelled and having to join the stinky circus! So, aha, the best way to actually put out a magnesium fire is to smother it with cum. Sand. Smother it with sand. I meant sand.

And lucky for the thousands of sad circus-goers below, Gotham City is positively BUILT on miles upon miles of catacombs filled with sand! Isn’t that absolutely nifty? So Nightwing’s bright idea is to cut loose the giant 100-ton scoreboard hanging above the center of the building, allow it to crash down, and hopefully that will dredge up enough sand from under the building to put out the flames. It’ll probably work too, this is a comic book and I think Kyle Higgins is eleven years old.

Ah, what actually happens is that the scoreboard creates a giant hole that leads to the unfathomable depths below, where most of the area that is actually on fire falls down into. The fire goes below ground, the patrons are sort of safe for now I suppose (?), but Saiko and Nightwing keep battling near the big scary hole. Maybe someone should push them both in and start sealing up this stupid hole before either of them can come back up!

Bryan Haly, the drunk piece of circus shit, is hacking and coughing from the smoke while Raya looks disgruntled. “It wasn’t *cough* supposed to be like this, Raya! He said it was just *cough* supposed to be Grayson!” he desperately flails at her, but she’s pissed as hell, man! Real low shit, sir.

OHHH THE HUMANITY!

Nightwing, clinging on the edge of the hole, fights his way back up to the floor…but Saiko boots him in the face! “A valiant effort, Dick…truly. You managed to swap death by flames for death by asphyxiation. I’m sure the masses are grateful.” Saiko drawls, probably filing his nails a little bit while he talks. And now Nightwing’s in the bargaining phase, attempting to talk some sense into Raymond. “These people are your friends!” And Raymond’s like “fuck those friends!”

Saiko Raymond takes this opportunity to let Nightwing know that he and Raya are in cahoots! Bryan Haly, too! “Raya and I are in this together, Dick…willing to do whatever it takes for this to finally end.”

And as the crowd coughs and attempts heroic feats of not dying from the smoke, Raya is probably having other thoughts right now.

She pulls out her own little remote control, similar to the one Raymond had to trigger the explosion, and presses the button. The doors of the stadium open to the outside.

Raymond is all like “WHUZZAH WHUT?” Nightwing smiles triumphantly, and gets a little more pep in his step! Now Nightwing’s got the upper hand! He starts punching a bitch!

“You think all this terrible stuff happened to you because I left Haly’s? Fine…believe that. But we both know it’s not true.”

Ha, but it is true you little dullard. Raymond reminds Grayson whose name he discovered in that book he found, and Grayson’s giant shocked face fills a whole damn page! That’s a lot of ink that went into the ultimate frown! “That’s right, Dick – they didn’t want me…they wanted you.”

But then that fucker left the circus and start dancing around town with that sexy billionaire.

So chew on that, spaz. Grayson doesn’t know how to handle this, so he keeps trying to kick Raymond’s ass instead. They both knock each other off some scaffolding. Nightwing hangs on, but Raymond keeps tumbling down into the massive hole.

Nightwing has a device that he wears as brass knuckles, but it looks like the hookshot from Ocarina of Time. He launches it at Raymond and impales his leg with it in a bloody mess! Hurrah! He’s saved! But Raymond’s like “oh no you don’t” and severs the hookshot with his Wolverine claws. Raymond continues his fall into oblivion. Bye Raymond! Try harder next time, Haly didn’t torture you for months for you to die like a pussy in some giant hole.

Who could blame any of these people? I want Grayson dead too.

Later, Grayson changes back into his street clothes and explains to the cops that he was trapped on the wrong side of the stadium when the scoreboard fell. There’s using that ol’ improv brain, Grayson! Meanwhile, some other officers haul Raya’s ass into the back of a cop car. Grayson tries to catch up with her real quick: “They said you confessed, Raya…that you were working with Raymond to do all this…? Help me understand, please… I need you to help me understand why?”

And Raya, she just glares at him silently with an enormous sourpuss face. And then gets hauled off to the gulag.

Everything’s back to normal now. Well, ok, nothing is ever back to normal. Nightwing returns to Wayne Manor to find Bruce wringing his hands over all that Court of Owls stuff he’s been preoccupied with. This must be after he escaped from the labyrinth. He’s got Talon, the Big Bad of the Court of Owls, propped up in a rather undignified device. Talon looks like Paul Stanley from KISS!

Bruce yammers about trying to revive the dead guy he kidnapped and squirrelled away into his cave, but Nightwing is only half-listening. Once Bruce tells him that Talon is his great-grandfather, Nightwing snaps out of it. “Buh-what?”

Talon’s name is William Cobb. Bruce keeps DNA samples of everyone he ever comes into contact with! He’s a match with Grayson.
Nightwing feels like there’s something Bruce isn’t telling him, which I’ve gathered to be a running theme with every single person who Bruce Wayne ever has a relationship with. Well NO MAS! Nightwing starts bitching him out.

ggg FFFffmffsfsfff rrrrrrgghhhh angry

He goes on to yell at him about the ordeal he has just been through over the course of the last few weeks. Circuses, Bruce! Circuses are fucking gross! So if Bruce thinks that keeping a secret like this is a big fuckin’ deal, that knowledge of a criminal ancestor is going to matter much at all, then, boy howdy, Nightwing’s gonna have to rough him up real good! And –

KRACK

That’s the sound of Bruce punching Nightwing in that pretty mouth of his. Blood everywhere. Nightwing’s on the floor now. lol

“You were supposed to be one too, Dick.” Bruce says simply, holding up a tooth he smacked out of the kid’s mouth, the one with a Talon symbol. “One” refers to a criminal. A member of the Court. A Talon. Bruce tells him that Haly’s Circus brought a crop of children to the Court every decade, and the Court picked a winner! And that winner got to be tortured and fed Stouffer’s meals until he became insane enough to be a good assassin for the Owly Ones. Trained to be “that era’s Talon”. Grayson was supposed to be the most recent one, but his parents ate the concrete and Bruce brought him in under his own wing.

Bruce admits something he never admitted in the Batman Vol. 2 Court of Owls storyline: the Gotham City he thought he knew doesn’t exist. The Owls have been running things for a long-ass time. This isn’t his city after all. It’s Owl City! Remember that dumb song about the fireflies? Yuck.

Nightwing’s still got the fire in him. He doesn’t give a SHIT who his ancestor’s were or what the Court wanted with him. It’s all about choice, son. Choice. The roles aren’t determined by the past. “The Court of Owls is just another bad guy, Bruce. They’re a little grayer around the temples is all.” he thinks, but that’s probably something he should’ve said out loud.

Later, alone in the cave, Grayson thumbs through the Haly Book of Groomed Assassins. Alfred observes in the distance as Grayson does some more thinking that I won’t even bother writing out here. More of that smarty man philosophy, ending with “we are not defined by our tragedies”.

Alfred emerges and tells him that there’s something else he should see. It’s a photo of a crime scene; a double murder, and one of Nightwing’s weapons was discovered next to the bodies. I mentioned this for a brief paragraph in Issue #6’s writeup, and I’m glad that it’s going to haunt him now!

“We’re defined by how we choose to react to being challenged.”

Nightwing smiles.

Final Thoughts

Yeah, I don’t know anymore about this Nightwing loser. Time to move on! Starting to think he should’ve died along with his parents, thereby sparing the rest of us forever.