Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #9 – “Fighting Destiny”! In the previous storyline, Nightwing continues getting terrorized by Raptor until he learns his secret weakness: comparing him to Bruce Wayne. Only then will Raptor be so overcome with emotions that he’ll fight like a mouse and can easily be thwarted forever.

Let’s hope this next story isn’t as stupid!

Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #9 [January, 2017]
Written by: Tim Seeley
“Fighting Destiny”

“I tried to stay awake. Really, I did.”

Nightwing is describing me reading his comic book! Ha!

Anyway, Nightwing and couple of companions are fighting giant matador robots, because of course. They neutralize the robots and discover a figure in a ratty cape running away from the scene. Oh no you don’t, Fauntleroy. You’re not getting away that easy!

Nightwing’s companions are the Flash, Arsenal, and… uh… “Donna”. They run to a warehouse-type building, open the door, and discover a skeleton in a ratty cape holding a glowing ball of red light: “It was there. The pulsing gift that made me real. But it’s gone. Now there’s only an echo of a dream. But an echo is the true sound to one who hasn’t heard the source. And a dream is real to the sleeper.”

Three giant matador robots enter the room and stab their razor-sharp serrated appendages right through Flash, Arsenal, and… uh… “Donna”. Nightwing looks in horror, then he wakes up from a dream (that was real to the sleeper!)

“NOOOOO!” Grayson bolts upright, shirtless and jacked as the dickens. Ever since he started Nightwingin’ it, he’s been having nightmares. As he shakes out the creepies, Superman hovers in front of Grayson’s giant bedroom windows. As in, Superman is peepin’. “We need to talk,” he says. And an hour later, the two of them are in Superman’s Fortress of Jerking Off Secretly.

Superman (who is not the original Superman) tells Grayson that even the Justice League is undecided on how they feel about Batman lately. He punches shit into a computer and a large hologram of baddies appears before them. “I’ve been preemptively monitoring for known threats from my world in case they potentially show up in some variation on this Earth,” Superman says importantly. “Last night I detected two faint energy signatures associated with an artifact called the materioptikon.” Dr. Destiny, a skeleton man, used it to “create reality from the fabric of dreams”.

One energy signature is in an A.R.G.U.S. safehouse. The other one is in Nightwing’s brain. Go figure.

Because you’re a big ol’ wuss and Dr. Destiny feeds off of pee-soaked mattresses.

Superman wants to enter Nightwing’s dreamscape and search the source of this energy signature. I think that means he wants to put his PENIS in Nightwing’s EAR and that, sir, is sexual harassment.

Superman plops a large virtual reality helmet on top of Nightwing’s head and makes him sit in a stupid chair. Nightwing tells him that he’s too tired for this shit. Everything sucks and there’s not enough sertraline. “G’night, Superman,” Nightwing says as Superman plops on his own helmet and begins infiltrating Nightwing’s dreams of 69’ing Tom Brokaw.

The first stop in the dreamscape? Gotham Shore. It’s beach volleyball time with a couple of knuckleheads from Spyral, the old espionage agency, Helena and Tiger. Nightwing grabs a ball and serves it over the net, only to be intercepted by the creepy skeleton man from his earlier dream. “A gift,” it says. “Thank you, child. But it’s not enough. You must give me more. You must give me all.”

Giant robots come out nowhere and slaughter Helena and Tiger. Superman notes that the energy signature is growing stronger while Nightwing feels scared and helpless. “These materioptikon are feeding him with each dream-kill,” Superman notes. He starts punching robots, assuring Nightwing that he can wake him up from all this right now to avoid a heart attack or some shit. Barring that, Superman can take Nightwing to a safe dreamscape. One without jerkass robots ruining the party: a Gotham City rooftop.

At least, it’s A rooftop. Nightwing doesn’t recognize it, but the Nightwing of Superman’s world would. It’s in a city called Blüdhaven, a place where the alternate Nightwing was a hero. It was like Batman’s Gotham to him.

They see Batman, Robin, and Batgirl sparring on the docks. Everything seems nice and familiar and – OH NO! THE ROBOTS!

That’s a stupid Thing, but whatever makes you happy.

Once they start attacking little Damian Wayne, Nightwing gets so mad that he throws one of his sticks at them. This causes more solidity in the time-rift-dream-matrix and Nightwing is able to punch robots around with his handsome fists. Yay, Blüdhaven.

When one robot presents an arm made out of Kryptonite to Superman, the caped one realizes that Dr. Destiny is feeding on Nightwing’s anxieties about vulnerabilities. Exploiting his compassion, his fear that he can’t save the people he loves, and he’s putting delicious ketchup all over it.

Nightwing gets caught in a dream net as his friends get dragged away by a horde of robots. “NO!” Nightwing screams, but it is met with more of Dr. Destiny’s whimsical musings: “The truth is, you’re letting me do this, Mr. Wing. Because you know I’m saving you. You’re respected by everyone for your experience and kindness. You’re everyone’s friend. But the problem with having so many connections… so many friends… you’re going to lose them. Someday, they’re going to die.”

A real fucking buzzkill, this guy.

Dr. Destiny leaps out into the open and punches Nightwing across his ugly, pockmarked, scar-ridden face. Superman is powerless to help; Nightwing has to pull his own damn self out of the dream. Nightwing has no idea how to fight Skeletonius as he gets thrown around a dream graveyard. He even whacks him across the face with a large gravestone that says “BATMAN” on it. Not even “BRUCE WAYNE”! That’s funny to me.

Superman has an Infinite Universes theory: there are infinite universes!

…

Sooooo, according to Superman – now hear him out – you can access these bajillion universes by “closing your eyes” and “thinking of them”.

And he does just that.

And Red Robin shows up to blast Mr. Skullbones with a laser blast of some sort. Red Robin is who again? Tim Drake? Stupid white boys with their white boy names. Superman and Nightwing either have guns in their pockets or they’re happy to see him. Everyone hugs it out while Dr. Destiny writhes on the ground in his own poop.

Then he achieves his final form.

RAWR! I’ll lick you with my octopus tongues!

Good thing Nightwing has more than “a few” friends. In comes every DC hero you can think of, including, but not limited to, two Supermen! And the fight begins! And Dr. Destiny is no match for the pummeling of 45 superheroes. A real throttling. Some grim stuff.

Later, it was determined that these giant robots were designed by Lady Eve of Issues #1 – #4 as revenge. Kobra was using Dr. Destiny’s powers to steal info from Nightwing’s mind, promising to restore him with the dreamstone! Of course! (?)

Batman thanks Nightwing for the good work. He also begrudgingly thanks Superman. All like “hrm” about it.

Superman tells Nightwing that everyone is so different from the people in his own world. That is, except for Nightwing. Nightwing is very much the same. Just this pants-wetting little punk.

Superman flies away, leaving Nightwing in Blüdhaven to do a little sight-seeing.

Final Thoughts

I failed to really capture the happy-go-luckiness of the last half of the issue. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WITH FRIENDS. Give me a break. Friends are the worst. When’s the last time a friend did anything for you? I rest my case.