Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #13 – “Blüdhaven (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, the Run-Offs agree to work with Nightwing in order to prove SHAWN THE DEFACER and GORILLA GRIMM’s innocence! In the midst of trying to figure out who is actually behind the murders, the Run-Offs have a run-in with the Orca. They fought for ten pages in what I can only call an inconvenient distraction that served only to pad out this story further for reasons I still don’t understand. Let’s just end this thing, why don’t we? Come on, man. Comics are for dorks.

Nightwing (Vol. 4), Issue #13 [March, 2017]
Written by: Tim Seeley
“Blüdhaven (Part 4)”

Nightwing just can’t believe he’s leading a team of former supervillains. Really makes you think. They run to their destination, but they’re too late. Forsyth lies dead in an alley. Carter Forsyth, that is. The real estate magnate. Now everyone’s dead that matters. Paterno. What’s-His-Name. All dead.

Dead people don’t talk, right? Well, Forsyth must still be alive then. At least for now. He’s probably going to do that thing where he gives up all the necessary information before dying, just like they always do. “I didn’t get a look at the guy who done me, on account of the tire in my face,” Forsyth says weakly. “B-but you can head ‘im off… see, there’s only one more of us left.”

In his last breaths, Forsyth tells Nightwing to go to City Hall before the murderer does. He’ll be going after Mayor Madrigal, the “secret partner”. Then he dies.

OH WAIT, NOT YET! No… no, never mind. He’s actually dead now.

Nightwing is gung ho about stopping the mayoral murder, but the rest of the Run-Offs are hesitant. Especially Thrill Devil, whose bike ultimately killed Forsyth. If the police are involved, he’ll be arrested faster than you can say “boo”. Like this: boo!

Plus, these people are fighting every day to not be villains. Ain’t no way that they’re going to start being heroes, of all things. Oh well.

At the Blüdhaven police department, Detective Svoboda is yelling at a handcuffed and orange-jumpsuited Shawn Tsang. Just really letting her have it. “You’re accused of murder, Shawn. And the problem is, it’s attracting too damn much attention.” The Chapman murder has Shawn’s stink all over it. Graffiti, for one thing. And… uh…

Anyway, Svoboda needs Shawn’s help. She can’t have a killer running free in her town, but she can’t let Nightwing be right either because Blüdhaven hates their superheroes. What a pickle! I’m sure Shawn will really jump on that. I’ll stay in buttfuck prison, thank you very much.

“Blüdhaven was supposed to be the place I got my trust back,” thinks Nightwing as he swings around town. “In others. In myself. Instead, I’m trying to find the fastest rooftop path, or I’ll be too late to stop an assassination.”

Hey! I already said that!

City Hall sees Cherry asleep at her desk in the Tourism Bureau. Her coworker Simon tries rousting her, smacking her around a bit to wake her up. He’s just whaling on her. Cherry was up all night preparing for her meeting with the mayor. Simon says he’ll handle the meeting. Cherry’s done enough to help and he can take it from here. (Simon’s going to fuck it all up actually, but that’s a story for another issue! Maybe.)

In Mayor Madrigal’s very high office, the mayor himself is talking on the phone to the morgue about Forsyth. “Are you sure it’s him?” he asks. “I’m just saying, Forsyth’s an old white guy. You must get a lot of those down at the morgue, right?”

The police show up to City Hall and the mayor needs to call it quits on the phone call. And as soon as he does, an incredibly, blinding light flashes through his extremely large window, making him go “UNF!” It blows out the windows like a bomb. The police below are perplexed, and rightfully so! Bombs are dangerous!

Nightwing shows up to the scene, fashionably late as usual. He jumps through the broken window and discovers some costumed twerp gripping the very-much-alive mayor’s shirt. The kid’s got some sort of fire blaster, but his aim is terrible. Nightwing dodges an attack easily and whacks the masked assailant on the arm with one of them batons. “High-tech weapons. Weird power sources. Off-world knockoffs created by the Second Hand. This is where the missing weapons shipment went.” Nightwing kicks him in the dick. “Right into your grubby little hands.”

As Nightwing keeps talking distractedly, the kid grabs the mayor with an extendo-arm and throws him through a not-broken window. BUT HE DOESN’T DIE! Because the Defacer is here with her rocket boots (?) to catch him in mid-air. Nightwing mentions something about being so happy he could kiss her on her respirator. He gets #MeToo’d immediately.

The assailant takes this opportunity to push Nightwing’s face against the glass. “You. You got in the way,” he says. “Evil men have to die. The guilty have to be punished.”

Nightwing swings around and grabs the mask off the kid’s face, but he runs away before Nightwing can get a good look at him. Simon and Cherry run into the office all like “Egads! It’s Nightwing!” while Nightwing writhes on the floor.

And the masked man is someone we all know. Whodathunkit?!

More like “Jimmy Mean”! Ha! Fuck you!

A heavily armored police team enters the room and points their big, fat guns at everyone. “Down, down, down!” they say, but Jimmy Nice most assuredly does not go down. He throws his fire blaster stick at Simon, and Nightwing pushes the guy out of the before he gets a small bruise on his head. “You saved me,” Simon says, narrowly avoiding a minor injury.

Too bad the police think that Nightwing is the bad guy here. Hero types and all, nobody likes them. Nightwing leaps out of the building while bullets rain upon him. Helicopters start chasing him, too. It appears to be a whole thing. “DOWN! GET YOUR ASS ON THE GROUND!” blares the helicopter guy before opening fire. Nightwing is lucky he’s not dead from all this, but there is a jail cell with his stupid name on it waiting for him!

Nightwing ducks in an alley with nowhere to go. A wall on one side, cops with deadly bullets on the other. It’s a good thing Nightwing is a lucky duck, because Defacer is there to pull him aside and away from danger. Somehow.

Defacer knew it was James Nice all along, but there’s another thing that confuses Nightwing: how did Shawn get out of the joint.

Duh. She made a deal.

“Hey, Tights. I owed ya one,” Svoboda says, popping in suddenly to aim a gun at Nightwing’s melon head. “And you owe me a coffee. How about we go for a ride?”

Final Thoughts

Grayson should just go back to Gotham. This Blüdhaven business is complete constant bullshit. At least in Gotham you have Batman doing all the legwork and getting all the attention. In Blüdhaven you have the cops pointing guns at you. This is a no-brainer, son.