Not to be outdone by Marvel having turned Captain America Steve Rogers into an agent of Hydra, DC has decided to push the envelope itself by taking one of its most beloved heroes in an unexpected direction. Granted, we’ve seen a dictator Superman in the Injustice video games and comics, but the writers managed to make the Man of Steel’s heel turn rather believable. Already knowing that Nightwing: The New Order will undoubtedly create some backlash, we can only hope that the folks at DC are bracing themselves.
With a major motion picture centered on Dick Grayson set to arrive in the future, it makes sense that DC would want to give Nightwing more exposure, but it remains to be seen if playing the controversy card is the way to go. Before we proceed any further, let’s take a look at the synopsis for this new series, which is written by Kyle Higgins (Nightwing, Batman Beyond 2.0) and illustrated by Trevor McCarthy (Batwoman):
NIGHTWING: THE NEW ORDER is the story of a future world without “weapons”—where superpowers have been eliminated and outlawed. The man responsible? None other than Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Nightwing, now leader of a government task force called the Crusaders who are charged with hunting the remaining Supers. But when events transpire which turn the Crusaders’ aim toward Grayson’s own family, the former Boy Wonder must turn against the very system he helped create, with help from the very people he’s been hunting for years—the last metahumans of the DC Universe.
Let it be known that this story takes place over a decade into the future, so we’ll have to see if this is a possible future a la’ Futures End, or if indeed we’re to expect the Nightwing we know and love to completely go off the rails. If you examine the preview images in the gallery at the top, you’ll notice that both Nightwing and Superman are wearing their pre-Flashpoint costumes, with Wonder Woman donning her New 52 threads, so we may have to wait until the book is actually in our hands in order to see how this all lines up.
Nightwing: The New Order #1 is currently slated to arrive in comic shops on August 23.
