Grayson #5

Dick Grayson exists in a kind of superhero limbo, trapped between his former life as a sidekick and a hypothetical future as one of the greats. He has more stature than the likes of the Teen Titans, yet as Nightwing, he’s not quite Justice League material yet. At times, it feels like Batman’s presence in those upper tiers is what’s keeping Dick out—that and the fact that Dick can’t seem to entirely escape Bruce’s orbit. Even now, in his own title, he’s reporting to Bruce on a mission of Bruce’s creation. Shackled as he is to his mentor, it’s hard to see how Dick measures up as his own man.

So Seely-King plop Dick in the middle of the Sahara, a setting whose extremes strip title and status from everyone and leaves only the human behind. There, he’s tested alongside Midnighter, as close to a Batman analogue as you can get without actually being the Dark Knight. Make no mistake, while both men, Helena, and an infant share the same struggle for survival, this is purely Dick’s trial.

The desert crossing is obviously the most important part of the issue, such that Seely-King can’t even afford to give us much set-up for how they all end up there in the first place. In an opener that gives in medias res its good name, the three agents are already in dire straits, plunging through the sky on an EMP’d plane while Midnighter and Dick help a doomed woman deliver the child who’ll be the fourth member of their party. We get just enough context to get us into the story, but things only start to matter after the crash.

For one thing, as survival instincts come into play, moral priorities start to shift, repositioning some of our players in the heroic spectrum. Helena’s played the pragmatic bad cop to Dick’s well-meaning intentions for most of the series, but here, she gives up her share of their scant resources for the baby, though she’s physically the worst off of them all. It’s possible this is her putting the mission before herself, as usual, but there’s no reason to think more altruistic motives are in play as well.

It’s actually Midnighter who turns out to be the villain in this situation, insisting that they use the baby’s heart—yet another of those prized organs Spyral’s been after—to save themselves. It’s a disgusting suggestion, one he rationalizes by arguing that he’s only doing now what Spyral’s going to do later, which only undermines him further, if anything. As a foe of Spyral, same as Dick and Bruce, you naturally assumed that made him one of the good guys, but this makes it clearer that his war against Spyral is based on his own gripes against the agency, not preventing the evils they commit.

In theory, Midnighter should be the dominating presence in this ordeal. He’s bigger, stronger, and more skilled than Dick, even without the enhancements and powers he keeps bragging about. In a straight fight, he’d most likely win. But despite inviting battle with Dick for days during their sojourn, he never actually goes ahead and starts one. Maybe this reveals his own sense of compassion, in that even he won’t start a fight with a baby in the mix. Maybe he’s just determined to see who can outlast the other.

It’s Dick who manages to come out the other side, of course, or at least, gets himself and the kid far enough to be rescued. On one level, it’s a triumph of machismo, a way to show he’s got as much guts or more as Bruce (albeit by proxy). But it’s also a dramatic glimpse into what drives Dick as a person. He survives where Helena and Midnighter do not because even when he has nothing, he has someone else to live for. As he says at the start of the crossing, “If we’re dead, she’s dead. So we’re not dead.”

There’s no fancy action for Janín
to work with this month, but that actually works in his favor as he’s more of a dramatic artist anyway. Dick’s look of grim determination as he cradles the baby through the entire journey wins major respect points, but you really fall in love during the quiet moments, when he’s staring at the road ahead with exhaustion and looking back at his past with a strange kind of sadness in his eyes. These expressions tell you that he’s grappling with despair even as he keeps a brave front for his charge. He might want the kid to take away a war cry from his dream, but it doesn’t change the fact that the dream he’s describing is actually a nightmare.

Some Musings:

– Now that Midnighter knows Dick is an agent of Spyral, how will he exploit that information, I wonder?

– I’d love to see that baby girl’s future. A Middle Eastern girl with superstrength? Yes, please.