Two Recent Comics

Nightwing 144
Read this on the subway ride home. I really hope this story arc has a strong payoff because I am so not enjoying this book right now. Dick seems so out of character. But what really ticked me off was the cover art depicting Arsenal in such a way as to make it appear that Roy was a major guest star in the book, something I've been wanting for a long while. And I know comic book covers are generally misleading, but I figured Devin Grayson has written Roy before and seems to like him, so he'd get some nice play here given his longstanding relationship with Dick, which is more like brothers than friends (Wally West has been established as Dick's best friend, anyway), but Roy didn't appear for more than a few pages and mostly to serve as a plot device, mainly to get some info about Dick to Oracle. Big yawn. I was disappointed.

I also read Teen Titans 29 on the trip home. I don't follow this title closely, so maybe it's me, but this seemed very disjointed. Jason Todd was used effectively with Tim. But while I don't mind the retconning of his origin from circus kid a la Dick Grayson to street kid Batman took in, I do dislike the notion that Tim got to be Robin because he figured out Batman's ID. He figured out Dick's ID, which led him to figure out Batman was Bruce Wayne. It made sense then and still makes more sense that he'd figure out who Dick was because he was a fan of the Flying Graysons while growing up and recognized one of Dick's circus moves when he saw Dick in action as Robin on the news on TV. I do try to go with the flow post-Crisis on Infinite Earths (with the new Crisis upon us, I now have to specifiy which I mean, another annoyance), but sometimes, being an old-time fan has its drawbacks. There are just some things I can't let go of. This is one of them. The art was nice, though.