Review by Ian Keogh

Nightwing as a pirate surely has to tick some fantasy boxes, and that’s essentially what Tom Taylor provides over the opening three chapters of Standing at the Edge, while also delving back to the days before he wrote Nightwing. If readers of that incarnation wondered what happened to bar owner and Nightwing’s girlfriend Bea Bennett, this is the place to find out. It’s not quite a completely new start, but Standing at the Edge can be absorbed without reference to the previous Time of the Titans.

Sense is made of the previous anomalies about Bea, explaining her capabilities and in passing acknowledging the help behind the scenes she’s given to Nightwing, greasing the wheels to make his improvements to the city of Blüdhaven happen. Now she has a problem needing the direct help Nightwing can provide, and the result is a humdinger, with a particular joy the sheer number of little moments in passing building the bigger picture, one being why Nightwing’s wearing the outfit seen on the sample art. That continues into the following story, which has a cameo from a young Shelton Lyle near the start.

Stephen Byrne draws Nightwing as a pirate, and is more imaginative with his page layouts than Sami Basri on the remainder, but Basri’s more fluid when it comes to action scenes, where Byrne can’t overcome a slight stiffness. These aren’t major flaws in the case of either artist and their art is considerably better than the style over substance provided by Daniele Di Nicuolo for the final inclusion, where regular series artist Bruno Redondo draws the closing three pages. He’s being kept in reserve to draw all of following volume Fallen Grayson.

For the second story Taylor contrasts a child whose father has just been murdered with the way Dick Grayson was in the same circumstances years earlier. In the present day Blüdhaven villain Heartless appears to have shifted to Gotham and Dick finally has proof connecting a mobster with the killing of his parents. Neither plot really comes to anything here and neither does Nightwing freezing at heights, but the compensation is Taylor providing a team-up with Batman that reveals something about them both amid the necessities of correcting a mistake.

Nightwing was co-created by Marv Wolfman, so it’s a nice touch that Wolfman writes his own dialogue for those pages drawn by Redondo as an anniversary is celebrated. Wolfman recreated as running a pizza parlour and acknowledging the passing of co-creator George Pérez is respectfully handled.

Standing at the Edge isn’t Taylor’s Nightwing at an absolute peak, but it’s solid superhero entertainment.