Review by Karl Verhoven

The logical assumption would be that this second volume of Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird was a direct continuation from Volume One, which isn’t the case. They’ve been through a troublesome time as seen in Superman: Codename Patriot and Supergirl: Friends & Fugitives. That suggests a disjointed continuity, and this is a disjointed collection, the focus not always on the title characters

Broadly, at the beginning Nightwing and Flamebird are still trying to track down General Zod’s Kryptonian sleeper agents on Earth, and the current target has no more concern about remaining anonymous than the earlier agents. Eric Trautmann is credited as co-writer alongside Greg Rucka, and that’s good news. While the focus may sometimes drift away from Nightwing and Flamebird, these are more intriguing stories overall, despite the somewhat random problem for Nightwing that sparks them.

Read a little deeper and a plotline making it seem only very few people can see Nightwing and Flamebird as individuals, instead damning them for their race, obviously has symbolic aspects, but they’re in passing. Religious parallels actually come to have greater significance as the writers investigate the Kryptonian god Rao, usually only known in epithet form. The Kryptonian archive informs “Rao transformed the flames of chaos into the fires of creation and thus were the machineries of the universe created”. It’s neat chapter of myth-building, and followed by a clever use of Kryptonian villain Jax-Ur, who’s certainly more ambitious than most Kryptonian villains, counterpointed by an article by Lois Lane.

Although a few other artists contribute pages here and there, Pere Pérez draws the bulk of this collection dynamically and efficiently. It’s very necessary to emphasise scale, and Pérez does this extremely effectively without ever losing sight of the little people, many of whom are called in to deal with what occurs. Surprisingly, this is achieved in the bigger moments with just figures and simple backgrounds of smoke and rubble.

Whether this was always Rucka’s plot, or whether the arrival of Trautmann transformed the flames of chaos into the fires of creation isn’t known, but there’s a certainty this is far stronger than Nightwing and Flamebird Volume One.