DC’s New Nightwing Comic Explores A Powerless, Authoritarian Future

DC’s upcoming miniseries Nightwing: The New Order
completely changes the dynamic of the comic book universe. The
majority of heroes and villains alike had their powers stripped
from them, and the man leading the charge, while working with the
government, to hunt down the remaining metahumans is Dick Grayson,
also known as Nightwing.

Kyle Higgins, the writer of The New Order, first worked
on the New 52’s Nightwing series back in 2011, and his
return to the character was exciting for him, to say the least, “It
feels familiar but different,” Higgins told GameSpot. “I can write
him in my sleep though. He’s my all-time favorite character. It’s
more exciting than anything. I’ve already written the series, and
now that I’m done, it’s a bit sad. Even though it was for a very
specific story, he was my guy again.”

The six-issue miniseries follows Dick Grayson in 2040. “Dick’s
like 45 years old and he has a 12-year-old son,” explained Higgins.
“We’re living in a world where about 12 years earlier, Dick
detonated a device that neutralized 90% of the world’s superpowers.
There had been a proliferation and spread of superpowers in the
world. They were as easy to get as a loaf of bread at the
supermarket. You could walk into a bodega and pick up telekinesis.
In a lot of ways, it’s an allegory for the gun issue in our country
right now but through the lens of DC superheroes and superpowers.
The spread and incidents that escalated in the world finally
culminated with something that’s like the Armageddon war of
Metropolis.”

The New Order miniseries—you can see a
preview of the first issue above–is a very different tale for the
character many people know as Batman’s former sidekick, Robin.
“This is a unique situation because it’s my take on Nightwing out
of continuity. It’s like an Elseworlds, and it takes place far
enough in the future that I’m defining the character. I’m not
playing off of established continuity that’s happening in the
mainline right now or anything like that.” Higgins and artist
Trevor McCarthy have carte blanche with the character and the world
he inhabits, leading to this unique take on characters losing their
powers.

By neutralizing the world’s metahumans, Nightwing’s actions lead
to an authoritarian state: “The world did get safer, but similar to
what we see in our country, things went too far. Laws passed that
made superpowers illegal, and if you were part of the 10% that had
superpowers, you had to register, and go on inhibitor medication,
and if the inhibitor medication didn’t work, which was very, very
rare, then you’re put into stasis until the doctor can figure out a
way to take them away.”

The story of a superhero losing their powers has been done
before but never on such a large scope as this. There are many
changes to the world around characters people know and love and
with that, come redesigns of characters. Higgins explained that
McCarthy did many redesigns of popular characters, and McCarthy’s
take on Superman was the writer’s favorite.

Higgins closed by discussing the relationship between Dick
Grayson and his son, Jake, and the dynamic’s affect on the story:
“It’s Jake [in the future] narrating the book, looking back asking
the question that we as readers are asking, ‘How does my dad, who a
lot of people said was the heart and soul of the DC Universe come
to believe that this was best for the world? Was the world really
that bad that this was the only way for the world to move
forward?'”

Higgins and McCarthy’s Nightwing: The New Order comes
to comic shops and digital formats on August 23.