Nightwing and the 4 Supergirls

You can probably guess at this point that I’m a pretty big fan of Supergirl, what you might not be aware of is that I’m equally into Nightwing. Nightwing, the Dick Grayson one, first appeared as Nightwing in Tales of the Teen Titans #44 in 1984 and by 2005 he had met and interacted with 4 separate variations of the maid of might. A single Nightwing meeting 4 different Supergirls in a mess of continuity resets and revisions while Nightwing’s history remained relatively unchanged is what I want to discuss here. The 4 Supergirls are; Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El, Matrix Supergirl, Cir-El, and Post-Crisis Supergirl. The Pre-Crisis interaction and the interaction with Cir-El are rather brief so I’ll only cover them briefly, and I’ll mostly focus on The Batman Chronicles #20 and Supergirl (Vol. 5) #3.

I’ve had this thought in my mind for a while and its partly because I was positive Nightwing would have been included in the group shot of all the heroes shown in Supergirl (Vol. 2) #20. It even proclaims on the cover that the New Teen Titans are in the book! I was just as surprised as anyone else to find out Nightwing does not show up and it’s because Supergirl #20 released the month before Tales of the Teen Titans #44. I worried briefly that maybe the Pre-Crisis Supergirl never met Nightwing before her untimely demise, but both heroes do show up in Crisis and even stand near one another on the Monitor’s satellite so it’s reasonable that they could’ve had some conversation.

The Nightwing story in Batman Chronicles #20 is just one of 3 stories from the issue and is titled “The Rage of Angels”. Written by Ian Edginton, penciled by Mshindo Kuumba, inked by Bob Almond, with colors by Noelle Giddings and letters by Ken Lopez. This, of all the comics I’m covering in this post, is the most interaction we have between Supergirl and Nightwing. While just 10 pages, this is a very clear cut Nightwing and Supergirl team-up and doesn’t have the ensemble cast that most the other stories I’m covering have.

We open in Blüdhaven where Nightwing is staking out a shipment coming in that is transporting illegal substances into his city. His plan was to take it slow until a certain red cape entered the scene. Apparently this shipment also had a stop in Leesburg which is the home to the Linda Danvers/Matrix Supergirl. Supergirl has a much more aggressive approach than Nightwing’s stealth plan, but together they are able to successfully apprehend the Russians that are smuggling in guns, drugs, and refugees.

The police and FBI show up and the captain of the ship seems like he is planning on pulling his diplomatic immunity when Supergirl, as Nightwing says, “puts the fear of god” into him. The pair finish off with a farewell and agreement that they made a pretty good team together. This story does a good job of fitting nicely in both Nightwing and Supergirl’s worlds at the time of it’s release in early 2000 with Supergirl having the flame wings that were present near the end of her time bonded to the Matrix, and Nightwing being the hero to Blüdhaven while not being very well respected as such. I also wanted to note that Nightwing pretty immediately calls out this Supergirl as “not a Kryptonian. She’s something else” which is possibly just to get Batman readers up to speed if they hadn’t been keeping track of the goings on of the S side of the universe.

Cir-El barely has a dozen appearances so it’s really impressive that she not only shares an appearance with Nightwing, but also they’re both on the cover to Superman/Batman #5. This is the penultimate issue of the first arc of the Superman/Batman title and features the sidekicks of the titular heroes breaking into the White House after President Lex Luthor reported to the world that he had captured Superman and Batman. Dick Grayson and Cir-El don’t directly interact here but it seems the “S-Team” (Superboy, Supergirl, and Steel) and the “B-Team” (Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, and Huntress) would’ve had to planned an operation like this beforehand and are in radio communication the whole time.

Supergirl (Vol. 5) #3 is part of the Post-Crisis Kara Zor-El’s exploration through the DC Universe as she tries to find a place for herself. This issue has her meeting up with and trying out for the Outsiders, currently led by Nightwing, in a story titled “The Girl of Steel Chapter 3: Outsiders”. Jeph Loeb writes, Ian Churchill pencils, and Norm Rapmund inks with letterer Richard Starkings and colorist David Moran. We open the story with Grace, Lightning, and Supergirl fighting in what can be assumed is a training exercise. Supergirl also has some internal monologuing during this time and the reader gets some insight to how Supergirl feels about the other Outsiders, including her confusion about why Grace doesn’t have a hero name and why Thunder’s name really doesn’t make sense.

This all changes when Nightwing shows up. Here we find out that our girl of steel has a teenage crush on Nightwing (and who can blame her). We get about 4 pages of Supergirl looking dreamily at Nightwing and not hearing a single word he says. Supergirl then kisses Nightwing and then runs off to take on Lex Luthor by herself. The back half of this issue doesn’t feature Nightwing since Supergirl fried the controls to the Pequod (the Outsider’s main mode of transportation).

I’ll probably wait to cover the rest of the story at some other time, possibly as part of Supergirl Surprise sometime down the line. I do want to mention however that some of the art in this issue is really great especially Supergirl breaking out of the chains and the whole of the Supergirl/Grace fight.

I didn’t really have a goal in mind with this post other than having an excuse to talk about my 2 favorite super heroes. I’ve been reading through my Nightwing comics recently and I liked the variety of stories here and enjoyed reading some Nightwing stories that are a bit adjacent to his normal series that I didn’t read as part of my Nightwing reading. This was by no means every iteration of Supergirl and Nightwing together but I feel it represents the somewhat irregular timeline that DC has. Dick Grayson from before the first Crisis, around New Teen Titans, up to Flashpoint really had a pretty uninterrupted continuity while Supergirl in that timeframe seemed to have a pretty irregular stability and it seemed they kept trying to reinvent her. Let me know if you have a favorite Supergirl Nightwing team up or if you have any other heroes that team up with Supergirl that you’d like to know more about!