Perk Perkela 🍂

Dixon does well in a few ways. I’d say he is one of the best at making new characters. To this day, both Blüdhaven itself and a large chunk of Dick’s villain cast were introduced by him. Part of that is survivorship bias — he introduced so damn many that plenty of others disappeared without a trace. When was the last time we saw leather girl or backwards head man, you know? But he’s good at trying shit rather than rehashing old plot and character beats, which I can respect. And while his Dick is much more of your stereotypical cool guy hero than the Dick I envision, it’s still entertaining.

The problem is that nothing ever happens. Insofar as there is build up, it’s for individual characters’ power levels and not really a broader narrative. The story isn’t saying anything. There’s no message or fundamental advancement in Dick as a person to be seen. Even with the three-parter where he ostensibly gets over his sidekick hangup with Bruce, he’s back to avoiding asking Bruce for help a couple issues later. There was no consequence, positive or negative, discernible from any of his major gang or villain takedowns besides “okie dokie, another one under my belt”. And so, while issues are fun as episodic adventures, they blur together into a heap of goop. I can’t tell you how Blüdhaven has changed from #1 to #25, or how Dick has, or how anyone has, with much complexity.

And, frankly, while he’s great at making characters, he doesn’t utilize them well. Amy only becomes one of my favorite characters to date when Devin Grayson gets her hands on her. Likewise for many other mainstays. Dixon made them, then a later writer grabbed them and turned them into something with depth. I guess maybe that’s the crux of it. Dixon has a lot of surface area but no depth.

But, for instance, in 26 issues (#85-#117, not counting the 6 issue year one interlude), Devin Grayson has Dick: get fired from his job, lose Barbara, lose his home, go through the debacle with Blockbuster (which ends with massive lasting consequence to his character), join the mob and suffer consequences there too, become Renegade, mentor Rose, suffer consequences from that too with Chemo. That’s a lot. A lot of lasting, important character development.

Since Watters has started his run, which is around 25ish issues, we’ve gone from gang wars to the Zanni, then from the fallout of the Zanni facilitating the reconstruction of Blüdhaven to the highway mess. We would not be where we are now were it not for the ending of that arc, because without that arc we would not have had the earthquake. We have met and lost characters like Bryce. Blüdhaven has been fundamentally changed.

But for Chuck? When we start with Dixon, Dick is new to Blüdhaven, trying to establish himself. Issue #25, Dick is… still feeing relatively new to Blüdhaven, trying to establish himself. I cannot tell you what is happening in Blüdhaven more specifically than that, because issues are centered on individual fights with criminals of the week rather than change. Blockbuster inclusions are meandering at best (Heartless, anyone?), there are little plot threads that are picked up and disposed of without consequence, he even has the exact same dynamic with Clancy as he did at the start. The “oops silly me I think she’s hot but I can’t make a date because I’m a ~~hero~~ (and also still very clearly interested in Barbara).”

It’s the same running around in circles as Taylor. We disregard larger plot movement for the sake of filler issues, except while Taylor loved his Le Wholesome Chungus filler, Chuck is all about the insubstantial but dramatic action set pieces. Mobsters with guns. Trucks of money. Explosions. That kind of thing. And as I’ve said before with both Taylor AND Dixon, these issues can be a lot of fun. It’s not like they’re entirely without merit. But as a larger cohesive story, or even read consecutively, it starts to feel more and more slop-adjacent.

Arkham City Robin’s weird suit:

NIGHTWING #143 10/21/2026

Written by Dan Watters

Art by David Lapham

There was a significant time gap between when he was taken and when he was rescued. Like weeks. Towards the very end, we see him exalting Brother Blood with the rest of the crowd, but besides that we know almost nothing. Raven had a high position in the organization. She was manipulated, clearly, but like when Wally attempted to reason with her, she argued back in defense of Brother Blood. You have to understand, it takes a degree of mental faculty — of capacity for independent thought — to argue. She spoke coherent sentences, full soliloquies. She was thinking. It felt more like traditional manipulation.

Dick, meanwhile, could usually barely string two words together. He sometimes couldn’t speak at all. He was aware enough to cry, but didn’t have the agency to move when Kory was near him. He was frequently depicted as on the floor, immobile, either due to physical disablement or lack of cognitive awareness to move. He was dragged around so casually by Brother Blood’s followers that it must have been a semi-normal thing. He was described as “drugged”. And when he did struggle enough mentally to start to break through, something was presumably done to him off screen that brought him back to his state.

He didn’t feel “manipulated” so much as rendered broken enough that there was no way for him to interact. There wasn’t enough capacity for thought to be manipulated, because manipulation requires the ability to reason. To me, that’s so much worse. It means there was never a time he at least believed he was happy, or had the agency to act within the grounds given. He was in a constant state of suffering that he didn’t have the capacity to fully understand or ameliorate.

That’s what freaks me out, and why the scenes of him being dragged around bothered me. What was he doing? What was being done to him? How much of his time was spent in vain struggles to break free, only to be tortured back into obedience and left alone in some room somewhere? How much of his time was spent isolated, non-functional, in mental anguish about something he didn’t have the ability to understand?

His pleading, his screams, are horrifying.

How functionally powerless he is while, on some level, being aware and resistant and terrified of what’s happening to him, is gut-wrenching.

The stuttering,

the description of him as “empty”, the leaking tears betraying some kind of tortured awareness while he is incapable of anything but spectating,

how weak and incapable of descent he is, even when there is breakthrough (“I will deal with your tortured mind later”, more weak stuttering, highly unrefined motor movements…),

and, god, the ragdoll quality of him, dragged around and discarded by people who do not see him as worth enough to care for his suffering.

How often, in the weeks of capture, has he been left on the floor like that? Christ.

He’s described as too drugged. Too drugged.

“Must have been a sadist”, Jason says.

<Checks notes>

Yeah. Uh huh. Yup. Right on the money there. Immaculate.

BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER.

WHAT THE HELL.