This week from DC Comics we get the answers to last issues baffling ending. In Nightwing 82 we learn if Dick Grayson truly does have a sister, and if so how much trouble it puts him in. Crime defines Dick Grayson’s life. Tony Zucco murdered his parents (we now know why). His foster father became one of the greatest crime fighters in history, and Dick followed in his footsteps, battling crime in two cities. Now a criminal empire has seized control of of the Bludhaven’s government, and Dick finds out the Crime boss’s biggest puppet may in fact be his sister. How would you react to this?

Nightwing 82 is very simple and straight forward in its story telling, yet the ramifications of such a story just turned both Bludhaven and Dick’s world upside down. In Nightwing 81, Mayor Melinda Zucco kidnapped Dick and told him she was his sister. Now Dick needs to give her the chance to explain all this. Well, that is after he calls off a superhero strike force. I love how Donna, Beast Boy, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, and Batman are all charging to his rescue, yet Barbara stays on the line with him. She strikes me as the perfect friend for something this revolutionary.

The Rest of the Story

The rest of this issue tells a pretty straight forward story. Melinda takes Dick to the one person who can best tell the story – the woman who lived it, her mother. Meili Lin tells Dick the story of how his parents saved her from Tony Zucco. Mary and John were not together yet, so John had a brief relationship with Meili Lin before she was kidnapped once more by Zucco. Melinda was the result, but when Meili tried to return to John, she found John and Mary were together with a certain precocious young boy. Instead of messing up the family, Meili left.

One thing that stood out to me that I thought added a very nice touch – the artwork. The present day events of Nightwing 82 look like the standard art in Nightwing’s title, but when the story jumps back in time to the young Graysons, the artwork changes. Instead of the smooth, clear coloring of today’s work, the art shifted to a slightly cleaned up dot matrix look old school comics are known for. It adds a nice bit of flavor to the story telling and makes it feel like we jumped back in time to a degree.

Nightwing 82 – Where Does This Take Us?

Everything seems legit. Melinda Zucco looks to in fact be Dick’s half-sister. This immediately brings up two questions. The first – will she survive the coming storm? Many times when comics shake up the status quo like this, the new character often fails to make it out of the story in one piece. If Dick grows attached and ends up losing his sister by the end, what will that do to Dick’s psyche? The second question becomes, does Dick now have inside help to deal with the crime in Bludhaven. The Magistrate Program may be a Gotham thing, but what happens in Gotham often overflows into Bludhaven.

Can Melinda and Dick work together to change Bludhaven? We will have to wait awhile for that. First they must deal with the literal bull at the door – Blockbuster. What did you thing of Melinda’s origin story in Nightwing 82? Head over to DC Fanatics on Facebook and tell us what you think of this revelation.