Nightwing (2016-) #1: 2024 Annual

by Travis Moore, Tamra Bonvillain (cover_art)

The secret origins of Bea Bennett! During Nightwing’s recent pirate adventure, we learned that Bea Bennett, Dick/Ric’s ex-girlfriend, is a pirate queen whose father, the Quartermaster, left her an entire pirate society! But what about her life before she became a pirate? Before she met Ric Grayson? Just what, and more importantly, who led her to where she is today. A backstory like no other with tales of betrayal, love, and independence.

Genres: Comics, Dc Comics, Comic Book, Superheroes

43 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 30, 2024

Reviews

[Monita Roy Mohan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh boy, this was… not good. I have no problem with Bea being the main protagonist of a Nightwing annual—I mean, the X-Men once had an annual that was a fairytale about Lockheed the dragon, so I’m cool with annuals throwing us a curveball. But man, the story is terrible.

Let me first put it out there that the art and colours are quite stunning. Beautiful character work. This attention to detail should be given to Nightwing, but he’s a dude so DC doesn’t always give him his due.

The problem is the story. This is the most unoriginal writing I have ever seen. If you had to retcon a backstory for a Bat-Universe female character, this would be bottom of the barrel obvious. Like, I cannot believe how utterly predictable the story was. And what irks me more is that it actually undermines what a cool character Bea is. I’m just so disappointed.

Spoilers ahead:

So, it turns out, Bea is not her real name and she had a mom who was a secret spy. Bea’s mom was killed, Bea was on the streets, she was found by the Hold and that’s how she became a pirate. Except she didn’t become a pirate, she got some training and then left for Blüdhaven to find out who killed her mom. And then she got recruited by Spyral, where she saw and knew about Dick Grayson. She didn’t partner with him though, because she partnered with Shan—who is literally drawn like Asian Grayson…it’s a choice.

Dick gets shot and Bea is sent undercover to make sure he doesn’t spill any Spyral secrets. Bea promptly falls for him and doesn’t help with any of the crime in her home city of Blüdhaven. She also decides to chuck up her spy life and her quest to find her mother’s killer because of love. Her mom’s killer is exactly who you think it is, because this story believes fiercely in 1 degree of separation for every event in Bea’s life.

If that’s not bad enough, she remains in Blüdhaven pining for Dick and takes his ideals to heart—she doesn’t kill her mother’s killer. Instead, she finally decides to return to her adoptive dad and that’s when she becomes a pirate. Which all happened half a minute before he’s killed off by Heartless, so even that emotional arc is undermined here.

Oh, and her mom is alive, in case you thought there wasn’t an expected unexpected twist coming your way.

All of this just makes Bea into nothing more than a truly incompetent spy and fighter who is so lovesick she can’t seem to accomplish anything. Admittedly, she can hold her own, but her being such a passive character who never acts, but waits for Grayson to do so, is such a painful read. Let’s be honest here, no dude would be written like this.

So much of her inaction is down to this retcon coming out of nowhere. Look, maybe they planned it or maybe they thought it was a clever idea, irrespective, Bea does not come out of this looking great. It’s so disappointing because you felt sorry for how things turned out with her and Dick, and then you find out she was playing the classic game of falling for her mark. It’s so ewwww.

All this seems to suggest that Bea is sticking around, which I don’t mind, but we could easily have had an amazing backstory of a seafarer finding land and love, but instead it’s a cliche story of a female spy not being good at her job. Sigh.

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a really fun Nightwing-but-not-really story.

It was fun getting to know a bit more about Bea, and it definitely makes me want to go back and read that portion of Nightwing's story.

There's some great character development here and it was lovely to see a bit more of her - Bea is such a strong character that it's nice to know her better.

Artwork is decent, too.

Worked for me!

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not a bad little story, I'd just rather forget about the whole "Ric" era.

[cauldronofevil · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Annual Issue #1” starts 20 years ago with a young (9 yrs) Bea Bennett. She is on a boat with her mother. She is grousing with her mom because they have to leave Blüdhaven because of her job. Then the boat explodes. Her mother pushes Bea into the water saving her life. Bea sees the boat that killed her mother speeding away.

In the hospital, Bea hears how she was rescued and has no other family. She escapes. She lives homeless for four years, living in an encampment until a company buys out the land to make a warehouse. That company is Ascendek - the same one her mother worked for.

So she steals one of their boats. A yacht.

Bea’s a cool character so I don’t mind her story in Nightwing’s book, but it would have been neat to see what was happening to Dick during the same time period as contrast.

The yacht is found by a group of pirates that would become her new family. Five years later she has hacked the laptop and found out why her mother was killed. She has to go back to Blüdhaven to track down Revenant.

She soon finds (and fights) a low-level jerk and his thugs to meet Carmen. Who tells her to call a number to find out more about the hit on her mother.

Carmen sends Bea to St. Hadrian’s Finishing School. There she trained to become a top agent for Spyral, the spy agency everyone loves to hate.

Bea is on a mission at a Russian party when an agent of Checkmate (Ice) steals a communication device that has a list of assassins on it. Bea pursues. As Bea and Ice fight in evening dresses (like you do), Ice tells mentions that her mother was a agent of Checkmate.

When Bea asks Carmen if what Ice said about her mother was true, Carmen tells her about Nightwing. Her new mission is to keep a close eye on him.

What is an NOC list?
The meaning of a "NOC list" depends on the context, but it most commonly refers to a classified list of Non-Official Cover intelligence agents.

Bea goes to Blüdhaven and cute meets “Ric” Grayson when he is bare knuckle boxing (and losing).

”Moby Dick is on the Hook.”

Soon she is falling in love. So is “Ric”.

Who forgets that he falls in love anytime a woman smiles at him.

Soon, her boss Carmen, confronts her.

You should know, you’re not the first agent to succumb to Grayson’s charms. You’re not even the second or third.

Dick soon confesses that he was Robin the Boy the Wonder. That’s it. Panties off.

Then Bea hears that Spyral might have been destroyed. If so, she could abandon her mission and simply stay Bea Bennet and stay with Ric.

Then Ric is hypnotized by his grandfather Talon into becoming a killer. Then Bea finds out that her mother was a Spyral agent. A double agent.

Then Ric goes back to being Dick. Then KGBeast comes and fights Nightwing.

So Bea breaks into the prison where the KGBeast is and questions him about killing her mother.

KGBeast tells her that Spyral ordered her mother’s assassination.

So let me repeat this back to you to make sure that I understand.

You had to do the Crisis on Infinite Earths because you’re comic’s continuity was becoming too confusing?

Ice tells Bea that there will be an assassination attempt on Dick Grayson. Oh, and also on Bea.

Well, I’m a little torn on this. On the one hand, bringing back the Spyral and Ric Grayson mess was completely unnecessary. You might as well bring back pink Kryptonite while you’re at it.

On the other hand, it was all neatly tied up into a bow that set everything back to the status quo and did give Bea a ridiculously convoluted back-story that was soon crazy enough to be entertaining.

And if it’s a new thing that women fighting can have extraordinarily long and deep conversations while looking fabulous, then I’m all for it.

So, you can’t exactly call this an average book, but it’s definitely an acquired taste and completely skippable.

4****

[Marsh Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Nightwing Annual 2024 delves into the backstory of Beatrice (Bea) Bennett, a former love interest from Dick Grayson's who made a reappearance earlier this year. In that storyline, it was discovered that Bea had a secret life as the Pirate Queen of the Crew of the Crossed Keys, a secret buccaneer society that helped to found Bludhaven. Now, I'm all in on a good pirate story, but I have to admit that the Pirate Queen arc was one of my least favorite Nightwing stories in a long time. As such, I was hesitant as to how the annual would unfold since Bea — not Dick — is the primary player.

READ REVIEW HERE

[Kastie Pavlik · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's very little Nightwing here. There are a ton of words. And we get Ric. BUT ...

Bea's origin is thought out and her life story is fully fleshed. Wow. We don't get stories like this often, and rarely in one issue. Ric was a disaster, but much has been done with that character since then that is slowly redeeming the decision and Bea is integral to that. I was rather surprised by how much I enjoyed this and that I really hope we continue to see her in Nightwing's neighborhood.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have not read the Ric part of the run, so no idea how redundant this Annual was, or, if Bea's background is new, how plausible it is with how events were depicted in the initial run.


All I can say is that it is a very heavy origin story with affiliation to several spy agencies (is everyone a double agent?) and to the Hold, that is a LOT for a single new character.

[Tahani Hc · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasnt expecting the protagonist to be Bea but it held up honestly. I didn’t like the way they just broke up through her and Dick, it seemed like she was a place holder for him during his recovery. I know like his memories were coming back and what not, but i feel like they should have gone more in depth with the reasoning honestly.

[Vijay Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twisty. Very twisty.

I really would enjoy a Travis Moore Pirate Queen run so hopefully that happens in the future cause I wanna see her reunite with her mom and fight the KGBeast one on one since he didn't finish the job of taking her mom out.

[danny · Rating 5 out of 5]

basically this is behind the scenes of ric. this is before he’s the nightwing we know now from the current series. got it!
when he got shot, the titans showcased how they took down the function.
got it 🫡

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[James B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nightwing is a very small part of this story. Overall, it was okay, but the romance stuff was cheesy af.

[Nightwing’s Thiccness · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bea is a great character, but I think this story belonged in a Secret Origins anthology or her own mini series. I’m just not a fan of the Ric Grayson era.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.75

[miranda mackinnon · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a fun little extra story to add to the nightwing universe !