Nightwing: The Prince of Gotham Omnibus

Nightwing: Rebirth is Tim Seeley's run, which returned Dick Grayson to the costume after years as a spy and moved him to Blüdhaven to build a life outside Gotham. Seeley writes Dick as the one member of the Bat-family who is genuinely well-adjusted, which is a harder character to make interesting and he manages it. The Blüdhaven material gives him a city, a supporting cast and problems that are his own rather than Batman's leftovers, and it is the run every later Nightwing writer builds on.

Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's Nightwing won an Eisner and is the most acclaimed run the character has ever had, built on Dick Grayson inheriting a fortune and deciding to give it away. Redondo's art is the reason this run is famous: issue #87's single-shot chase drawn as one continuous panel, and layouts that keep finding new ways to show movement. Taylor writes Dick as relentlessly decent, which in a Bat-book is a genuinely radical choice. It reads perfectly well without the first volume.

Nightwing by Tom Taylor, collected complete as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Nightwing by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo Omnibus Vol. 1 brings Dick Grayson back to Blüdhaven with Barbara Gordon close by, Heartless in the shadows and a run built around legacy, warmth and danger. Nightwing by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo Omnibus Vol. 2 completes the Eisner-winning modern run. Dick Grayson, having inherited a fortune from Alfred Pennyworth, keeps trying to fix Blüdhaven with it rather than just fighting its crime, alongside his three-legged rescue dog Haley and his fully-committed romance with Barbara Gordon. This volume brings the run to its conclusion, deepening the fight against crime boss Blockbuster and the masked killer Heartless. Warm, optimistic writing and Redondo's inventive, experimental page layouts made this the definitive modern Nightwing.

PRH presents this as Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's Nightwing run collected in omnibus format. The hook is Dick Grayson returning to his own city and identity, with the book balancing street-level heroics, found family and a new enemy built specifically for this era. This is a strong modern Nightwing shelf for readers who want Dick Grayson as the lead, not only as part of the Batman family. The tone is cleaner, more emotional and more hopeful than many Gotham-adjacent runs, without losing the danger around Blüdhaven.

Dick Grayson, presumed dead after Forever Evil, becomes a secret agent working for Spyral, a shadowy intelligence organisation targeting superheroes. Tom King and Tim Seeley write Grayson with the wit and physical grace that defines the character, while Mikel Janín provides some of the most visually inventive pages in DC publishing of the era. A complete genre switch for a character who had always been a superhero, proving that Dick Grayson works in any narrative One of DC's most creative series of the 2010s.

Nightwing: Year One tells the story DC had left as a gap for twenty years: how Dick Grayson stopped being Robin and became something of his own. Chuck Dixon wrote Nightwing for a decade and this is his retrospective origin: Batman fires Dick, and the story is about a young man discovering that being cut loose is the best thing that could have happened. Scott McDaniel draws movement better than anyone who has handled the character since.

Nightwing: The Rebirth Deluxe Edition Book 2 continues Tim Seeley's run, with Dick Grayson settled in Blüdhaven and finally allowed to be a hero in his own city rather than a satellite of Gotham. Seeley writes him as the most socially competent member of the Bat-family, and Javier Fernández draws him as an acrobat first.

Batman Eternal was DC's attempt at a weekly Batman series: fifty-two issues published in a year, plotted by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV with a rotating writing team. The premise is a slow-motion demolition of Gotham's institutions: Jim Gordon imprisoned for a crash he did not cause, Falcone back in the city, and Batman losing the police force, Arkham and eventually Wayne Enterprises. A weekly schedule forces a plot that never idles, and at fifty-two issues in one volume it reads closer to a season of television than to a comic run.