hazard-tape colours: thedeadairchannel020

This week sees the release of Nightwing 135. The final chapter of the Zanni/Cirque Du Sin story we've been telling across 17 issues and one annual.

Not everyone's going to make it out of this one. Preview pages here.

Dexter Soy is back on art duties, finishing the story we began together a year and a half ago.

It's a quite literally explosive finale, as we shake things up in Bludhaven before our new story, Bludhaven Lore, begins next month, with our new art team joining us.

DC Comics solicits for the April release included this cover by the incoming team, which is your first glimpse of how the book is going to look inside:

By the by, every element on that cover is a clue to what's coming in the next year. Some are quite major clues, which I haven't seen anyone pick up on yet.

The issue this cover is for- #137, The Bridge- was one of my favourite issues of Nightwing to write thus far. It's a story about Nightwing and Batman trying to solve the same crisis from opposite ends. It's a story about what makes them different as detectives.

Jorge Fornes again captures the tone of the issue perfectly in his cover:

Jorge's cover design for 139 just landed in my inbox, and set me off cackling. We are making some really fun stuff here.

Nightwing #136: Bludhaven Lore part 1, is on FOC this coming Monday. Let your comic store know you want a copy. It's a complete crime story of its own. It's the start of a broader mystery that will play out over the arc. And it's a huge turning point in Dick Grayson's life.

I think it's some of my very best work.

Also this week: Shredder #5. The penultimate issue of our first story arc. This book is really building towards something- I recently sent in a detailed outline for issue 12, thinking "this might be a big swing," and got a response of "this... IS a BIG swing!" but thankfully in an enthusiastic let's-do-this kind of way rather than a stay-away-from-our-franchise-or-we'll-poke-you-with-sharpened-sticks kind of way.

Issue 5 was a fun one to write- it includes revelations that bridge the gap between the beginning of this book and where Shredder was left before this, which I know a lot of long-time TMNT readers have had questions about.

It also features a certain scene of... let's call it combat improvisation... that I truly didn't think we'd get away with.

You'll know it when you see it.

My plate remains full. I finished scripting Nightwing 140 at around 11pm last night, and now get to turn my attention to notes on two scripts that will require some rewriting. I also have notes on a third that will only need some light fine-tuning. I have two outlines that need writing for upcoming arcs of things. I will attempt to do all of this plus the bulk of a new script before I head out of town on Sunday for a work thing. Pray for Mojo.

Work/life balance is fucked a tad of late, but it's easy to fall into this when it's been so miserable outdoors. The snow still hasn't fully melted from the storm that hit the East Coast a few weeks back, and at this point most of it has turned to hazard-tape colours; car-exhaust black or piss yellow.

I'll need to clear some schedule space soonish to allow myself to breathe. Right now the job is getting down on paper the things that are already in my head, but to generate new ideas I need to sit and read and think and probably find a topic or two to get overly absorbed in for a while. You can't keep creating worthwhile output without new input. One does not want to be shovelling the black and yellow snow of the mind.

It's also ComicsPro this coming week, and though I will not be there I believe at least one book I'm writing will be announced, going some way as to explaining why I am Very Tired.

Last month I spoke to the lovely folk at Escape the Mojoverse, and they released the episode this week:

This was a really good chat ahead of the release of the Batman: Dark Patterns tpb (out March 31st) primarily about what went into making that book. A lot of cities talk, a lot of crime talk.

Speaking of crime, I have managed to take in some input at least. Last week I enjoyed A History of Modern Britain in 20 Murders by David Wilson.

It's a book that very much does what it says on the tin, beginning at Jack the Ripper and running through the 20th Century to end with some of the horrific crimes that took place under the cover of the COVID pandemic.

I enjoy a work that studies a topic through a lens, and Wilson paints with blood spatter to create a picture of the national psyche- of what has been considered fair and just and proper over the last 150 years. It's as breezy and light as a book on the subject can be, and I tore through it.

I'm now rereading Franz Kafka's Amerika for the first time since moving to America. I thought it'd be an interesting exercise, and it is. Kafka never made it further from Prague than Vienna, but his sense of America feels intrinsically correct in its soul.

Aditya Bidikar just sent me an advance look at In Your Skin, the book he's launching from Image Comics in April with artist Som and colors by Francesco Segala (who's also coloring Nightwing) with Gloria Martinell.

Aditya is the superstar letterer who's worked with me on The Six Fingers, Coffin Bound, Arkham City and a bunch of other stories, and letters all your favourite Tiny Onion and Ram V comics. This is his first published longform comics work as a writer, but anyone who follows his own newsletter knows that he lives and breathes writing and art in general.

I had high expectations for this, and they were easily met. It is grotesque and beautiful; disturbing and sexual. I said somewhere above that I enjoy a work that uses a lens to examine a topic. Here the lens is skin; a lens through which yearning and self-disgust and fame and jealousy can all be examined.

The book has shades of David Lynch in how it creates unease, though I pause before I bring up his name. Most art that invokes Lynch is not as thoughtful in its choices as this comic is.

I've been getting more disciplined about reading my monthly comics stack alongside reading some older comics. This has led to thoughts on panel counts and pacing that I'd hoped to banish here. But I'll have to leave it until next time at this point. It's midday on Tuesday, and my to-do list is gnawing at my leg. I'll also be appearing on the Pop Culture Squad's Youtube show this evening at 8pm EST if you want to see the bags under my eyes live.

I'll write again soon, when things are announced.

God. I haven't written here about anything except books, have I? I promise there is more to my life. Then again, books are very good.

This has been thedeadairchannel. An SOS from the desk of Dan Watters. Please do subscribe.