thedeadairchannel021: brainsinjars

Next week sees the release of Nightwing 136. The new art team of Denys Cowan, Norm Rapmund and Francesco Segala join the book. DC tell us we've had quite the sales bump for the issue in terms of preorders, so I'm glad people seem as excited as I am. Here are the first four pages, out in the wild at last:

Told you they were gorgeous.

Welcome to a whole new Blüdhaven, and a whole new world of grief for poor ol' Dick Grayson. That superhighway is going to cause all kinds of problems.

As someone who moved from the UK to the US, American infrastructure fascinates me. The shapes of cities here can be entirely different- there's just so much more damn space.

The psychogeography of a sprawled city is so different to a more European-style city, which I'd generally pigeonhole Gotham as- walkable, easily accessible via public transit, with people living stacked on top of each other.

Cities where each stop of the day is a 45 minute drive away makes for a different way of living, and invites a different kind of story. There's an eerieness to a place made primarily of liminal space. The side of a major road can feel as unsafe and uninviting as the darkest of Gotham alleyways.

It is wild to me to build infrastructure that is ostensibly to facilitate and improve human living, and to have so much of it inaccessible to the pedestrian. Engaging with your own town primarily through windshield glass.

These are the things swirling around in my head as I consider what makes Blüdhaven different to Gotham. And I decide it means Nightwing needs a cool new car.

136 is the first issue of Blüdhaven Lore, which is a six issue arc taking us up to Nightwing 141. After which is the Bad Seeds Gotham event, which was teased at Comics Pro last month.

More on that soon.

Next weekend I'll be in Richmond, Virginia for Galaxycon. Denys will also be there, so this'll be your first chance to get an issue of Nightwing signed by both of us. I should have copies with me, too. I believe I'm doing a panel or some panels on Saturday, so keep your eye out for that if you want to see me blather.

This is my first convention of the year and I'm looking forward to it. Spring is still deciding if it wants to lay claim to New York, but we've got to shake off the frost and emerge from the cave at some point.

Hope to see you there.

Sometimes you just fancy a light-hearted pick-me-up of a book.

Spoilers: things go boom very fast and very definitively. This is the kill chain to the end of the world laid out in stark, thoroughly researched black and white.

The strangest thing about reading this- which was published in 2024 before the US general election- is that you now have to assume it is set in something of a parallel timeline. There's presumed to be something like an adult in the room in most high stakes scenarios. It posits people in power acting or attempting to act for grander ideals than I've seen any evidence for in 2026.

The resounding clamour of the book is people bemoaning that "it didn't have to be like this," and I think we all know that feeling well by now.

Did you see this? They taught a clump of brain cells to play Doom.

They now claim to be building a data center out of brain cells.

Perhaps the future of our species is brains in jars playing increasingly hi-res Doom games powered by other brains in jars.

It doesn't have to be like this, but perhaps it will. If Jacobsen's book underscored anything, it's to never underestimate our capacity for wildly unnecessary and bizarre behaviour.

This has been thedeadairchannel. A ricochet off the desk of Dan Watters. Please do subscribe.