Nightwing: Our Worlds at War #1

Die, Die, and Die Again

Chuck Dixon Writer
Rick Leonardi Penciller
John Lowe Inker
Noelle Giddings Colorist
Digital Chameleon Separator
Willie Schubert Letterer
Michael Wright Editor

Looks like we have another Jae Lee cover for this latest Our Worlds at War one-shot. This one isn't too bad, showing Nightwing fighting some less-than-human cavemen. This indicates that we're in for another nonessential, time-traveling tie-in to this massive crossover.

Our story opens with Nightwing trying to combat the riots that have broken out in Gotham City since the war began. But when he receives a distress call from Oracle, Dick Grayson rushes off to Barbara Gordon's aid. Babs explains to Dick that she's been tracking a virus that appeared at the same time as Imperiex. She believes the virus is from the future and is fighting back by sending assassins after her through email. To try to avoid the virus, Oracle and Nightwing visit a S.T.A.R. Labs facility that houses a strange device that is surrounded by a temporal field, which transports whoever steps into it to a random moment in history.

Oracle and Nightwing step into the field and reappear in 1934 and are promptly attacked by a mobster, who was given a letter instructing him to kill the two of them. Our heroes easily defeat the man, then commandeer his car to help them out in all the other time periods they visit. Every time they drive into the temporal field, they end up being surrounded by people trying to kill them, no matter how far they go back in history. It is after their adventure with the cavemen people that they cross paths with Young Justice in the Timestream.

Eventually, Nightwing and Oracle decide to use holograms to fake their deaths. This successfully wards off the mountain man sent to kill them, which gives them enough time to somehow figure out how to get back home. Whoever launched the virus, perhaps Brainiac 13, finds out that Oracle has survived, but he decides he has more important things to worry about now.


This issue sucked. The art was lackluster and the story completely worthless. At least when Young Justice traveled through time, they got to actually see Brainiac 13 and Imperiex. This issue does no such thing, only referencing a futuristic virus, but not actually saying what makes this virus so bad. There was never a sense of a threat, and the story ultimately has nothing to do with Our Worlds at War. I'm really confused by these one-shots. The JLA one was absolutely essential to the story, but the Young Justice and especially the Nightwing one-shots could easily be skipped.

Next time, we'll take a very brief look at JLA #57, one of the few issues that did not tie-in to Our Worlds at War.