NIGHTWING #80 Cover by Bruno Redondo

NIGHTWING #80 Cover
by Bruno Redondo
Written by Tom Taylor
Unique Digital Screen Print
Not for Sale

One of the most enjoyable storytelling mechanics of the Tom Taylor & Bruno Redondo run on Nightwing was the gradual dissemination of new information mixed with the planting of visual clues that lent to rereading the previous issue everytime a new issue hit the shelves.

This issue teased new villain Heartless right on the cover, but revealed nothing until past the staples. In a way, this harkens back to the pre-Image era and to Peter David's run on Hulk and David Micheline's run on Spider-man, which leaned heavily on subtlety back when there was an expectation of literacy among comic readers. By the 2020s superhero comics had been mostly dumbed down to such a degree that one could get the gyst by turning 22 pages in 30 seconds —and without the technical proficiency of Dale Keown or Todd McFarlane. Al Ewing's tenure on Immortal Hulk was the only other monthly floppy getting me back into comic shops in this era; by maintaining a high artistic bar for both words an pictures.

Bruno was working exclusively digitally at this point, and the paper and print quality is exceptional. The digital screen printing process on this page imbues the inks with a striking texture. Signed by the artist on verso and on a C.o.A., this is about as close as you can get to analog work in a monoprint, preserving the bragging rights of being the only owner of this art.