There’s nothing greater than a parent’s love for their child (or fur-baby) in the finale of Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo’s run, Nightwing Vol. 7: Fallen Grayson. This has been a catalyst from the start, as Dick “Nightwing” Grayson had to decide what to do with the fortune left to him by his late “grandfather” Alfred Pennyworth and then to deal with the consequences thereof.

We have known for a while the identity of Taylor’s long-running villain Heartless and his connection to Nightwing, such that there seemed no mystery left as the story reaches its end, just suspense as to the conclusion. But Redondo draws a brilliant two-page sequence in Fallen’s third chapter in which a variety of events from across the run, all of which the audience has been privy to, are suddenly recast in a way that reveals a conspiracy that we might have expected, but certainly didn’t see unfolding under our noses. That’s smart work on Taylor’s part, not unexpected, both recasting the over 40 issues that got us here but also offering a bit of surprise even when we thought the finale was forgone.