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.

For Dick Grayson to overcome the fears that have recently hampered his Nightwing activities, he has to revisit one of his earliest conflicts, and here again Taylor takes a story we think we know every part of and unearths something new, convincingly making it seem it was there all along. And before the story ends, people do good for other people’s children, people do bad for their own children, and a father puts on his kid’s duds for the first time.

[Review contains spoilers]

Heartless, really Dick’s childhood bully Shelton Lyle, has been Dick’s antagonist but Batman Bruce Wayne’s analogue, curly as the metaphor is. That is, Shelton’s parents die and he’s left to be raised by his butler Gerald, a la Bruce, though in this case Shelton and Gerald are complicit in the Lyles' deaths and proceed to set off murdering together. Despite or because of their origins, Gerald and Shelton specialize in murdering parents to leave children orphaned, though Taylor is nuanced in how this cruelty doesn’t apply to themselves; when Nightwing nears defeating Heartless in the end, Gerald is enraged, chiding Nightwing for hurting “my child.”

It is another variation on how parenthood shows up in this Nightwing run. As mentioned, Gerald is to Alfred as Shelton is to Bruce, but I think Taylor is purposefully circumspect on this point; to an extent Bruce and Dick are more like brothers, with Alfred raising them both (and then Shelton becomes Dick’s analogue directly). The boundaries of parenthood are fluid: The adults of Bludhaven step in to protect other people's children in the Haven encampment in the book’s conclusion, while at the same time Heartless' henchmen are willing to riot and kill to keep their own children safe. In Nightwing Vol. 6: Standing at the Edge, two of comics' most nontraditional single dads, Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon, congratulate themselves over the success of their kids, while elsewhere Bludhaven mayor Melinda Zucco changes her last name to Grayson-Lin to honor a father she never knew.

These aspects come to a head in Fallen’s finale in two ways. First, for what is the first time I can recall, Bruce Wayne takes on the Nightwing mantle (we’ve seen plenty of the other way around). Another arc of Taylor and Redondo’s run has been Nightwing’s even-more-increasing leadership in the DC Universe, chosen to lead the Titans in taking over for the Justice League after Dark Crisis. We’ve seen Batman increasingly defer, even as recently as Absolute Power, but here the historic refrain “Gotham needs Batman” becomes “Bludhaven needs Nightwing,” and the master truly becomes the student, as it were. (“I quipped. Twice,” Bruce deadpans, hilarious but also a sure sign we deserve more Bruce-as-Nightwing content from Taylor.)

Second, I admit I was skeptical of whatever psychological block Taylor would reveal was holding Dick back from Nightwing’s acrobatics, especially when it began to seem like survivor’s guilt — believably but not wholly original. Instead, Dick comes to admit his realization that Tony Zucco meant to kill him and not John and Mary Grayson, which indeed seems so obvious it’s as if it were there all along (a flip-flop that so upends Shelton’s pattern, he kills Zucco for it). The Graysons' grave has never felt lacking in this book, but it’s a shock when we realize Dick rarely visits; here, we have parents and children “reunited” in the conclusion and also new families aborning — Melinda and her wife and bodyguard Audre, and Dick and Barbara Gordon, with Dick whispering his intention to marry her some day.

Admittedly I’m reading Taylor’s books out of order, having started his Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 1 before finishing his Nightwing run. Not that the two are related, so much as the aesthetic Taylor originated here — rich hero doing more for society with his money than buying cool gadgets — continues on into his work with Batman proper and Batman’s new focus on juvenile rehabilitation. Taylor puts a fine point on Heartless, by day a pharmaceuticals CEO, as an anti-populist villain, all too familiar; Nightwing scoffs that he’s “over” enemies like Heartless, “the self-obsessed. The greedy. The entitled … You bought brute force. But that doesn’t make you powerful.” Jon Kent dealt with similar hot button issues in Taylor’s Son of Kal-El; I’ll be curious to see if Taylor continues to continue that trend with Detective.

The chapter of Nightwing as leader of the heroes of the DC Universe seems to have reached its end with the return of the Justice League, at the same time as (if not because of) the end of Tom Taylor’s run. This is by no means a defeat, as an Eisner win and the swift release of an omnibus collection shows, only a reminder with Nightwing Vol. 7: Fallen Grayson that everything has its time and then those times end. I will admit, here at the close, that even as I complained about the lack of angst among Taylor’s Nightwing, the happy ending where Dick and Barbara keep their relationship and Melinda et al. make it out alive is rather pleasant. One for the ages, and surely not the last time we should see Taylor and Bruno Redondo collaborate.

[Includes original and variant covers, character designs, page processes]