Nightwing Annual 2024 is going to be tackling one of the biggest developments that’s happened during Tom Taylor’s run on the series. This latest Nightwing annual will be diving into Bea Bennett’s backstory. We learned in a recent storyline that Bea is actually the adopted daughter of a captain of a secret pirate society. When her adopted father was killed Bea took over as the leader of the secret pirate society. How did this all happen and what could be next for Bea Bennett? Let’s find out with Nightwing Annual 2024.
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer & Artist: Travis Moore
Colorist: Ivan Plascencia and Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Wes Abbott
NIGHTWING ANNUAL 2024 SOLICITATION
“DISCOVER THE SECRET ORIGIN OF THE PIRATE QUEEN! The secret origins of Bea Bennett! During Nightwing’s recent pirate adventure, we learned that Bea Bennett, Dick/Ric’s ex-girlfriend, is a pirate queen whose father, the Quartermaster, left her an entire pirate society! But what about her life before she became a pirate? Before she met Ric Grayson? Just what, and more importantly, who led her to where she is today. A backstory like no other with tales of betrayal, love, and independence.” – DC Comics
REVIEW
Nightwing Annual 2024 is a great example of how filling in a character’s backstory can fix what previous creative teams failed to do. Does this fix the Ric Grayson Saga for Nightwing? Absolutely not. That period of Nightwing went how it went and, like with other bad creative, there is no going back to retroactively fix that. But what can happen is elevating a character by giving them good genuine character work. Nightwing Annual 2024 does just that with Bea Bennett.
Right away Travis Moore set the mission statement for the structure of this story. This wasn’t going to be a flashback with the present-day Bea Bennett recollecting her origin story. Rather, Moore places us on a journey through Bea’s origin story alongside her. While Moore couldn’t get down to every single detail of Bea’s backstory where he made the best choices to tell his story.
The biggest choice Moore made was only spending a few pages on the secret pirate society part of Bea’s origin story. Given how there was an entire Nightwing story arc dedicated to this part of Bea’s life it was for the best. We already got all the details we needed to know about Bea the pirate captain. Spending a good chunk of Nightwing Annual 2024 on the pirate society would’ve felt like there was a reliance on that to carry the story.
Focusing on the choices Bea, known by her original real name of Destiny Alston, made after someone killed her mother made her narrative stronger. We see how important each choice Bea makes from leaving the hospital to training with her pirate family led her to where we last saw her in the present. Presenting things as Bea’s choice gives her an agency in her life that she was given during the Ric Grayson Saga.
The idea of character agency made how Bea’s life was closer tied into Dick Grayson’s life during New 52 and DC Rebirth was much more intriguing. Specifically, revealing that Bea completed her training at St. Hadrian Finishing School right when the Agent Grayson period for Nightwing started was a good surprise. It is a development that strengthens how much of a reach Spyral had.
This also provided an opportunity to really get over all the skills Bea has built up over her entire life. While we’ve seen glimpses Bea has been largely in Nightwing’s shadow when she’s shown off. This time around the focus was completely on Bea and we do see that she is a great spy and fighter. In turn, this helps to show that not everyone is at the superhero level that the spies are incredibly skilled.
What was surprising on this side was how Bea’s story provided much needed development for Condor Red. Condor Red is a character we saw who have an important but short role during the Ric Grayson Saga. Now showing that Condor Red was Bea’s partner during their time at Spyral made it clearer why he showed up when he did during that period of Nightwing.
The way Bea’s story ended up tying into KGBeast provided a good hook for what we see go down in the second half of this story. Learning that KGBeast was the one who targeted her mother gave Bea a motivation to go through all the rigorous training she did. It also made it so getting her revenge on her mother’s killer did create a blind spot for Bea. We see that she was easily trusting those she saw as helping achieve her goal. While that worked out with her adoptive father, we see that was not the case for her involvement with Spyral.
Specifically learning that Bea’s mom was a Spyral agent and was ultimately targeted by her partner, and Bea’s future mentor, was a good twist. It created a strong final conflict for Bea to overcome as she discovered the truth about how her life was manipulated. This gave a final villain to Bea’s story to have resolved.
All of this leading to Bea coming to understand how she has been putting up all these masks her entire life a good way to end this story. It made Bea’s return to her pirate family have a greater importance. Even with the years she spent away from it, the pirate society was her home. This decision helps to establish Bea as a character who doesn’t need to only appear in Nightwing.
Bea being established as a fully realized character is put over with the hook ending of her mother not being dead. This ending is a story that could be picked up in many other titles that Bea could easily fit in. Especially as it looks like Bea’s mother is still involved in the spy world.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Nightwing Annual 2024 achieves its goal of making Bea Bennet a fully realized character. The way Travis Moore told Bea’s origin story gave her character a lot of layers. With where this story concludes this annual leaves Bea’s character in a spot where she can appear in other DC Comics titles. Breaking the chain of being a Nightwing supporting character makes this annual a big success.
Story Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
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