Grayson #4 Review

Catch me if you can.

Tim Seelay combines the free-flowing Nightwing and the secretive Agent 37 into a beautiful balancing act for Dick Grayson, as tense mysteries are balanced by a playful chase.

Helena works well as a foil for Dick, while the artwork by Mikel Janin is awesome as always.

SPOILERS FOLLOW…………….

While being debriefed by Mr Minos, Grayson irritates Helena by suckling on an exotic lollipop. That is, until Helena slaps it out of his mouth.

Despite all that, he still keeps it.

Through a montage of panels, we see Dick and Helena infiltrate the Checkmate’s Black Knight carrier and retrieve a hard drive containing information on the Paragon Project.

Mr Minos brings up Agent 8 again, mentioning grief counseling. His saying that she ate people makes me believe this was Dr Ashemoore,‘Stomach’ turned Agent of Spyral, and then killed in action last issue.

Back at St. Hadrian’s, a group of girls studying there find that a man (Dick Grayson) is staying there through one of them, Lotti.

In his room, Dick reveals in his communications with Batman that the lollipop was sent to the Batcave – and that it contains in addition to his and Helena’s DNA, a collection of microbots that devour anything belonging to Mr Minos that falls on foreign ground.

Even as Dick is concerned with that enormity of Minos’s paranoia, he hears the girls outside and leads them on a merry chase around St Hadrian’s grounds (bare-chested, of all things!) and it is Helena who stops him (after investigating his room).

Meanwhile in Dubai, Midnighter continues his search for the missing super-organs by hanging a person by his ankles thousands of feet above ground. Apollo arrives to bring back his ex-lover and former Stormwatch member to the team, but Midnighter lets the man fall to distract Apollo and escape.

Mr Minos berates Dick for revealing himself to the students and assigns him a new designation – a gay acrobatics teacher at the school. Meanwhile, Lotti is revealed as someone who has planted cameras everywhere, and Minos awards her an extra credit – though he tells Helena to punish the students who were outside.

Back at the School, Helena and Dick engage in a playful race.

There is a palpable tension across this issue – as deception and lies litter the atmosphere. Dick is both hiding his true intentions yet revealing in the spy game, and Helena is deceived by that double faced approach.

SPOILERS END……………..

This issue was both tense yet playfully light, as Dick played the double game well enough to both deceive SPYRAL and recapture his blissful early days.

Though given enough time this may wear thin, still now it’s a good cat-and-mouse game going on.

The artwork by Janin is awesome as usual.

So, I give it 9.5 out of 10.

+The cat and mouse game is presented well

+Dick’s dual identity is elaborated on beautifully

+Some tense moments balanced by playful ones

+Dick and Helena’s interactions

+Great artwork by Janin

-Given enough time, the secrecy theme may wear thin