Can Dick Grayson convince Alfred to return to Gotham?
In 1995, DC released the one-shot Nightwing: Alfred’s Return as a means to assess the character’s popularity on his own merits. Since taking on the Nightwing mantle, Dick Grayson had made appearances throughout various DC publications such as Teen Titans, Action Comics and, of course, showing up in Batbooks such as Batman and Detective Comics. However, this was the character's first true headlining opportunity.
Nightwing: Alfred's Return has not aged well - I'm not even sure if it was good in the first place. For starters, the artwork we’re given here is serviceable at best. Facial expressions seem... off. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t recall Nightwing looking like John Cho with long hair. Because that’s what he looks like here. Also, he’s stuck in that awkward costume between his disco inferno days and the popular black and blue. I haven’t really read many stories of his while in that costume, does the yellow part serve as a glider? It's a part of his costume that was never consistently drawn. It just seems weird when artists have it flap around in the wind while others depict it like a piece of armor.
Unfortunately, the issue I have with Nightwing’s early 90’s look isn’t as big of a problem as I’d like it to be. That’s because he’s barely featured. This is an Alfred story guest starring Nightwing. This normally wouldn’t be a problem for me (I do love bad-ass Alfred, and we see him here), but the story just isn’t very good. After Bruce Wayne has gone back to being Batman having recovered from the events of Knightfall, Alfred, unable to bear seeing Bruce fail again, leaves him for London. Nightwing shows up to convince him to come back. If you’ve read any Batman comic since 1995, you can guess the ending. Alfred meets up with an old flame, suffers some tragedy - or what would have been a tragedy if we cared about the characters, and moves on with his life. That’s pretty much it.
If you’re interested in checking out a piece of Nightwing’s publication history, you might be able to find it for pretty cheap at your local comic shop - I think I paid about $3 for it. However, the story itself is rather boring and the artwork was serviceable at best.