By the end of Forever Evil, Dick Grayson is screwed. His identity has been revealed, he’s been strapped to a bomb, and he’s just generally had his ass kicked. So, this being Dick Grayson, he’s changing cities and careers yet again, this time in Arch-er,Grayson.
Essentially, the thrust of the book is Dick Grayson, Super-Spy. The rest of the Batfamily thinks Dick is dead, which frees him up to, well, basically join a more serious version of ISIS, according to USA Today:
Grayson’s new employer is the international spy agency Spyral, an organization created by writer Grant Morrison for his Batman, Incorporated series. [Co-writer Tom] King sees it as representative of today’s intelligence community: They’re the people who stop bad guys from doing bad things, yet to do that, they employ questionable tactics such as mind erosion.
Also, DC admits there will be a lot of fan service for Nightwing’s substantial female base. You know, because the book was so chaste and demure in that respect before.
It’s certainly an interesting direction to take the character, but at the same time, fans have reason to be skeptical. Dick Grayson is a character that DC just can’t seem to get the hang of; he’s been anchoring his own book for nearly twenty years, and yet it feels like every few years Dick is handed an emotional setback and has to move to a new city to get it together. It’s like the guy’s perpetually in his early twenties. The New 52 even made him twenty-one.
Still, we’ll give it a shot, if for no other reason than Tim Seeley and Mikel Janin are a great creative team. And besides, we all know this isn’t permanent: Grayson can never stay away from Batman for long, unless they manage to turn this into a TV show on the CW as well.