Not really a "Batman RIP" tie-in, but still a pretty good book overall.  Essentially, Nightwing finds himself having to fight nightmare versions of some of Batman's worst villains due to being dosed with Scarecrow's fear chemical; all the while, the D.A. he's been hired by Harvey Dent to protect is in danger of being killed and Dick is desperate to save her.

I wasn't a huge fan of the "bad guys are all in the mind!!" aspect of the story; when I saw all the villains waiting in the room for Nightwing at the end of issue #148 I remember going "Oh, wow!  Next issue's gonna be awesome!"  Unfortunately, they all turn out to be the effect of Two-Face dosing Nightwing on scarecrow's fear agent, and what follows from that for most of the issue is Nightwing left fighting all the villains (Killer Croc, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Joker) in a drug-induced fear haze while he suffers from delusions that the room is filling up with blood and D.A. Carol Bermingham is being killed by each of them.  Unfortunately, this didn't seem clear to me that this was all just something happening in Dick's head, and even after it was spelled out it still seemed a bit confusing to me.

What did work in the fight, though, was Dick starting out by trying to hold his punches, but eventually realizing that in order to save Carol, he had to cross the line.  When Nightwing goes from being the typical "do not kill" superhero to one willing to jam Mr. Freeze's ice gun in the villain's own mouth and pull the trigger while punning about a "brain freeze", he became instantly cooler.  (Look--I can do a good pun myself!)  And I will admit, Carol's death came as a bit of a shock to me; I expected her to come back from the brink and be saved by Nightwing.  The fact that she actually died surprised and delighted me a bit.  It brought home the seriousness of the stakes in this story, as well as the true psychosis of Harvey Dent/Two-Face.

Ahhhh, Two-Face.  Though the book is titled Nightwing, this issue was really a beautiful examination of the crazy, twisted dual nature of one of Batman's oldest villains.  It was Harvey Dent that originally hired Nightwing to protect Carol Bermingham from an assassin charged with killing her, but here we discover that it was actually Two-Face who was the one given the task of taking Carol out.  Harvey Dent hired Nightwing to protect his old love from Dent's psychotic other side.  The total duality of nature that implies for the character is chilling to me; though I've read and seen lots of stories where it's assumed that Two-Face has two natures, this brought home the point by showing that Harvey Dent almost literally has no control over Two-Face.  They are two entirely different characters forced to reside in the same body.  Later, Harvey doesn't even seem to remember killing her--when he hears the announcement of her death over the television, he's surprised and distraught at her death, driven to an angry, bitter, homicidal rage at Nightwing's failure.  "He was supposed to protect her...from me...from him..." Dent forces out, and in that line it's plain that Dent has no control over Two-Face and the helplessness he feels at it, too.  He knows that he does evil things as Two-Face, he knows that Two-Face will commit crimes he doesn't approve of.  And he knows, deep down, that he's responsible for all of that--but he's set himself apart from Two-Face, refers to Two-Face as "him" and has taken independent action to thwart Two-Face's plans.  Unfortunately, as we see in this issue, it's impossible to separate himself fully from the criminal; just as he knew Two-Face's plans to kill Carol, Two-Face knew about his plans to use Nightwing as protection, and acted to thwart them.  Dent is his own worst enemy.

Peter Tomasi writes Nightwing really well, but as is probably plain in this review, I'm a much bigger fan of how he writes Two-Face.  I really enjoyed this book despite some of the confusion I had about what was going on in the fight scene in the beginning; to me, what made this book was the insight offered into the split mind of Harvey Dent.  I'm really interested to see where this story goes, and as long as this Two-Face storyline goes on, I'm there.  Don Kramer's art was fine as usual, and he did a good job depicting the bloody, hellish battlefield in Nightwing's mind, as well as the grief Harvey Dent felt upon learning of Carol Bermingham's death.  I also want to make note of Jay Leisten as inker--in an issue with so much red going on for the backgrounds, I found that he managed to keep things interesting and diverse enough so that it didn't all blend together and still looked engaging to the eye.  A great book overall despite a few weaknesses--bring on the next one, and more Two-Face!