Nightwing #94:

There was less focus on Tarantula than I expected, from reading the initial reactions here; maybe I'm just not used to the conventions of superhero comics yet. I do think that the action scenes are Tarantula-focused rather than Nightwing-focused because Grayson is continuing to emphasize that Tarantula sees herself as a hero and considers what she does as morally justified. This was, for me, one of the most fascinating things about the story arc climaxing in #93: Tarantula isn't actually an anarchic force, she has quite a strong moral philosophy -- it's just one that's really messed up. She actually sees everything she does in #93--from shooting Blockbuster to fucking Nightwing--as being, not just fun, but the Right Thing to Do. And she's not oblivious enough not to notice that Nightwing is a mess, but she's oblivious enough to interpret it entirely through her own biases, which are that he's not used to facing The Real Hard Truth of the World, and he still needs to loosen up.

The previous arc led up to a climax in which definitions of heroism/questions about vigilantism/concepts of maximum allowable force clashed -- and Dick caved, in part because he never did see how seriously Tarantula took her own definitions. I think there's a lot farther for him to fall, but along with the personal conflicts of this arc, it still looks like one of the central concerns is going to be Dick's (re)construction of his own idea of morality -- which may end up reaffirming the ideas of Batman & Babs (or his own perception of their ideas), but which is going to have to take Tarantula into account as well.

I think she's probably going to be dead by the end of it, because in plot terms her recklessness is an unfired gun and in symbolic terms she seems to be the limited and selfish view that needs to be sacrificed in order to create a more mature philosophy.

But, as I said, I don't know that I get superhero comics yet; so maybe I'm coming at this from a completely cracked perspective.

[edited for typos]

Micole! You've said what I've wanted to say so much better than I ever could.

I don't think you're cracked, Micole -- one of the tensions of the Batfamily in particular has always been the fact that the standards for defining good vs. bad vigilantes are very much there, but unspoken. Learning lots of martial arts and wanting to fight crime isn't enough. Tarantula is a wildly fucked up case, but from a certain angle (hers) you could say that she's a better vigilante by the family's own definitions than Huntress (in it for herself) or Robin II (saw it all as a big game and got killed for it), not to mention a pathetic character like Nitewing (bugfuck crazy and just doesn't get it, but somehow well-meaning underneath it all). In other hero myths in the comic verse, it's easier -- if you're a metahuman or alien with wacky powers, what you do with your powers may be questionable or even evil, but the fact that you get to do anything with them at all is pretty clear .

Micole, I think your analysis is spot-on.

One thing I may have missed in my hasty reading of back issues: Why did Tarantula become a vigilante?

I don't know -- because she trained to be an FBI agent and then wound up in social work. Meanwhile her brother becomes a D.A. -- it's like there was this v. strong thread of doing service to the community but I don't remember any sort of backstory as to why they followed those paths.

IIRC, it wasn't any big traumatic event so much as a general growing up in a shitty neighborhood and wanting to make things better path.

Why the hell does Tarantula suddenly remind me of Dizzy from 100 Bullets? That's weird.

More unrecognizable than in the scenes that weren't deleted?

In the deleted scenes it's obvious she's trying for some kind of accent, it's just unclear what. In the rest of the movie she just sounds a little odd. At least to me.

Question - is Identity Crisis a stand-alone series, is it a part of the (an?) ongoing continuity, or is it the setup of one?

Frank, this week's Identity Crisis was the first issue of a standalone miniseries -- IIRC it'll go to either 7 or 8 issues altogether. As far as I know it is in continuity with other DC titles.