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Andrews's (that is correct punctuation) Reign is probably the bigger rip off. It's a four issue series, has the same sort of setting, and even has the media intercut. Hell, one of the newscasters is named Miller Jansen.

Now, I stopped reading Grayson's Nightwing fairly early on, so I never read Born Again. Did Deathstroke blow up Nightwing's brownstone? Did he have all his accounts frozen? Did Nightwing go insane and have to claw his way back to sanity? These aren't rhetorical questions, I'd like to know.

Perhaps I'm not qualified to answer this question, but to me, as I read Spiderman: Reign, it just screamed DKR to me, and it's a blatent homage/rip off.

Nightwing was written (quite accidentily) I'm sure like a Bill Watts territory feud, right down to the Dusty finish where he almost got evidence against Blockbuster.

"Nightwing was written (quite accidentily) I’m sure like a Bill Watts territory feud, right down to the Dusty finish where he almost got evidence against Blockbuster."

You even had "Baby Doll" changing sides...Though I don't think Nicola was booked to rape Big Dust. (If she had, Sam Houston might have gotten a bigger push.)

Just from its description Spider-Man:Reign sounds like a blatant Dark Knight rip-off. But I haven't read either.

I don't recall Batman getting his Batawang out in DKR, though.

Thanks, I'm here all Knight.

You guys are COMPLETELY missing the point of Spiderman: Reign. It is not trying to re-invent the wheel. It is clearly intended to pay a certain degree of homage to DKR. Obviously it will not be completely the same.... we will just have to wait and see how it will be different when applied to Spiderman's mythology.

I am VERY familiar with Devin's NW run.... and there is one HUGE difference between that run and Reign. The difference is that Devin actually thought shewas writing something profound.... as opposed to the literal rape-fest that it was (NW was IN FACT RAPED by Tarantula in issue 93...something that Devin herself expressly admitted both in the written script that was shown online as well as in interviews where she admitted the act of sex between Tarantual and NW on the rooftop after killing Blockbuster was non-consensual on NW's part).

Frankly, until I see senior citizen Parker take it from behind, there is no possible way that Reign can end up such a creative failure and alienate as many fans as Devin's NW did. And let me add that while there is no evidecne to support my next statement..... I find it rather interesting that Devin's 'tale of failure and redemption' for NW was so disastrous that but for the intervention of Geof Johns and Company.... Dan Didio would have had NW killed off in Infinite Crisis (an event that immediately followed the conclusion of her run).

Also, I wish to point out that Devin's had NW do only two things to apparently satisfy NW's need for redemption. She had him turn in Tarantual to the police..... and then while Bludhaven was slowly being destroyed by Chemo.... had him ignore a city full innocents in danger.... to save Blockbuster's lawyer!!! I kid you not. To call Devin's NW run a bowl of storytelling diarhea would be too flattering.

At least Kaare Andrews is being more upfront about the inspiration for his story.... and I have no illusions about what to expect. In fact.... it is precisely because I think I have an idea what to expect that Mr. Andrews may pull a fast one on us all.... and do something unexpected. But even if the story fails to be seen as original..... it will STILL be a different story because Spiderman is NOT Batman..... and while structure and future setting might be similar.... do NOT presume that the journey will be boring.

And for god's sake..... don't insult poor Kaare by comparing his run to Devin's.

"Frankly, until I see senior citizen Parker take it from behind..."

As soon as you typed that, I was unable to read anything else you wrote because of the biblical amounts of tea interfacing with my monitor via the nasal cavities.

The answer, of course, is "Batman: The Cult."

I kid! But I second the assessment that Reign just has to be an homage - it's too blatantly similar, and Andrews has been pretty public about that being his intent. It's a clumsy homage, and maybe it uses homage as an excuse to be lazy in the same way ripoffs are, but I still think it's of a different kind than books like "The Cult," that simply replicated the tone and narrative techniques of DKR in an attempt to beat some more manure out of the dead horse.

Mule...

Like I said on the CBR boards: "Now if the next issue is a Watchmen homage and the one after that homages, say, Eightball or the Lee/Kirby FF that could be cool."

But arguing that it's paying "A certain degree of homage" to DKR is like arguing that the sun radiates "A teeny weenny itsy bitsy l'il degree of warmth."

It's pure homage, and there's very little there BUT homage.

I mean, it wasn't terrible homage. The first shot of Spidey in costume was cool. But the entire point of the book was S-MR.

Reign is really what my 10 year old self imagined a Marvel DKR would be like, and you can figure it out yourself if it would be good or bad.

Grayson's Nightwing is a much more complex beast, a case of a writer having an idea of an end point but absolutely no concept of how to get there, and her paranoia about fandom spinning out of control.

"right down to the Dusty finish"

Somebody deserves a Nerd Point (counterpart to the Cool Points, donchewknow?) just for being able to work that into a sentence so effortlessly...

--yo
playing Ricky Morton. Off-Broadway.

I wonder how many comics have Dusty Finishes?