Maybe it's part of the wedding package...cake, dress, banquet, exploding minister. Oh, and this is my first post, hi everyone!

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If I ever get married remind me not to use the same Planners that Dick and Kory used.

Hi! Welcome to s_d. We don't bite much

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Welcome!

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Dick, baby, your hair. >_

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All I can think of is:

Don't tell my heart
My achy-breaky heart
I just don't think it understands...

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This is Devin Grayson's infamous Nightwing Annual story. There is NOTHING about this four colour car crash of a story that I will ever accept as canon, from joking about grotesque deaths (DONNA being the one to make the joke in particular), to Dick's hair to... well, to the whole damn story. ICK!

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Are there any good Nightwing Annuals? I hate Andreyko's Annual #2 with a fiery passion, and this is ... very bad, too.

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To be blunt: not as such. I enjoy this one because I like Devin Grayson's writing and am perfectly okay with Not Thinking about the suggested method to conduct the investigation, and I like the scenes in Andreyko's annual that aren't flashbacks, but otherwise...

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WHAT is that thing on his head.

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Whatever it is, it crawled there to die, and Dick is leaving it there out of respect.

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What's left of the first minister?

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I like Alfred's expression in the last scan.

Also: Greg Land art.

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I thought it was him, though it's pretty ugly here.
Or maybe it's just that thing on Dick's head?

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Dick! Is that a raccoon on your head? I know I'm not much of a fashion expert but good god that thing makes even me go crazy. Also who is dashing young woman that Dick is getting married to? and can someone tell me whether this is cannon and a little about what happens in the story.

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It's been a while since I read it, but this is more or less it... Remember that you asked for it....

A woman is suspected of being a black widow killer, as something like three of her wealthy young husbands have died in mysterious accidents. She also has a young son who has lost at least two dads.

Dick wants to investigate, and Bruce points out, apparently to Dick's surprise, that he IS the heir to the Wayne fortune (Be warned, Dick has an IQ roughly equivalent to a cold bowl of chicken soup in this story).

So what does Dick, trained detective, do? Rather than investigate the thing as he has been trained for years, he decides that the only way to find out what's going on is to marry her and see if she tries to kill him.

So he sweeps her off her feet, bonds with her son, and proposes to her. She accepts (It's never addressed, but this woman has some fairly serious "needy" issues IMHO).

Ultimately, on the honeymoon (which Dick spends sleeping on the couch because... well, apparently that would be to icky even for this story), we find out that it's not the wife who is the killer, but the woman we see Roy chatting up, the brides best friend who is consumed with jealousy that her friend wants to spend time with anyone other than her.

After psycho kinda-lesbian bitch is arrested, Dick reveals to his bride that they were never legally married, as he had Babs delay the filing of the marriage licence. He DOES offer to stay with her out of loyalty, and he likes her, but she agrees to do it only if he can promise her that he doesn't have any OTHER secrets. He can't do that so they split.

Where do I begin to say why I think this story REEKS? The whole "Marriage is the only way to do this" assumption is so seriously flawed in the first instance that it boggles the mind. The notion that DICK would come up with such a cold blooded plan, Bruce should have been calling THIS one out of bounds in terms of emotional manipulation. And what Dick does to the kid in question is so OOC as to defy belief. A kid who's lost at least two fathers, is used as a chesspiece by a guy motivated by parental loss? No way.

Sadly it IS still canon.

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The best friend had other motivations than psycho-lesbian jealousy - she was trying to avenge her father who'd taken the fall for financial illegal stuff Emily's father had committed (Emily's father being long dead in the story, so that's why she attempts to get Emily condemned instead of directing her vengeance at Emily's father).

A kid who's lost at least two fathers, is used as a chesspiece by a guy motivated by parental loss?

The kid only lost one father, his. His mother's other husbands both died during the honeymoons, and IIRC he's not mentioned as having been as close to them as he was to Dick. As for Dick's behaviour regarding the child, his sympathy toward him and the fact that he genuinely cares for him is shown and told both rather clearly imo; where do you see he tries to manipulate the child?

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The story sucked, plain and simple, so I will say only this: Oh, Roy, and his choices when it comes to fashion and women.

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icon_uk I thought you were going to tell me what happens in the story but all I see is a huge blur.

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I don't know whether to cry or just go FAIL.

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Considering that I've never heard of this story before at all, I suspect this ended up being a "let us never speak of it again" retcon, the sort WCW loved back in the day, where you just pretend it never happened and let it cease to be canon because nobody remembers it.

While it didn't work that well for WCW (who liked to use it on things that had happened just a couple of weeks--or even HOURS--before), it's actually a fairly elegant way to deal with things in comics, where more time passes. You just do a year or two of stories that wouldn't have any logical reason to reference it, and then quietly tell the editors not to allow writers to refer to it from there on out. No need for writing a story to hamhandedly erase it, you just pretend it's an "imaginary story" and act as if it never happened.

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Liked it better when it was called So I Married An Axe Murderer.

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Sensitivity? What can you expect from someone who would wear a turtleneck to a wedding? You too Roy, really couldn't find a tie?

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I think that's a mandarin collar dress shirt. Acceptable in some circles as business and formal attire if you don't like wearing a tie.

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All the lol-dead-minister stuff aside, when you're at someone's wedding, it is NOT THE TIME to bring up the previous wedding the groom attempted! Even (or especially?) if the neobride doesn't know about it. It's almost malicious!

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To be fair, I don't think anyone said they were referring Dick's last attempt at getting wed, they only kept expressing their relief that wow - no one got killed, and there were no supervillains rampaging through the aisles! Which is something of a rarity in the superhero community.

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