Dick Grayson has just learned an earth-shattering revelation about his family. Here’s the true story behind Nightwing’s secret family tree.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Nightwing #82, on sale now from DC.
Nightwing’s time defending Bludhaven during the Infinite Frontier era has been especially tumultuous as Dick Grayson faces a new supervillain named Heartless while trying to navigate the more complicated aspects of his personal life. One major obstacle for Grayson has been Melinda Zucco recently being appointed Mayor of Bludhaven, the apparent daughter of Tony Zucco, the mobster who murdered Dick’s parents John and Mary Grayson before his eyes when he was just a young boy. And after Melinda confessed she was actually Dick’s half-sister, the truth behind this bombshell revelation has finally been revealed as Dick learns more about a deep secret his parents kept from him all this time.
Nightwing #82 — by Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, Rick Leonardi, Neil Edwards, Andy Lanning, Scott Hanna, Adriano Lucas and Wes Abbott — pulls back the curtain on Melinda’s origins. Melinda introduces Dick to her mother Meili Lin, who was trafficked into the country at a young age and made to be an arranged wife for Tony Zucco as moved up the ranks in Gotham City’s criminal underworld. Seeing an opportunity to run away from her abusive husband while he took her to see Haley’s Circus, John sheltered Meili before he and his future wife Mary fought off an angry Zucco. In the months that followed, with Meili accompanying the circus around the country, she and John began a whirlwind romance as John and Mary were nothing more than friends and trapeze partners at the time. Zucco eventually tracked down Meili and the circus to Star City, taking his wife with him forcibly back to Gotham after ambushing John in his own trailer.
Unbeknownst to Zucco at the time, Meili was already three months pregnant with Melinda, who was born back in Gotham six months later and took on her father’s family name. Zucco always publicly downplayed suspicions over his daughter’s parentage to save face but privately resented her and Meili for it, with Zucco not actively standing in his wife’s way when she left him a second time years later, with Melinda a young girl at this point. Meili contemplated reuniting with John at the circus, to raise Melinda together as a whole family, but after observing John and Mary now a married couple raising a young Dick to follow in their aerial footsteps, decided it was best if she raised Melinda on her own instead of disrupting the fledgling circus family.
While Dick had assumed ever since learning of Melinda Zucco that she took more after her father, Melinda was actually raised by her loving single mother after they finally left the abusive Tony Zucco for good, with Melinda aware of Dick and the Graysons long before he was aware of her. This shared family history also gives Tony a particularly personal reason to ultimately murder John and Mary Grayson rather than just another job given to him by the mob targeting the circus. Humiliated by John for stealing his wife away from him and getting her pregnant, Tony had a vested interest in getting the last laugh on the Flying Graysons that tragic night.
Dick has finally gotten to know the half-sister he never knew he had and a side of his father that John Grayson took with him to his untimely grave. While Melinda never got the opportunity to get to know her biological father, she grew up with her loving single mother. But with both aspects of Nightwing’s life now known to his half-sister and Heartless still on the loose, Dick’s mission has just gotten a lot more complicated.
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