Batman and Robin, v. 1: Born to Kill

Collects: Batman and Robin v. 2 #1-8 (2011-2)

Released: July 2012 (DC)

Format: 192 pages / color / $24.99 / ISBN: 9781401234874

What is this?: The New 52 reboot of the adventures of Batman (Bruce Wayne) and Robin (his son, Damian) against a villain from Bruce’s past.

The culprits: Writer Peter J. Tomasi and artist Patrick Gleason

Oh, DC reboots … I never get tired of you. No, wait, that’s not true — I’m sick and tired of them. This is unfortunate, because at the current rate, I expect four or five full or partial reboots before I start collecting my meager Social Security checks.

But approaching senility, I think, will make the reboots more palatable because I will no longer wonder: what do I need to remember? What should I forget? Because rebooted titles never get rid of everything.

Take the New 52’s Batman and Robin, v. 1: Born to Kill. I read Grant Morrison’s entire pre-reboot run on the title; what do I need to remember from it? Did that series even happen? Did Dick Grayson train Damian Wayne at any time? Or did Bruce Wayne’s son immediately begin training with Bruce? What is Bruce’s relationship with Talia, Damian’s mother? We haven’t seen Damian and Bruce interact much, but is Damian’s character the same?

Admittedly, most of those questions aren’t important or are only important when the writer chooses to address them. But their presence is distracting, and I have trouble dismissing them and others out of hand, especially when writer Peter J. Tomasi seems to have changed who Damian is.

Seems to have changed Damian. One can argue he is acting differently in different circumstances. In Morrison’s series, Damian was a brat, supremely confident in his abilities, and annoyingly dismissive of patience and Dick Grayson. In Tomasi’s series, Damian is unintentionally dangerous, cruel, impatient, petulant, and obsessed with Daddy. I do not like Tomasi’s Damian, either on his own or in comparison with Morrison’s Damian. But it may be fair to say I don’t care for Damian when he’s around Bruce Wayne rather than Dick.

The art doesn’t help Tomasi sell his version of Damian. There are a couple of moments in which Patrick Gleason‘s illustrations are supposed to convey some subtlety of Damian’s character, but the art does not do so. In Tomasi’s pitch for the series, included at the end of Born to Kill, it mentions Damian killing a “sick” bat. But in the actual issue, Damian snatches a seemingly healthy bat out of the air and crushes it. This transforms the act from “morally debatable” to “psychopathic.” When Bruce gives Damian a dog after this, it feels less like an act of therapy or socialization than a death sentence for the dog. (Of course it isn’t, which makes Damian’s bat-killing mystifying or irrelevant.)

In another scene, Bruce angrily scatters some of Damian’s drawings. What upsets Bruce is largely unseen — one drawing has Two-Face’s head split by an axe, but there’s no indication of who wielded the axe. (Seriously, the picture is more high-school doodling than disturbing.) The rest the pictures that are visible are innocuous, leaving the question of what upset Bruce so much: that a boy raised by the League of Assassins and sent into the streets every night to punish criminals and psychopaths would draw violent images? I would be shocked if he did not.

But Tomasi is hitting the father / son dynamic heavily. Bruce has been a father before, to Dick (and possibly Jason?), when Dick was about the age Damian is (probably.) Yet he totally mishandles Damian — his behavior would be a mishandling of any child or any Robin. But Bruce reacts differently when Damian is captured than when any other Robin was taken, threatening to kill his captor and losing his cool … I supposed blood really is thicker than formal adoption papers. It makes me think less of Bruce, though. His concern over Damian’s development if he were to disappear is touching, except that he was gone and presumed dead for quite a while, and Dick did a fine job.

As for the plot, Tomasi installs one of perquisites of the reboot: the continuity implant. Bruce and Damian are menaced by Morgan Ducard, a.k.a. Nobody. Morgan is the son of bloodthirsty manhunter Henry Ducard, one of the men who trained Bruce to be Batman. Morgan’s got his own daddy issues, a grudge against Bruce, and a similar mission to Batman’s. Morgan is a vigilante as well, but he kills the criminals he captures, and he derides Batman for being soft on crime by merely imprisoning the punks. So Morgan goes about killing small-time criminals, trying to convince Damian to become his student, and attempting to kill Bruce. This is … so, so dull, especially spread over eight issues. Morgan knows Bruce is Batman, but he doesn’t do anything clever with this knowledge; he goes for the gloating kill after capturing Bruce, then he tries for a garden-variety seduction-by-darkness of Damian.

Tamosi’s dialogue is sometimes tin-eared, especially in battle scenes; when, for instance, Batman and Robin burst in on gunmen, one says, “What the hell?!,” and Batman responds, “Yes, that’s exactly where you are tonight!” That’s awful. Or sometimes the dialogue just feels wrong for the characters: when Nobody is about to kill a human trafficker in a vat of acid, Damian complains Nobody is “dunking him in acid!” (I don’t think the “dunking” is the sticking point.) But Tomasi does get a few moments right, most of them involving Alfred and his parenting suggestions. But Born to Kill doesn’t collect eight issues of Alfred & Robin or Butlering Comics, so that’s cold comfort.

Tomasi also missed on a few names. He uses Henri Ducard — the alias Ra’s al Ghul uses in the movie Batman Begins — for Morgan’s father and Bruce’s former mentor. ⁶⁶ Is this to suggest Ducard is Ra’s or draw a parallel between them? Probably not, but that’s what I thought of. Morgan’s nom du revanche, Nobody, is clever if you’re Odysseus or an imaginary friend; otherwise, it’s a mistake, as Morgan has a strong sense of self and leaves an unignorable trail of dead and missing in his wake. And as for the Great Dane Bruce buys for Damian — OK, I can see avoiding Ace (the Bat Hound) as being too obvious. But if you’re going to name a Great Dane after a Shakespearean character, I can think of one involved with a bloodbath and having parental issues that fits. Or, if “Hamlet” is too on the nose, why not “Horatio,” which makes a great name for a sounding board? Either is better than “Titus,” which Damian ultimately chooses.

Other than my previous complaints about Gleason, I have few objections to his art. I liked his design of the Russian Batman, even though he is only briefly in the book. Nobody’s design, though, is a generic mishmash: insectoid (apparent multiple eyes) and black, with glove blasters. Perhaps that fits a character “Nobody” better than a truly distinctive design. Gleason’s action scenes are chaotic without devolving into incoherence; although there are some confusing bits, I never lost the thread of the narrative.

Still Gleason’s art isn’t enough to pull Kill past “acceptable.” Is there anything wrong with Kill? No, not in the long run. I’m a little confused why DC started the reboot in this title with such weak fare, and I’m downright bewildered by the positive blurbs on the cover. It’s a slow story and not a very interesting one.

Rating: (2 of 5)

Batman & Robin, v. 2: Batman vs. Robin

Collects: Batman & Robin #7-12 (2010)

Released: November 2010 (DC)

Format: 168 pages / color / $24.99 / ISBN: 9781401228330

What is this?: Batman and Robin investigate the true fate of Bruce Wayne.

The culprits: Writer Grant Morrison and pencilers Cameron M. Stewart and Andy Clarke

As the calendar marches toward Christmas, once again, I have decided that nothing says the holiday season like a child in a red-and-green costume punching and stabbing people. Batman and Robin, v. 2: Batman vs. Robin is even more Christmas-y than Batman: Shadows of Gotham, v. 1: Hush Money because it involves awkward family gatherings. Sure, when my family gets together for the season, we generally don’t attempting to murder a step-brother or learn about a clone-brother that will replace a family member in his mother’s, but there’s still the general aura of awkwardness and disapproval that really says, “Season’s greetings.”

I looked at the first issue of Batman & Robin in one of my Quarter Bin reviews, and it was intriguing. Batman & Robin is writer Grant Morrison’s baby, and with him in charge, there’s little chance of it being boring. (Incomprehensible, maybe, but not boring.) That’s a very good thing, because this collection centers around the resurrection of Bruce Wayne — an event that was inevitable as soon as we learned Bruce Wayne was dying, let alone when it was first hinted at in the book. With something as inevitable as Wayne’s return, there’s little joy in the destination, so we have to enjoy the journey, and Morrison does string us along on quite a journey — puzzles in portraits, secret passages, bat demons, architecture and graveyard patterns — as Damian sniffs disdainfully at Tim Drake’s theory of Batman being sent back in time and the da Vinci Code style shenanigans. Morrison adds in a few red herrings in the form of Lazarus Pits and dead clones (hey! it’s comics!).

Fortunately, that’s just the “A” plot — I doubt even Morrison could make that unstoppable plot train interesting if that were the entirety of Batman vs. Robin. Morrison brings in Batwoman for a three-issue arc, tangentially hauling along the plots of the Crime Coven and the prophecies of the Crime Bible. Then, in the second arc, he goes on to include the return of Dr. Hurt and the Black Glove, introduce Oberon Sexton, and show Damian’s battle for independence from his mother. In that second arc, there’s a good mix of subplot types — one leads to a surprising reveal at the end of the book, one is a teaser for future stories, and the other complicates the main story. The latter, Damian vs. his mother, Talia, is my favorite; it’s a nice idea that Talia would use her wayward son as a weapon against the man who she feels isn’t really worthy to wear her dead lover’s costume. I also like the inclusion of Knight and Squire (essentially the British Batman and Robin) in the first arc; the loony Silver-Age background and adversaries — such as Old King Cole, who has mine and chimney-themed henchmen — are a hoot.

The rest of the “B” and subplots are less enjoyable. It’s fortunate that there’s such an easy main plot to hang on to; I can see being easily frustrated or confused by the Black Glove or 99 Fiends or domino references if you weren’t overly familiar with the “Batman: RIP” storyline or the previous Batman & Robin issues. Neither the editors nor Morrison do much to make you familiar with that information either. And then there’s the Crime Bible prophecies and Batwoman; I have no idea what a new reader would make of that — incoherent babble, I suppose. When a true mystery comes along, like the identity of Oberon Sexton, it’s impossible for readers to know whether that’s something they should already be aware of or something to be revealed.

The art for the two arcs in Batman & Robin are divided between two pencilers, Cameron M. Stewart and Andy Clarke. I like Stewart’s art quite a bit, although I admit that’s because it fits in the general smooth, pretty style that I admire the most. He has a lot of funny with the goofy, faux-Silver Age world that is British crime. His action scenes are fluid and easy to follow, and he does a good job with emotion. On the other hand, his style feels a little light for a Batwoman or a resurrection / madness of Bruce Wayne story, dealing with death and revival as it does. (It isn’t all his fault; Morrison doesn’t exactly get across the monumental nature of using the Lazarus Pit to return from the dead, treating it more like a scenery-moving stage direction.) Also, his characters are astonishingly clean and bright, despite fighting coal-themed villains in a coal mine.

Clarke is less my mug of tea and more of a Frank Quitely type, for those readers who are looking for the style of the title’s regular artist. His heavily hatched style would have been more at home in the first arc, as it gives the characters and scenes a sense of texture that would have fit the grubby underground settings. It’s a welcome change, though. On the other hand, his characters have a tendency to look frozen when not actually in action, especially Talia and Alfred.

Batman vs. Robin is a fun book, but it’s not for those who are just looking to pick up a random Batman book — even though I didn’t think as much of it, Hush Money is the book for readers coming back or new to Batman. But if you have a reasonable familiarity with the past five years of DC continuity, have the ability to ignore bits you don’t quite understand, or are looking to get into Bat-Family continuity, then Batman vs. Robin might be right up your alley.

Rating: (3.5 of 5)

The Quarter Bin: Batman & Robin #1

Trade paperbacks and — God forbid — hardbacks are a big risk; dropping $14.99 to $34.99 on material you’re not sure about can lead to buyer’s remorse and bitter, bitter recriminations. Why didn’t someone warn you that Captain America and the Falcon, v. 1: Two Americas was so bad? A sample would have warned you, but you had to order the whole thing.

Well, I’m not made of money either. So I’m trying out that sampling approach in The Quarter Bin. Recent comics that have lower promotional prices, are Free Comic Book Day giveaways, or I have found in that holy of holies, the Quarter Bin, get a quick review and a recommendation on whether it might be worthwhile to pick up the trade. So, without further ado, we have …

The Issue: Batman & Robin (special edition) #1 (August 2009, DC)

The Culprits: Written by Grant Morrison, art by Frank Quitely

The Hook: Cheerful Dick Grayson takes over as Batman, with Bruce Wayne’s brooding son, Damian, as his Robin.

Collected in: Batman and Robin, v. 1: Batman Reborn

Strengths: You know what you’re going to get with a Grant Morrison story — some interesting story ideas and some sick villains. The latter is here, as the villains go from cartoonishly ugly to terrifying within a single issue. The former … not yet, although that’s not a bad thing when Morrison writes for DC: he has a fascination with Silver Age ideas / stories that should be left alone. This isn’t Silver Age stuff, although there is a whiff of silver in the circus folk adversaries and their mysterious cargo of dominoes. On the other hand, I want to know why those dominoes are important. Dick slips into the Batman costume with some — but not too much — angst while watching Damian slip into his old costume. Morrison revives the Bronze Age Batcave under the Wayne Foundation building (not that it’s named in the story) for the new Batman.

Weaknesses: European carnies? Really? Against Batman? Also, I don’t like Frank Quitely’s art — I find it creepy at the best of times — those wide heads that aren’t quite … smooth, unsettling faces. The Flying Batmobile doesn’t particularly look like a Batmobile.

Mitigation: Many people think I’m stupid for not liking Quitely’s art, that he’s quite innovative and an excellent storyteller. And I do like the slightly retro styling of the vehicles in Quitely’s Gotham. On the other hand, there’s always time for Morrison to run off the rails, as he occasionally did in Batman: R.I.P..

Judgment: I enjoyed this and was intrigued by the story, occasionally in spite of myself. There’s a definite emphasis on the new — from the Batcave to the Batmobile, everything but Alfred has been changed and rearranged for a new Batman — so it actually feels different from what has come before. Even if Bruce Wayne is coming back and Morrison’s spent the last couple of years writing Batman.

Hardcover, TPB, or Nothing?: Unless you disliked Morrison’s previous Bat-work, I would recommend the TPB — I enjoy Batman, and I enjoyed Morrison and Quitely’s collaboration on New X-Men — but that doesn’t come out for another seven months. So if you want Batman & Robin in a collected form, you have to go with the hardcover until next year.