Batman and Robin #8 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (writer), Patrick Gleason (penciller), Mick Gray (inker), John Kalisz & Guy Major (colorists)

The Story: Son, what say we leave this cadaver and play some catch?

The Review: Over the years, Batman has been built up in both competence and legend that he’s attained a mythic status well in keeping with the fact that he hangs with the most powerful beings on the planet without question.  Yet we should never make the mistake of seeing him as invulnerable—and I’m not talking physically.  Everyone admires the feats he can achieve with his mortal frame, but people don’t give him nearly enough credit for his emotional honesty.

Bruce may not wallow in his feelings, and it make take something rather drastic to push him to express himself (i.e. the near-death of his son), but he does not lie nor understate his emotions.  In that respect, Damian really is his son.  This young, would-be assassin is so tough he only reveals his vulnerabilities when pushed to the utter limit, but when he does, he surprises you.  His faint murmurings about protecting “our castle…our kingdom” reveal a romantic view to the world he lives in: he is the prince helping his king-father defend Gotham from their enemies.

Tomasi just does this kind of thing so well: sincere character moments that resonate with you despite their outrageous context.  For any guy—and girl, for that matter—out there, who hasn’t had a moment when he feels the crushing weight of disappointing his father and begs for understanding?  And who hasn’t felt the rush of relief and comfort when his father simply picks him up and carries him home?  If you can connect with that, it hardly matters that both father and son are bleeding and leaving a corpse-strewn, flaming wreck of a boat in their wake.

Batman and Robin #7 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (writer), Patrick Gleason (penciller), Mick Gray (inker), John Kalisz (colorist)

The Story: Can anyone say “massive daddy issues”?  And a little bit of mommy, too.

The Review: The hallmark of Tomasi’s writing—or at least, the one I like to promote—is his methodical character work, the development and refining of a character over a long period of time.  That said, he seems to bring that same level of craft to writing action sequences.  Lots of writers throw in the obligatory, mindless battle into their stories, but Tomasi’s one of the few who really knows how to work the pacing and timing for maximum impact.

This issue puts that skill on full display.  Remember when The Matrix first came out, and how mind-blowing all those slo-mo bullet-dodging scenes were?  The great thing about this technique is it slows down the action just enough for your brain to catch up and process just how much is actually going in those precious few moments that speed by on screen, letting you appreciate it that much more when time goes back to normal.  That’s what Tomasi essentially does, over and over, throughout this issue.  One moment will be a series of non-stop panels, tracking each attack and recoil Batman and Nobody inflict on each other, the next we’ll have a big splashy moment captured in exquisite detail, letting you catch your breath, only to plunge into the fray once more.

Had Tomasi left all this never-say-die sparring alone in its glory, that would’ve been satisfying enough.  Unfortunately, he has a story whose loose ends he wants to tie up at the same time.  This not only drags down the otherwise breakneck speed of the issue, it also comes off sounding awkward and unconvincing.  Only in fiction do characters spout such involved strings of dialogue in between punches, and only rarely does it work.  Here, it does not.  Nobody, as he slashes Batman’s face: “In my father’s eyes I was dead after you beat me—I was nothing—I was nobody!”  Batman replying as he flips the villain over: ““And you’re still just an insecure little boy—with wounded pride—looking for Daddy’s approval!”

What makes the lines even less credible is that they seem, at least for Bruce, out of character.  Sure, you can argue emotions are running pretty high, and things are getting quite personal, but it just doesn’t seem natural to Bruce to be talking so much as he takes down a mortal enemy.  Anyhow, that’s matter of taste.  What’s really problematic is Tomasi spells out the story’s symbolism for us, a convention I always disapprove of as it dumbs down the reading and takes your perceptiveness for granted.  Did we really need to have it told, straight-up, to us: “Robin turned on you—your father turn on you—no one showed you any loyalty—except for your mother, and you killed her for it!”