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!”

Batman and Robin #6 – Review

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

The Story: Not one of your typical father-son bonding times, but to each his own…

The Review: Since family has been such a prevalent motif in this series, it got me reflecting on the special relationship between our titular stars.  It then suddenly occurred to me how the parent-child duo is getting increasingly common in comics nowadays, what with Cyclops-Hope, Mr. Fantastic-Franklin and Valeria, Animal Man-Maxine and Cliff.  This is an important trend, since family remains a largely untapped mine of stories in this medium.

Once you read through this issue, you can clearly see why: the world of vigilantism is a rather sordid place for a kid to hang around.  Innocence doesn’t stay unstained for long, and sooner or later these younglings will run into some very gray situations that even grown-ups struggle to deal with.  Plus, no matter how you look at it, there’s something a bit disturbing about either exposing the child to such danger or having them adapt, even take to it.

And that’s pretty much the big reason why Damian as a character is so off-putting and yet completely engrossing.  I suspect you have the same feelings toward him as you would a ghost-child; while horrified about what they’ve become, you remain invested in their fate, hoping that somehow, they might regain the purity you expect from them.  Tomasi has made it very easy to believe the ship has sailed on that point for Damian, and the opening of this issue felt very much like a seal on his destiny as a remorseless assassin, Nobody’s empty gun be damned.

All that does is add another cord of tension humming through the story as you barrel towards the climax of this motherlode of father-son issues.  As it turns out, the anger Morgan Ducard holds against Bruce not only involves a “favorite sons” resentment, but also a good dose of wounded pride as well, not only for himself, but on behalf of his father as well.  You have to remember, though, that Bruce left the Ducards over a conflict of principles.  That Morgan well-nigh hisses about Bruce’s “only child” mentality indicates he has a deeply-rooted insecurity, in spite of the front of professionalism he tries to employ (“I don’t believe in fanfare or a signature style…”).

Batman and Robin #5 – Review

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

The Story: Damian, I’d say you have a bright future as an artist—for S&M fetishists.

The Review: Way, way back in my review of Batgirl #17, I talked about how Damian Wayne, for all the different interpretations he’s been given under various writers, generally projects a bratty, arrogant, and condescending personality.  While the manifestations of all these traits are quite diverting, they tend to cover up his grossly violent and twisted upbringing, and ignore how such a form of nurture can have a lasting impact on his psyche.

Tomasi has gradually peeled back the confrontational layers of Damian’s attitude to reveal a deeply disturbed soul housed in this ten-year-old boy.  While it’s obvious to anyone who’s been reading that Damian’s indifference to life has been gnawing at him for a while, it’s not until Alfred and Bruce’s horrific discovery of Damian’s stash of vicious doodles that we fully understand what he’s been repressing all this time.  What’s brilliant about the moment is how even as it fills you with revulsion, a wave of pity strikes you too as you realize how sincerely, in his own way, Bruce’s son has been trying to live up to his father’s principles all this time.

The realization isn’t lost on Bruce either, as you see him in a rare moment of self-loathing for ignoring his son’s needs.  That’s the thing with Batman; most people see him as the cold, calculating antihero, but if Bruce has proven over the years that he’s always had a very vulnerable soft spot where his Robins are concerned.  Over the years, he’s played father to quite a few youths, and he reveals here how genuinely he takes to that role: “I know we’re never going to throw a baseball in the back of the Manor after a tough day—but I’d be lying if I said a small part of me wouldn’t enjoy that mundane existence even for just a moment.”

The devotion between father and son forms the spinal theme of this issue.  It’s no coincidence Tomasi introduces clear parallels between Morgan (AKA Nobody) and Henri Ducard and Damian and Bruce Wayne: the son worshipping the mostly absent father, even betraying his mother for the sake of it; the father teaching and training his son in his footsteps; the budding resentment and rivalry between the sons of the father’s blood and his adoption.

Batman and Robin #4 – Review

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

The Story: If Alfred had been a Blackhawk, a “Hawkaaa!” would be very appropriate here.

The Review: I’ve often marked Tomasi as one of the great character writers in DC’s stable of storytellers, up alongside Paul Cornell and Gail Simone.  But Tomasi does something quite different from the other two.  Whereas Cornell and Simone craft bold, vibrant personalities that almost dictate the plot from their sheer assertiveness, Tomasi builds characters from the ground up, letting them evolve through the plot, growing richer and more complex with every issue.

And there can’t be two characters who profit most from Tomasi’s slow-burn style than Bruce and Damian Wayne.  Because Bruce tends to be such a repressed character and Damian a bombastic one, engaging them in tense, convincing conflicts allows Bruce a release for his pent-up emotions and Damian to tone down and become more human.

Batman is strict and disciplined, and he stands for no nonsense.  You can see this clearly when he unwaveringly adheres to the methods of his moral code even against Nobody’s needling critiques about the viability of such a code: “Look at these freaks…!  A vicious cycle of death and destruction that you continue to let spin after all this time!”  Bruce’s response?  “The only code around her that’s not viable is yours.”  As Damian says, Bruce is a “stubborn ass.”

Of course, by now we all understand why Batman sticks so closely to his principles, despite their flaws; if he didn’t, he’d just be another monster on the streets of Gotham, whose only value is he preys on monsters who are even worse.  So we can also understand why he’s so keen to ensure his son never makes that situation a reality.  Since Damian grew up under the tutelage of the most ruthless murderers in the world, the fact he uses his skills as a hero (for now) makes him no less susceptible to the allure of taking that extra step to the dark side.