Batman and Robin #16 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Cameron Stewart, Chris Burnham, Frazer Irving (artists), Alex Sinclair and Frazer Irving (colorists), Mike Marts (editor)

The Story: We see Thomas Wayne in 1765 summoning the demon Barbatos. We then shift forward to now, where Dr. Hurt is facing Batman, Robin, and DC’s spoiler for the whole Return of Batman miniseries. Problem is, Hurt’s got a lot of help, Dick has been shot in the head and the Joker is the wild card (so to speak).

Publishing Issues: I gotta get this out of the way before I do the rest of the review. On my way to my LCS, I was thinking of what a great thing it was that DC had taken its time to fully explore the implications of the death of Bruce Wayne and how I liked how they were taking their time to bring him back right. I thought the same thing contentedly as I read this issue, until I got to page 15, where suddenly I see two Batmans, one of whom is Bruce Wayne. I rubbed my eyes, flipped back a couple of pages, and find that the build up and explanation offered is….”You came through the fireplace.” WTF? OK, I don’t read most of the message boards for a reason. I want to be able to read each comic on its own terms, creator to reader, no intermediary. I think that’s honest. It took me a while to connect some of the whisperings I’d heard about publication schedules and finally realized that this issue occurs *at least* later than The Return of Bruce Wayne #6, if not later. So, I’m not going to get into my frustration, but needless to say, I felt a bit like someone had told me who the killer was before I’d finished my popcorn in the movie. Totally, totally not cool on DC’s part. I don’t care what their editorial/creative problems are. If some fraction of DC’s comics routinely get delayed for one reason or another, DC should build that into their business plan, especially on something as coordinated as an event. Now I don’t even want to read ROBW #6. Nice work, DC.

What’s Good: First part of the book (Thomas Wayne in 1765), was very moody and cool, classic Morrison. And visually impressive, even if that artist’s style isn’t 100% to my taste. The fight between Batman, Batman, Robin and the 99 Fiends was dynamic, but I never felt like anyone but the fiends were in real danger. It felt a bit like filler. Despite this, Damian certainly stole the show. Check out the visuals and the outcome of his fight with the guy with the flame thrower! The Hurt/Batman conflict in the Bat Cave continued the fun, and Pyg was twisted and depraved in central Gotham. The ending with the Joker was unexpected, tone-perfect and satisfying.

Batman and Robin #14 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Frazer Irving (artist), Janelle Siegel (assistant editor), Mike Marts (editor)

The Story: Batman and Robin Must Die, Part 2: Robin is still locked up with the Joker. Batman and Commissioner Gordon are surrounded by the enemy. And the full-on war between the Joker and the Black Glove blows up.

What’s Good: Right off the bat, Batman and Robin under Frazer Irving is visually arresting. Irving does different things. Colors and light become watery and fluid. The camera shots shift disconcertingly (intentionally) between complete pictures and tight close ups that drive up the tension and add to the mood of dislocation. Backgrounds are uneven sprays of paint with no defined source of light, eerie and effective. The villains, psychologically distorted outside of moral boundaries, are chilling, alien, and disturbingly plausible. Irving is my new favorite Batman artist.

Morrison on scripts has moved the plot forward with events and reversals, but this is the least part of the satisfaction of this book. The moody and unhinged dialogue opens crooked windows onto the insides of Pyg, the Joker and Black Hand. The Joker gets some awesome moments against Robin, and says some very revealing things, but at every moment, the cagey look and the mask of his expression scream that he is unreliable and that everything he says is lie or manipulation. Pyg is an utter, utter whack job and the more he talks, the more creeped out I am. The action is intense and fast and tumbling in the confused way that hard-boiled fiction reflects the chaos of the world in its narrative style. The reader is deliberately exposed to a measured amount of confusion and disorientation to bring him closer to the psychological state of the heroes and the victims.

Justice League: Cry for Justice #3 – Review

By James Robinson (writers), Mauro Casciolo (art)

The Story: The different heroes wanting vengeance are starting to clot together. Congo Bill and Mikaal are attacked, while Green Lantern, Green Arrow, the Atom, Supergirl and Shazam lay the gloves on Prometheus.

What’s Good: Mauro Casciolo’s art blew me away again. His art invites you to pause and admire, while creating that sense of excitement and anticipaion between turning the pages. The texture of skin and cloth are so obvious. The lighting, the explosions, the drops of splashing water– it’s all there as a feast for the reader.

What’s Not So Good: Unfortunately, while this series launched so strongly in issue #1, I really feel that the momentum has dropped by issue #3. There’s an awful lot of dialogue in this issue, a lot of it to dump information on the reader, but it really didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. This sucked much of the enjoyment from the story for me.

Secondly, I bought into the anger of the heroes for the first two issues, but it’s starting to wear a bit thin. The fact that Green Lantern and Green Arrow supervise an Atom-mediated torture session doesn’t sit well with me. There are heroes, anti-heroes, and post-modern heroes, but torture is just plain illegal and I’m having a hard time reconciling a Green Lantern doing the superhero equivalent of water-boarding to a captured villain. Didn’t Hal Jordan used to lead the charge against Green Lanterns gone bad?

Lastly, Prometheus is a bit loopy. I don’t mean that in a Joker or Professor Pyg sort of way. I mean he’s loopy in a Ming the Merciless sort of way. From his early motivation to his fiendish plots now brewing, I didn’t buy any of it and most of the time, he sounded like a Republican serial villain. While he was telling someone about the intricacies of his fiendish plots for two pages, I was waiting for Casciolo to have him gleefully kicking puppies. Ineffective villainy.

Conclusion: Treasured heroes commiting venal acts on flimsy pretexts to counter a villain who isn’t that intimidating, powerful or multidimensional… Twenty-two pages of lost opportunity for DC.

Grade: C-

-DS Arsenault

Batman and Robin #3 – Review

By Grant Morrison (writer), Frank Quitely (artist), Alex Sinclair (colorist)

The Story: Dick Grayson, the new Batman, is still trying to cement his positionas the Dark Knight, as Gotham doesn’t buy him. Meanwhile, Robin has taken off on his own. As the dynamic duo go their separate ways, Professor Pyg and his band of sadistic circus psychopaths, continue their savagery and brutality across Gotham.

What’s Good: Everything. From the brilliant opening splash page to the brilliant closing splash page. The art and story are vivid as events spill over, panel after panel, page after page. It’s a great ride. Since I really want to talk about the story, I won’t take any time at all to talk about Quitely’s art (with Sinclair’s brilliant colors), other than to say it is absolutely stunning. I found myself stuck on most pages, trying to figure what those two had done to create such dramatic, evocative images.

On the story side, Dick is obviously the core of this coming-of-age drama. The struggle of the son assuming the mantle of the father is as old as the hills, but Morrison makes it feel new here. He disguises it. The old tropes are hidden by the capes and nighttime chases and the surging, chaotic action, but at its core, this is still the story of a boy replacing his father and becoming a father himself. He doesn’t complete the journey here. No one would. Morrison trusts us to be patient with him. But Dick travels along his arc, and comes closer to discovering who he really has to be to feel right in the long cape and behind the dour mask.

There are obviously a lot of of parallels between Bucky Barnes and Dick Grayson, but as much as I loved Bucky as Captain America, there is something more emotional in Batman and Robin. I think it has to do with precisely Damian and Dick’s new role as guardian. Dick would be a great dad for any child. He’s mature and ready for it, but to take on his own father’s role, while taking on the upbringing of his father’s true-blood son…. There’s something very poignant and conflict-ridden in that triangle that makes Batman and Robin more visceral than Bucky’s socialization in Captain America. And Damian and Dick are on parallel arcs themselves. Damian has everything to prove to Dick, and vice-versa. Both travel along their respective roads and even cross for a while.

What’s Not So Good: There is little to complain about with this book. The villains are so horrific, psychotic, sociopathic, creepy, they are at the edge of suspension of disbelief. Their sheer disfunctionality had me wondering at times how such behavior could hold together a criminal group. Morrison takes some risks here, and for me, there’s a bit of creaking in the story around the sociopathy. An inch further and Morrison’s villains would have come off as caricatures, but he uses his artistic licence for the sake of drama.

Conclusion: What a stellar book! Absolutely brilliant. $2.99 is cheap for what Morrison and Quitely deliver. Buy this book now.

Grade: A

-DS Arsenault