Batman and Robin #22 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (story), Patrick Gleason (pencils), Mick Gray (inks), John Kalisz (colors)

The Story: Batman’s kryptonite?  Strong, smart women with a sharp wit.

The Review: I have a friend I carpool with up to Los Angeles every day and often, as we trudge along in the early morning traffic, he’ll see me writing one of these reviews and, out of what I assume to be sheer politeness, ask what it’s about.  When the question came to this one, I immediately said, “The character work.”  Hardly anyone else handles these superhero characters as deftly and with as much credibility as Tomasi does, often to the detriment of the actual plot.

Now, there are other great character writers in the superhero genre, but while they often find character by working from the outside-in, rendering agile dialogue which gives an outline to a personality, Tomasi works in the opposite direction.  He seems to grasp the entire being of a character as a whole, and draw out their personality from that understanding.  As a result, his characters seem completely natural and true to themselves even when doing the unexpected.

Nova #5 – Review

By: Jeph Loeb (Writer), Ed McGuinness (Penciler), Dexter Vines & Ed McGuinness (Inkers), Edgar Delgado (Colorist)

Review: A strange thing has happened. I think I’ve actually enjoyed a Jeph Loeb comic book. I don’t know if the events over in Age of Ultron somehow impacted on our own universe, but something is definitely up. This is not the natural order of things.

After reading Nova #5 – the finale to Loeb’s scene-setting inaugural story arc – I’ve been surprised to come away with a keen affection for its eponymous hero. He’s young, headstrong and cocky, three character traits that usually leave me feeling cold. But Loeb’s vision for Sam Alexander is fuelled by an infectious sense of energy and an emphasis on a certain Silver Age approach to superheroics (one that’s proved rewarding for Waid’s Daredevil and Fraction’s Hawkeye); these heroes enjoy the day job. There are tensions and tribulations outside of the mask but freedom and escapism behind it. Sometimes it’s just nice to sit back and watch a superhero have a good time.

Nova #4 – Review

By: Jeph Loeb (Writer), Ed McGuinness (Penciler), Dexter Vines (Inker), Marte Gracia (Colorist), Comicraft’s Albert Deschesne (Letterer)

Review: It’s a mystery to me quite how this happened, but Nova is undoubtedly the best cosmic book Marvel currently publish – this issue seals it. I never expected that from Loeb. I thought this’d be a big, dumb, brash piece of fluff – and it is, I guess – but it’s also filled with the fun of sci-fi, of explosions in space, of weird aliens aboard even weirder ships. Guardians of the Galaxy could learn a lot from this.

This issue starts with out with Sam Alexander, AKA Nova, apparently unconscious, left drifting through space at the mercy of the incoming Chitauri armada. Just as they’re about to scoop him up he blasts away with a glib cry (“Suckers!”) and weaves through the Alien hordes before crashing into the mothership: “All I have to do is find the generator or the power core or the thingy thing that runs this beast – and problem solved – Nova style.”

Batman and Robin #13 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (story), Patrick Gleason & Tomas Giorello (art) Mick Gray (inks), John Kalisz (colors)

The Story: Some fathers and sons go fishing; others repair spacecraft in planetary orbit.

The Review: Among the many kinds of storylines superhero comics tend to neglect, they seem most skittish when it comes to writing about kids.  Aside from the Fantastic Four, I can’t think of a single hero of any prominence who’s managed to have children without inviting disaster.  Simply not writing them into the story may be the only way creators can avoid the bummers that logically come with the vigilante business, but it saps the superhero universe of its diversity.

I think that’s another reason why so many of these kids get into costume sooner or later; it’s the only way to keep them included in the hero’s life without spending too much time away from the actual superhero stuff.  The side-effect is it’s incredibly difficult to have genuine parent-child moments in the middle of the some bit of comic book ridiculousness.  I also think there’s a tendency with many writers to equate kids with humor and cuteness, leaving little room for them to have serious sides of their own.

Batman and Robin #10 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (story), Patrick Gleason (pencils), Mick Gray (inks), John Kalisz (colors)

The Story: Don’t be so surprised, Batman; almost everyone hates family pictures.

The Review: There are a lot of reasons to like Batman, but the one I think is fundamental to his mass popularity over the years is his particularly aggressive form of crime-fighting.  On paper, we appreciate heroes who seek justice without compromising principle—which Batman does, only he toes the line a bit more.  He may stop short of killing criminals, but he has no problem doling out a lot of pain in the process, which appeals to the side of us that wants vengeance.

However, as the old maxim goes, violence breeds more violence, or something similar, and this issue demonstrates that all of Batman’s efforts may have exacerbated Gotham’s crime situation more than anything else.  We open on a round table of Bat-victims, a mixture of petty criminals and minor villains who have all suffered injury by the Dark Knight and now seem even more crazed and out for blood than before.  These are some seriously scarred people here, riddled with melted flesh, deformed faces, and a lot of Batarang mishaps.

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.