Batman and Robin #17 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Scott McDaniel (artist), Rob Hunter (inker)

The Story: Una Nemo, one of Bruce’s old girlfriends, now dead, has been dug up from her grave. Batman (Dick Grayson) and Robin (Damian Wayne) are on the case. New Gotham weirdness. What is missing?

What’s Good: Paul Cornell is new to this big, big title. I know some in the reader community think he has big shoes to fill (after Morrison’s defining run, Batman and Robin has a Diamond circulation of well over 125,000 copies per issue). Other loyal readers are breathing a sigh of relief that Morrison and his wacky take on Batman is gone from this book. I think that, first of all, those who wanted to see Morrison go will be happy with Cornell’s scripts. He’s getting to the basics of Batman: rich playboy, secret identity, Gotham and its environs, crazy villains, lots of henchmen (no time travel, space aliens, powered battle suits, etc). And Cornell drops us into the action early and without a lot of explanation. Page one: loonies. Page two: Batman and Robin fighting loonies.

For those who really liked the mood Morrison was building, you may miss it here. Morrison excelled at building the twisted psyche and neuroses of Gotham into its architecture, its interpersonal reactions, its weather and events. Morrison chose the pure horror (think Silence of the Lambs) trope of a personality on the edge of snapping; the character Morrison chose to put on the edge was Gotham itself. Instead of the unbearable tension of horror, the tone of Cornell’s book is adventure. The city in this issue was not a character, but a setting. Yes, lots of trash and crime and nasty people inhabiting it, but this was still an adventure story.

On catching the flavor of the characters, Cornell also chose to change their tone. Dick Grayson is cracking more jokes. This is a deliberate choice Cornell made (shown by the fact that Damian mentioned it) and is a departure from “Dick Grayson, the Dark Knight” and is closer to “Dick Grayson, the guy who was Nightwing.” I didn’t mind it, but I did enjoy the sorts of inner conflict Dick had when he was literally carrying the weight of Gotham on his shoulders.