Review: ‘Batman and Robin’ #1 is a visually stunning debut issue
PUBLISHER’S PITCH
Father and son. Bruce and Damian. Batman and Robin. From Batman vs. Robin to Knight Terrors, a lot has happened to the Dynamic Duo, but now they are back together and ready to fight crime in Gotham--just in time for Batman's most monstrous rogues to team up to turn the city into an urban jungle! A new villain watches from the shadows, intent on revenge, with a plot to turn one of Batman's greatest assets against him! Can Damian help his father solve the case before it's too late? A brand-new fun and exciting father-and-son adventure begins, from DC Comics architect Joshua Williamson and superstar artist Simone Di Meo!
RECAP
Damian moves into his father’s new brownstone and the two go through the growing pains of living together with someone for the first time. While Bruce would prefer his son to experience elements of a normal teenage, including going to high school. Damian is uninterested and would prefer to continue honing his crime fighting skills and highlights his new detective skills by discovering a lead from the previous night’s encounter. The duo goes to investigate but walk into a trap set by the mysterious new villain who turns Batman’s namesake winged creatures against him.
REVIEW
This book has been getting hyped by other DC creators for several months now and I finally got to see why. In addition to a great story from Joshua Williamson, Simone Di Meo made BATMAN AND ROBIN #1 into a visually stunning book with the approach to art and colors. It’s jumps from the page like a colorful, realistic manga come to life. Characters are expressive without looking cartoonish, lines are well drawn and clean, various forms of light are used to add depth to scenes, panels are presented at different angles to emphasize scale, motion is effectively captured during action scenes. It’s all SO well done.
One of my favorite pages is a full page where we see Damian’s sketchpad revealing what appears to be a fictionalized story/comic about his own upbringing. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about the page, yet it’s a fun tongue-in-cheek homage to the comic book medium. Another favorite is a panel where some of Damian’s toughest moments fill a shadow of costumed Robin as it falls behind out-of-costume Damian. The approach to both of these are so simple, yet the level of execution is sublime. If I had one complaint it would be that different angles are used so often, the final battle sequence felt a tad crowded and I almost missed one of the most important panels as it was surrounded by others. But that’s really just nitpicking.
Getting back to Williamson’s story, I was curious to see how the events of this series lined up with the “Dawn of DC” timeline, specifically with the Gotham War arc and Bruce and Damian’s role in those titles. It was a pleasant surprised to see Williamson align their realities with the plotlines of Battle Lines and Batman #137. Bruce and Damian are on the outs with the rest of the Bat Family due to, as Bruce puts it, “everything going on with Selina.” It’s such a small though on-point way for Bruce to describe the situation given his current mindset— not even taking the slightest amount of accountability. In that vein, it came across like we were witnessing someone with a split personality speaking any time Bruce started monologuing. He was talking about everyday things as if nothing else was happening to him. I don’t know if Williamson intended it to come across in this manner but that’s how I interpreted it and it was so unsettlingly enjoyable.
The writing for Damian was a standout for me. His appearances so far in Gotham War have shown him as a one-note character holding his father up as an infallible figure. Here, Williamson dives deeper into Damian as an individual and pulls back the curtain on how he’s processing the events around him. The aforementioned sketchpad page indicates he views Bruce and Selina as absent parents and you can’t really blame him for thinking that.
The one part of this issue that didn’t work for me is the new villain’s plan. How intimidating can they be if the first step of their plans was to turn bats against Batman? Sure, a giant flock of bats attacking you can’t be fun, but came across as lame and I hope they worse things up their sleeves if we’re really to believe they’re a viable foe.
FINAL VERDICT
While there was a decent amount of action to bookend this issue, the heaviest life was in Williamson exploring the the parent/child dynamics in Bruce and Damian’s relationship. There were glaring hints that their roles are on the verge of shifting much like any situation between a parent who is aging and a child coming into their own. It was also nice to see none of the usual Batman rogues suspects in this issue, with some minor names appearing as a distraction to the mysterious new nemesis. My biggest concern going forward is how this new villain is built up, but that won’t spoil how much I enjoyed this debut issue.
