Monthly (Comic) Book Club - August - Batman & Robin #1-1215357
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| Batman & Robin (2009) #1-#12: Batman Reborn & Batman vs Robin Wk1 (8/2-8/8): Batman & Robin (2009) #1-3    Wk2 (8/9-8/15): Batman & Robin (2009) #4-6 Wk3 (8/16-8/22): Batman & Robin (2009) #7-9 Wk4 (8/23-8/29): Batman & Robin (2009) #10-12 Discussion topic ideas: * Thoughts on the story or artwork * Details in the story, artwork, or presentation * References to outside events or other works of fiction * Making of/Behind the Scenes details * Editions you will be reading from * Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection |
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 If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Most of my experience with Morrison and Quitely is from the (New) X-Men run (although Quitely didn't pencil the whole run, only about 10 issues). That had some wild stuff in it, starting with the majority of mutants being killed in a few panels. There were a lot more weird mutants, like Angel Salvadore and Beak, there was Cyclops leaving Jean for Emma Frost, there was the whole Xorn/Magneto thing, and it ended with a weird time travel Phoenix story. So that's the sort of expectations I bring in to the series. More specifically for Quitely, he's one of those artists who I don't feel negatively about but I don't quite like his work. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just kind of... squiggly, I guess? But it isn't a big deal. |
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| #1 certainly fits those expectations a bit. An actual toad person named Mr. Toad? A pretty decent set piece to open the issue, too. I appreciate that there's a little backstory provided even though this is a number 1 (probably continuing from a previous Batman series, I appreciate). Dick Grayson, former Robin and Nightwing, is now Batman since Bruce Wayne appears to be dead. Bruce's son, Damian, is Robin. They're fairly different people, as Dick is somewhat playful (holding Toad out of the Batplane while only a couple feet above a building) while Damian is super-serious and, at first impression, kind of insufferable. Pyg also seems like an out-there villain to fit with my Morrison vibe. He has some weird process that attaches masks to people. It also maybe makes them his henchmen? Or at least his henchmen all have the masks, too. I wonder if his named is pronounced 'pig' or if you're supposed to do something different for the y. Does he have a card or send emails to make it clear how it should be spelled? Some odds and ends I enjoyed from #1: everything about Wayne stuff looks vaguely bat-ish, like Bruce's headstone (compared to the giant angel for his parents) and what I assume is Wayne Enterprises (with the Batcave beneath it now instead of Wayne Manor, it seems). The flaming guy is also interesting. It seems to be more of a power than anything else? I know Batman has an array of super-powered rogues, but I tend to think of him more generally as a fist-fighting guy. Maybe Morrison knew his X-Men readers would get to this eventually and wanted them to feel more at home. |
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| #2 establishes a bit more why this is a good first story for Dick Grayson Batman, as there's a big fight with a strange circus group. I think the art does a good job with the action; it's all fairly clear what's happening even when one of the fighters is a conjoined triplet. Damian is earning his insufferable label as he immediately storms off and gets grabbed by the bad guys. I get that he's only 10, but how does someone as competent as he's supposed to be (building stuff that Bruce never figured out, raised by assassins) get caught completely off-guard by a small army of weirdos in masks? Don't assassins scout out where they're going a bit, or anything? |
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| #3 might have lost me. Pyg was beyond obnoxious, and while I'm sure it was supposed to fit into the overall disgusting/disorienting vibe, he doesn't work for me. I hope that he stays in Arkham (or wherever he was) for a while. I was glad that the second half of the book turned elsewhere but I was put off enough from the first half that I didn't really get into it. I don't know the Batman timeline well enough to know if this Red Hood is a) Jason Todd, b) a Jason Todd copycat, or c) a pre-Jason Todd random Red Hood. I guess I'll find out next week! Hopefully with less Pyg. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by xkonk I am also familiar with this team from New X-Men, which I thought was an excellent read as it really broke the X-Men out of something of a rut and was not afraid to take risks with the team make up and the story. I also loved Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum graphic novel, which remains one of my favorite Batman books ever. That said, if these are his more mainstream works, it’s not difficult to imagine that things could get worse (as in weirder and crazier) when Morrison is let off his leash, which seems to have been the case with Final Crisis, which preceded this month’s reading and really set the stage for a good chunk of DC’s universe for a while. Here’s a good video that tries to summarize that story in an understandable way: I definitely agree that Frank Quietly’s art takes some getting used to. I agree that in New X-Men he makes characters look a little too…wrinkly? A lot of characters just looked a lot older than they should because Quietly seems to add a lot of extra line work. His style did grow on me a little. He’s not a favorite artist but when I first came across his work it was a little off-putting and I think I may be remembering a little worse than it actually was. I actually think Ian Beltran’s E for Extinction covers, which were certainly calling back to Quietly but with more exaggerated line work is probably how my memory has exaggerated my first impression of Quietly.  |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite strong agree |
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Issue 1 is a good introduction. Quietly’s art foes the job but that overambitious line work does creep in, like when Dick is in the batcave. The extra lines on his face looks like abrasions, as if he’s just been in a rough fight but nobody even touched him in the action scene we just saw him in. One thing that caught my eye was that the Wayne Tech Batcave looks a lot like the temporary Batcave from the Dark Knight. I looked it up and as this book came out in 2009 and the Dark Knight was released just the year before in 2008, I can’t imagine this is a coincidence. I thought it was kind of interesting as well that Morrison would make this move to make the comic align closely to the popular movie put around the same time as he did a similar thing with his tun on X-Men. His X-Men run introduced the black leather uniforms for the X-Men, not unlike what was seen in the movies at the time. Granted, this is a mostly superficial connection but I imagine it would make it easier for new readers crossing over from the movies to identify and relate what they’re seeing in the books to what they know from the movies.  I don’t think this will really spoil anything but Pyg was included in a side quest in the Batman: Arkham Knight game. It was my first encounter with the character and this is my first time seeing him in the comics. Was this issue Pyg’s first appearance? |
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| I definitely agree that Damian really gets on your nerves. He has that arrogance about him that you just can’t stand and I get the feeling that getting captured the moment he runs off on his own will do little to humble him. I’m curious what the fandom’s feeling toward the character was at this point. He’d been around for about three years when this story was releases. So has not gotten anymore likeable in that time? Or did people just kind of put up with him and he stuck around because Morrison created him and he was gonna use him regardless? For obvious reasons the meeting with Gordon reminded me a little of Jean Paul Valley meeting up with Batman’s acquaintances when he was taking Batman’s place during Knightfall, though I think Valley was more convincing to the police on first impression. Or at least no one immediately pointed out a height difference. Speaking of Knightfall, it would be interesting to compare these two replacement Batman storylines on some level. Both start with the new Batman trying to imitate Bruce directly before making Batman their own, for better or for worse. One difference I can kind of see, though we’re only two issues in so I might be wrong, is that Knightfall seemed to deal more with how the new Batman interacted with Bruce’s old acquaintances, specifically the villains. This run, on the other hand, seems to deal with how the new Batman interacts with Batman’s close family, specifically Damian/Robin and Alfred. This is fitting because Dick IS Batman’s family so for him it’s a more personal, family thing while Jean Paul came into it without those other connections. Though we only see it briefly in the last panel, I think the Dark Knight continues to show its influence on the comic. The Quad-Bat we see, though clearly different, certainly takes inspiration from the Dark Knight’s Bat Pod.   And interestingly, Damian was introduced a year after Batman Begins. The movie heavily featured Bruce Wayne’s training with the League of Shadows and Ra’s Al Ghul and then Morrison introduces Batman’s son who was raised in the League of Shadows and whose grandfather is Ra’s Al Ghul. I can’t imagine that was a coincidence. |
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| I agree that Pyg kinda goes off the rails a bit. I thought he was a great, creepy villain with the masks think but the song and dance number was a bit much. I’m glad the Arkham Knight toned him down a little, boiling him down to more like an insane plastic surgeon with a penchant for opera. I also feel like the episode just kind of dumped a lot of information after the fact to wrap things up quickly. I mean I know Batman got info out of the flaming head guy but it fees like we only learn there was an evil plot (the mind control germs) as it was being resolved. Kind of makes the whole suicide bombers thing at the end of the previous issue a bit of an unfulfilled tease. As I expected, Damian doesn’t learn any humility from being immediately captured as he almost immediately escapes. He also once again shows his penchant for going it alone when he abandons the girl he promised to save in order to go after Pyg. I wonder if that will come back to bite him as it can certainly be another opportunity for growth for the character. The page with the voice identification and whatnot, I imagine references previous events that I am unfamiliar with but it certainly looks like Grayson has a personal connection to who they’re tracking down. I wonder if they are who was standing on the gargoyle spying on Alfred and if it is also meant to be the Red Hood, which we see shortly afterward. I am also not familiar with this incarnation of the Red Hood so I’m curious to see what develops as well as what happens with the masked girl. As I said before, I found the mask/face thing to be very creepy and I think Quietly’s scratchy art style really helps make them appear more disturbing. I am glad they are focusing more on that, to some extent, going forward. I wonder if her turn to evil is a result of Pyg’s attack on her or if there was something going on before as her father didn’t seem like he was on the up and up. I’m currently reading from the Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus 2 which collects the 12 Batman and Robin issues for this month along with the Return of Bruce Wayne storyline. The book also has some nice bonus features including breakdowns of the covers, character designs and more.  Apparently they wanted to change up the visual style from the previous Batman RIP storyline so they wanted to do something more colorful and energetic, which can very much be seen in the covers. The first issue’s cover was supposed to be simple and iconic, harkening to the first appearance of Robin jumping through the hoop. Issue 2 was something of an homage to Detective Comics 31 and Batman 221. Issue 3 was supposed to be “weird” so they made it from one of Pyg’s altered dolls’ point of view look out to the fight. Apparently not intended, but if you look at the cover upside down you see a vague Joker-ish face. Interestingly, looking at some of the rejected costumes designs you can once again see the Dark Knight’s influence seeping in, though they ended up settling on a simpler, more familiar design. And back to the issie three cover, they mention that the Joker does not appear in this volume (I assume these were written for the original trades or something) but they did want him him to, in a way, haunt the series, so the hidden Joker face was a lucky coincidence. I have to wonder if the choice to not include the Joker but still have his presence felt is yet more influence from the Dark Knight.  |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I haven't played the game so I didn't know. According to Wikipedia, "Pyg was created by Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert, and debuted as a corpse in the alternate reality story Batman #666 (July 2007) before being introduced as a recurring character in the mainstream DC Universe two years later in Batman and Robin #1" |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| #4 shows what Red Hood was aiming for; he and Scarlet are going to fight crime by killing them. The tone set by Pyg is still here, too, with the Lightning Bug fight being a bit over the top. Robin's brattiness is still on display, too. The part with Red Hood disrupting the villain meet-up reminded me of the Joker in The Dark Knight, although he wasn't trying to take over bad guy business. I guess this is after Jason Todd came back and was Red Hood, since Batman thinks this might be Jason. |
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| In #4 the artist changed to Philip Tan. I don't mind the style overall but there are things that have been hard to follow. In #5 it bothered me because I'm not entirely sure what happened in the Scarlet/Robin fight. Robin ends up cut but he also seems to get electrocuted in the neck? The fight just isn't clear. I'm also a little unclear on if Red Hood is Jason Todd or not. When he takes the helmet off he doesn't look like Jason, although he has a story for that, and he also doesn't act like the Jason I saw in Under the Hood. But then he seems to know an awful lot about Batman, like his costume's armor. Flamingo and his face eating is keeping the tone and face-related weirdness at previous levels. |
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| I feel like the art lets me down in 6 again, too. I gather that Red Hood and Scarlet had their HQ in a truck or van of some kind, but I don't have a good sense of it. And I had no idea that the fight with Flamingo was on a roof or something (a random chasm in Gotham?) until Batman was falling off it. Was Flamingo introduced at all before this arc? He seems like a pretty capable villain, pretty much giving everyone the business including crippling Robin, and then he's dead. Or at least apparently dead. Seems like kind of a waste even if the guy was over the top. I was not a fan of Robin's casual slur. At the end of the first arc, I would say that this is all pretty wild. Not that I expected a Batman story to be boring, and we noted how Morrison has written some weird stuff before, but this is more than I expected. I wonder if this is the kind of story they would have told anyway or if they had a little more license since it's Dick Batman instead of Bruce Batman. |
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Wk3 (8/16-8/22): Batman & Robin (2009) #7-9   |
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| So the start of issue #4 reminded me of the intro to Batman: Mask of the Phantasm where Batman is pursuing a criminal but someone else gets to them and kills them leading people to think Batman did it. It’s a little different here in that it doesn’t seem to be turning the police against Batman yet but the criminal underworld seems to think he did it. I think the issue shows Morrison taking a similar approach to what he did in New X-Men in that he is modernizing the world surrounding our characters. Red Hood and Scarlet are using social media to publicize their crusade, and both he and the criminals make a point to mention that they are updating their approach to change with the times. The meet up with the mob bosses actually reminded me more of a toned down version of the intro to The Punisher: War Zone, which would’ve released shortly before this issue, with the surprise attack clearly meant to take no prisoners and skulls on their chest Damien is very much still a brat but he doesn’t have as much an opportunity to annoy in this issue. He also seems to be developing a brother-like relationship with Dick, who is still learning himself but is still trying to pass on his experience to his “little brother” |
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Quote:Originally Posted by xkonk Robin gets electrocuted/tazed, which left him open to getting cut. I was also unsure if the Red Hood was supposed to be Jason but mostly because there is very little in the way of mystery surrounding the identity of the character. Dick seems to pick up on his identity immediately. Maybe he recognized the voice? I agree that he doesn’t look the way you expect Jason to look but I think that’s more a quirk of the artist, as I do remember the gray hair streak being part of Todd’s design for a while, a detail that would be unnecessary to reproduce given that he would always have his helmet on. Add to that all the details and history he knows about Batman, his family, and methods, I don’t think this is meant to be an impostor. Red Hood returning to finish off a loose end once again reminds me of the Punisher, this time from Daredevil season 2. Coincidentally, that encounter also ended up with the hero incapacitated as Batman and Robin are in this. Morrison’s villains so far have had a very pronounced flamboyancy paired with a very macabre M.O. This push to the extremes is very much in Morrison’s wheelhouse. Going back to New X-Men, those characters didn’t exhibit the same flamboyancy Morrison did push the mutations to a more grotesque place than was the norm in the series at the time. When they first showed the removed face, I immediately thought of the Death of the Family storyline a couple of years later and thought Flamingo would turn out to be an incarnation of Dollmaker, who surgically removed the Joker’s face in that storyline. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by xkonk It looks like an alternate universe version of Flamingo appeared in Batman 666, the same issue that introduced Pyg before this arc introduced them to the mainline continuity…although that doesn’t seem to have lasted long since these seem to be their only appearance before New 52 rebooted everything. While I can follow the characters and the action well enough, I agree that the environments are more than a little undefined. It never occurred to me that Red Hood and Scarlet were operating out of a mobile base until Gordon mentions it. As for where it was parked, that was also unclear to me. Maybe because the story has my mind on the Nolan trilogy, I was thinking we were in a sprawling underground sewer or something. The issue is mostly made up of the fight with Flamingo, which is fairly vicious. In the previous issue it is mentioned that he can’t feel anything, which I think is what helps give him an edge, along with catching Red Hood by surprise. Robin had a bit of an arc with his feeling responsible for not saving Scarlet leading him to throw himself in harm’s way to help her against Flamingo. However it felt like it was only come back to briefly instead of really making it a character-defining event for the character. While the paralysis seems like a significant sacrificeD Dick makes it clear he’s just going to be tossed in a Lazarus Pit and he’ll be fine shortly. I think I was able to follow the immediate action well enough but I feel that Morrison was also building things in the background. Was the significance of the dominoes ever revealed? Does the death of all those organized crime heads at the meeting mean the vaguely defined threat of some new street drug is now over? I think this was just a crazy time in general for Batman as it seems Morrison allowed to define a large portion of Batman and even DC’s direction at at this time. After all, he did write Final Crisis, the major DC even preceding this, but was writing Batman since 2005 and continued through to 2013, and Action Comics from 2011 through 2013. It was in the Return of Bruce Wayne storyline that was released around the same time as some of this reading that we have Bruce Wayne traveling through time after Darkseid “killed” him and we end up with a pre-historic Batman, a witch hunter Batman, and a pirate Batman, among others, and later in Batman Incorporated where Bruce Wayne basically turns Batman into a franchise and you end up with different Batmen in different parts of the world so I think it is fair to say that Dick Grayson or not, it was just a wild time for Batman in general   |
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| From the covers for this week, it looks like they're changing artists again. I wonder if that's purposeful or if they were burning through them or couldn't get anyone to sign on for longer? The latter two wouldn't be very good signs. | ||
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| I enjoyed #7 more than most of the other issues so far. I don't recognize the artist's name from anything in particular, and I wouldn't call the art great per se, but it was certainly clear and competent. I did like the sequence of Knight jumping from car to car to get across London quickly. It looks like the dominoes have paid off somewhat, or it's a complete coincidence, as Batman is able to get directions for a maze via a set. On the other hand, they didn't really seem necessary since Knight just followed noises down to where the action was. Maybe there's still more to come on that front? I know it's kind of a sci-fi trope, but I wonder what the benefit is to suspending Robin in liquid while they do the surgery. Maybe he's soaking in something related to the Lazarus Pit? And speaking of which, if the effects of the Pit in the comics are similar to what I've seen in the Arrowverse CW shows, the next issue should have quite a showdown with Bruce Wayne coming back to life. |
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| I don't have as much to say about #8 as it largely just moves the plot forward. The Batman that gets resurrected in the Lazarus Pit is apparently not actually Bruce Wayne but a clone created by Darkseid. They do have a pretty intense fight, including Batwoman tasing fake Batman in the face, but fake Batman gets away and Batwoman is killed in a cave-in. It sure looks like she'll be the next one to go in the Pit. I guess one issue of more interest is, did Dick kill Batwoman so that she can go in the Pit? Batman is supposed to be no killing, so that would be kind of a big deal. But does it count as killing if the person was probably going to die anyway, and you're doing it expressly to avoid pain and then resurrect the person? I'm sure someone will have this exact discussion in a future issue. |
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| #9 wraps the mini-arc in a pretty conventional way. Batwoman chose to kill herself, so I guess that sidesteps any of those Batman moral issues (vaguely!), she and Batman get back to the mansion in time to save Alfred and Damian from a rapidly degrading fake Batman. Despite everything that went wrong, Dick is still set on finding Bruce. Maybe this was covered in Final Crisis or the Battle for the Cowl, but didn't Bruce leave any kind of instruction for when he died? Batman, the guy whose superpower is planning, didn't have a will or line of succession sitting around? Dick thought he was dead and needed to be brought back; does Bruce even want to be brought back to life? I'm sure that people would have fought over who would get to be Batman regardless, but some of this other stuff probably could have been avoided. |
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| @xkonk Are you sure that was Knight in the intro action sequence of issue 7 and not Dick? This kind of felt like a filler issue to me in part because there is so much we don’t see. Batman’s apparently been searching for a Lazarus Pit to revive Bruce, which is reasonable but we’re just suddenly in London with characters we not particularly familiar with and get information we don’t apparently need (seeing as Bruce has already been soaking in the pit for a while before we even get there) and also Batwoman is there for some reason. Am I wrong in thinking that this issue could be omitted almost entirely and just adda thought balloon at the start of the next issue saying something like “We found a long lost Lazarus pit. We put Bruce in it and I have some people with me to help me with him when he’s revived and crazed.” I imagine that a lot of those gaps (why Batman is in London, why Batwoman is there, etc) was probably covered in other issues as I’d imagine this return of Bruce Wayne was likely a story weaved through various titles at the time so just reading Batman and Robin is not giving us a complete picture. Damien’s surgery got me thinking of Knightfall and how different that story would have to be to be done today. In Knoghtfall Batman is paralyzed and is out of action for like a year. Damien is paralyzed and it’s apparently just a surgery and recovery time. |
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| Issue 8 partially answered some of my questions from the previous issue, mostly what Batwoman was doing there. I still feel like perhaps there was more of that story being told in a solo series or something. I also imagine that more of the Darkseid Clone Batman army story would be told elsewhere as it seems too big a story thread to be dropped in a few panels. I wonder when Darkseid would’ve made the switch but then I checked out the Final Crisis summary above and I guess there is some time between Darkseid killing Batman and Superman arriving to claim Batman’s corpse and finish off Darkseid. Two nitpicks about the fight with the Bat Clone is that Dick’s lightning gauntlets just kind of come and go and at one point a speech bubble that should’ve come from Dick seems like its coming from the clone. Also, how did the clone know where the Batwing was stashed? Spines seem to have a run of bad luck in these last few issues. First Damien, now Batwoman, and maybe Damien again in the next issue. I’m not quite sure of the mechanics of the Lazarus Pit but it would seem weird if a dead person can come back fully healed but an injured person couldn’t go in and get healed. I guess I’m saying that Batwoman going into the Lazarus pit seems a fairly obvious solution so I wonder why she wouldn’t just say that instead of saying she has an idea and then the book leaving us in suspense by not actually telling us that is what will happen, unless it is using that expectation to do something different. |
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| I definitely agree that Issue 9 wraps things up conventionally and perhaps a bit too conveniently. Batwoman is revived almost instantly with no ill side effects, and despite being hours behind the zombie Batman they still manage to arrive in time to save Damien, who only suffers a sore back from the experience, and Knight and Squire find King Coal and take him out in a few panels. I thought things might’ve gotten a bit interesting when the zombie Batman started to show a consciousness, albeit fragmented. Had me thinking he might beckme an almost Bizzaro-type mirror to Batman. That didn’t really happen in this issue though despite quickly degrading it seems the zombie is still alive and in JLA custody so maybe we’ll see it again. I think we are seeing some of Batman’s plan in action, what with Dick assuming the role of Batman in his place and WayneTech kind of running itself. This Lazarus pit was newly discovered so Bruce wouldn’t have thought revival was an option. And Dick did say it was more of an impulse decision on his end just because it IS Batman we’re talking about. Seems to me he would’ve done it even if Bruce specifically said “leave me dead.” As for still wanting to find Batman, I think the situation in his mind has changed. Previously the thinking was “Bruce is dead, we need him back” but in discovering that it wasn’t Batman’s corpse at all, he figures Batman never died and that they have to find him. This mini-arc definitely feels more in service of returning to the status quo than continuing the story and development of the new Batman and Robin team. I’m gonna have to look up how long Bruce was “dead” for. In issue 1 we were seeing Dick taking his first steps as the new Batman and 9 issues in and he’s proclaiming that Bruce is alive. I know death doesn’t mean much in comics but this seems like a pretty fast turnaround. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite You're right, it was Dick. Quote: Originally Posted by dielinfinite Maybe they could have, and I don't know what might have been shown in other series like you mentioned, but I feel like the sudden turn from the previous issue would have felt even more like whiplash. It did afford some introduction to Knight and Squire and an opportunity to show Dick flipping around London. I didn't mind it. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by xkonk Fair enough, and reading Knight’s bio on Wikipedia kind of makes me want to read some of his stories Quote: Originally Posted by Wikipedia |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| I also enjoyed Knight and Squire as part of my general British kick recently. Been watching a lot of Great British Baking Show. | ||
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Wk4 (8/23-8/29): Batman & Robin (2009) #10-12   |
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| I read 10 through 12 earlier in the week and was unimpressed, but I'm giving them another look. 10 is fine. It's more of the detective Batman story than the action Batman story. There's Sexton's mystery of rich people being killed, the mystery of why Damian would take a swing at Dick, and there's the mystery of where Bruce is. The idea of people who travel back in time leaving hints for the future is a bit of a trope at this point, but it makes sense. On the other hand, if Bruce had to leave clues instead of just being somewhere at the present time, that might not bode well for him actually being alive. #11 has Oberon and Damien get into a fight with some cult-type weirdos in the Wayne graveyard. Mystery 2 is solved, as Talia included some kind of remote control in Damien's spine. Deathstroke takes it over to get revenge on Dick by killing him with Robin. There's a new mystery with Robin noticing that Oberon's accent is fake. And then a whole gang of people show up and Batman is beat up when he emerges from the tunnels. #12 is where I think I lost the plot a bit. Who exactly are the 99 Fiends? Are they the same people that were part of the domino stuff? They got the box that Dick found and ran. And the Joker reveal at the end feels like it came out of left field. So maybe I lost track of something, but I felt like Morrison was just throwing everything at the wall. I understand that Talia is a supervillain, but controlling your son via spinal implant and also cloning him is a bit much. Dick fighting a giant bat had some Iron Fist energy for me. Dick's clues about Oberon being the Joker because they were all jokes wasn't clear to me. They weren't any jokes that were familiar to me. I did the briefest of googling and found this, but these jokes still aren't familiar. So I guess I didn't dislike the issues, although I feel like the Batman in the past stuff gets put off for the Joker to show up. It was kind of a poor place to end for our particular reading. On the whole, I liked issues 7-12 more than 1-6, and 7-9 was probably my favorite trio. Damien did get a bit of an arc, changing from a defiant brat to someone who seemed more invested in being Robin. This was fine to read but I don't feel compelled to keep going like I have for some other club selections. |
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