Three months ago, Batman took in an orphan. Now, it’s time for the world to meet Robin, the Boy Wonder. On his first night out, a run-in with Two-Face leads to questions about a new, and far greater, threat. Batman & Robin: Year One #1 is written by Mark Waid, drawn and colored by Chris Samnee and lettered by Clayton Cowles and Samnee.
Eclipso has possessed Batman and Superman, and the Justice League are captured. Robin has gone to the only heroes left to help them: The Justice Society of America. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #32 is written by Mark Waid, drawn by Adrian Gutierrez, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Dave Sharpe.
Lex Luthor reveals his fascination with things from space to Victor Stone, and Victor pays a price. Batman heads toward Smallville. And in that sleepy town, the sheriff shows some skills that are downright super. Batman: Gotham by Gaslight — The Kryptonian Age #5 is written by Andy Diggle, drawn by Leandro Fernandez, colored by Dave Stewart and lettered by Simon Bowland.
Will Nevin: The strategy of slow-rolling the Absolute Universe — giving us a new book every other week — is … interesting.
Matt Lazorwitz: It is. I think while it cuts down on the urgency some, it does allow people who might be price conscious the opportunity to buy it all and not get hit by sticker shock. It’s sort of the opposite of the New 52, where it was 13 books a week.
Will: That’s a lot of dadgum comics to keep up with. Another … interesting … thing here? We don’t even have release dates for Absolute Green Lantern and Absolute Flash. If this is long-term planning, it’s at least showing a commitment to the Absolute Universe.
Matt: We’re a few days from the January DC solicitations. I would not be surprised to see one or both of them popping up there. Or maybe DC is waiting to drop those as the first arcs of the current crop wrap up in February?
Will: Final thing in the “list of my personal gripes that DC editorial refuses to listen to”: You see the new Batgirl logo? That thing is hideous.
Matt: Oof. That is very busy. You think DC would have learned about logo design since they went back to the classic bullet, huh?
Will: Graphic design, Matt. It’s DC’s passion.
Batman and Robin Begin
Matt: Y’know what I loved about this comic (well, one of the many things I loved about this comic)? Batman might be a bit stiff and awkward and worried about taking in a kid, but at no point does he talk about Dick as a soldier. And that is a change from some other stories we’ve seen set in this era in recent years, huh?
Will: Boy, is it ever. Batman doesn’t demean Robin, doesn’t abuse him, doesn’t make him feel less than. It’s like Batman is not a douchebag or something. Weird! We were sold on this book the day it was announced, so it’s not shocking that it worked so well. I do, though, get the feeling that the tone is going to change over this 12-issue run. This was all light and life and happiness, and I think that’s good, I really do. But I would like a story that attempts to bring the Dick Grayson Robin into more of a modern world with some real stakes to it — and that seems to be where this is going.
Matt: I am right there with your feeling. I think Batman and Robin are going to face a threat like they haven’t before, and I think Dick is going to have a rude awakening about how much “fun” this is. We get hints of it already: his excitement about the Bat Signal maybe calling them to fight the Joker is telling. While we’re a good ways away, timeline-wise, from things like The Killing Joke and “A Death in the Family,” Dick still isn’t getting how much a threat Joker is. He says he “hurt” people. We’ve read The Man Who Laughs. It was a lot more than hurt people.
I expect Batman to get harder on Robin as things in Gotham get worse. But that is reasonable for how any mentor, or father, would get on their younger partner. But this is such a breath of fresh air. Bruce’s narration actually admits to him jinxing Dick by distracting him while they’re chasing one of Two-Face’s guys across a rooftop. There are plenty of interpretations of Batman that would have blamed Dick for letting himself get distracted. Taking that responsibility himself is a great moment to me.
Will: You know, I wonder if this is Waid writing at a different point in his life and his work reflecting that. “Tower of Babel” — a JLA story about Batman at the height of his calculating, almost psychopathic need to scheme against enemies and allies alike — came out 24 years ago. 24! That’s a long time to reflect and grow as a person.
Matt: Good night, that was 24 years ago! I think Waid is less interested in writing stories that end that bleakly now, yes. I think he is enjoying the rousing tales of heroism. This particular issue doesn’t exactly end on an up note, though. This General Grimaldi seems to be calculating and psychopathic. Someone with so little regard for human life is always going to be someone who stands against what Batman stands for.
Will: It’s hard not to bring World’s Finest into the conversation, but I think if we’ve learned anything about Waid from that run, it’s that he’s 1) got a great love for continuity and lore and 2) he wants to bring that into a modern age with the sort of context it needs. He said right there on the page in the Bat-Mite/Mxyzptlk arc that their time had passed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate the concepts and the characters. And I think we’re going to get more of that idea with this series. As a child, Dick Grayson can’t participate in a war on crime, and Batman is not a psychopath who would willingly put him in harm’s way. And yet that’s what the lore tells us. What does that idea mean in a modern context? What are the complications and uncomfortable truths of that? I’m really looking forward to where we go from here.
Matt: We also just have to talk about the art here. Waid and Samnee had a good, long run on Daredevil together, and I have loved Samnee on projects away from Waid. As much as I loved Dan Mora’s work on World’s Finest, and am looking forward to it on Justice League Unlimited, Samnee is probably the best artistic fit for Waid in his long career, with the possible exception of the late, great Mike Wieringo. His style is dynamic, and his characters are expressive. It’s some of my favorite art in comics.
Will: I have been looking forward to the next Samnee Big Two book since his work with Waid on Captain America, and it was worth it. Just incredible work.
Buy Batman & Robin: Year One #1 here.
Batman & Superman: Possessed!
Matt: A double dose of Mark Waid in a week is not something I’m going to complain about. World’s Finest continues to give us a view of the DCU through Waid’s eyes, and having it come out the same day as Batman & Robin: Year One shows what a talent Waid has. He can write a little story set in Gotham with Batman fighting Two-Face, and also write a classic, Silver Age-inspired JLA/JSA team-up.
Will: Two Waid books in one day. What is this, 1996? Shit, I hope they have pizza in the cafeteria today. I should also probably work on stopping 9/11. But, yeah, this was very different from Batman & Robin: Year One in that, just like as we’ve seen during the rest of this run, this is steeped in DC lore. Which is not bad! But this book requires a working knowledge of more than the handful of characters we saw earlier in Year One.
Matt: It’s fun to see Waid write the JSA, and to have put the JLA in a trap they can’t escape without help. I think we’ve talked about this before, but Grant Morrison said when you’re writing the JLA, you have to make the threat big enough that Superman can’t beat it himself, because otherwise, why do you need the whole League? And bringing out Eclipso, a vengeance god who has possessed Superman and Batman, fits that bill nicely.
One of Waid’s talents as a writer that I have found is how he balances a story. We have three big events the JSA is split up to deal with: fighting Superman, fighting Batman and freeing the JLA. There are writers who would make an issue with that much in it feel busy or confusing, but Waid keeps it flowing very nicely.
Will: The man is a pro and can tell a story that easily moves from A to B to C without losing you along the way. Not every writer can say that.
Matt: Waid does a great job of showing how the JSA saves the possessed heroes, and how different it is for both of them. We’ve seen it before, but the death of Robin, any Robin, is Batman’s greatest fear. So using that to bring him back makes sense, and giving Superman a solar bath when you’re fighting a creature of shadow like Eclipso also works for me. And it gives Adrian Gutierrez the chance to draw all of these characters doing some really cool stuff.
The Kryptonian Cowboy
Will: Five issues into The Kryptonian Age, and we’ve finally got our first Superman appearance. And Matt, it did not disappoint.
Matt: It absolutely did not. We get a very Silver Age Sheriff Clark Kent here, bumbling and awkward, but it’s done with so much charm and a wink at the camera and the people of Smallville. It was incredibly charming, and I loved it.
Will: Funny how all the bad guys’ guns never seem to work right in Smallville. Must be that darned prairie dust. Other side of the charming coin? Chekov’s Victor Stone had his unfortunate “accident” in this issue, and I never thought my body horror itch could be scratched by a cyberpunk Lex Luthor, yet here we are.
Matt: I was reading this and thinking you were going to dig that.
Maybe it’s because this is 12 issues, but I don’t mind all the little appearances of characters from throughout the DCU in this book as much as I do in some of the other Elseworlds we’ve read. Jay Garrick is obvious and important as we are building a Justice League or Society, but Deadshot wasn’t needed for that final scene. But it felt more like a nod and a wink and not like it was getting shoved in my face, and the same goes for Phantom Stranger’s interaction with Constantine. This feels more like worldbuilding than we get in a lot of Elseworlds.
Will: The Elseworlds Sin is mortal when it’s nothing but name dropping. The scenes and character building here are so good, I’m not even sure I can make this a venial sin of trying to include every single DC character in your book. This is just fun and weird, and I can’t complain … even if the overall plot is a bit hard to follow.
Matt: I’m hoping that now that we’re close to the halfway point, we’re going to get the different plots starting to coalesce. I would assume that next issue might introduce some more characters, but after that we start pulling the threads together for the downhill rush of the back half of the series.
Will: It seems clear that Luthor is a straight up villain with no pretense of being good. But who else is going to step up with him and give these heroes fits? Again, more stuff to look forward to.
Matt: Oh, and one final note before we’re done. I loved what Diggle did with Alan Scott here. How easy, how traditionally superheroic, would it be for him to get powers and suddenly go from a con man to a hero? But no, he’s still a con man here! He’ll have to grow into heroism, which makes for a much more interesting journey.
Will: “What if P.T. Barnum stumbled into a power ring?” is a neat-ass concept, and I think any number of these characters could support their own books.
Buy Batman: Gotham by Gaslight: The Kryptonian Age #5 here.
Bat-miscellany
- We’re at the halfway point of Villains Month on the BatChat pod, and this week, it’s time to read stories featuring Killer Croc.
- We will be covering the Batman vs. werewolves story Full Moon, but it’s a five-Wednesday month with not much coming out the past week, so we figured we’d save that one for the week of Halloween.
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Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
