Gotham City says “No more Robins!”
Batman’s sidekicks may be embroiled in the weekly saga that is Batman and Robin Eternal, but now there’s another Robin-centric conflict bringing everyone together. Robin War #1 kicks off a crossover that will run through several ancillary Batman comics for the next month. This opening issue introduces a conflict not unlike Marvel’s Civil War, as one of Gotham’s new Robins accidentally sparks a tragedy and a new wave of anti-vigilante sentiment rises up in Gotham City. It’s a solid premise fro a crossover, but one that doesn’t quite succeed in the execution.
Writer Tom King has all the right ingredients in this issue. Seeing the We Are Robin cast butt heads with the likes of Damian Wayne, Tim Drake and Jason Todd is a lot of fun. Damian especially is a hoot as he makes it abundantly clear how little respect he holds for Duke Thomas and his group. It’s also great to see the Court of Owls brought back into the forefront as the secret hand pulling the strings of the conflict. This shadowy band of villains has potential for far more outside of Scott Snyder’s Batman run, and now other writers are beginning to seize it.
Several problems arise over the course of this issue, however. One is that the conflict shares an unfortunate similarity with Civil War in the sense that the sides aren’t properly balanced. It shouldn’t be difficult to side with the faction that argues against the idea of angry teenagers taking the law into their own hands, but King paints the figurehead of this faction as so blatantly evil that Duke and his friends quickly wind up becoming the heroes of the story. This issue tries to adopt a more real-world sensibility as it acknowledges issues like police brutality and gang violence, but everything is taken to a comical extreme.
Another problem is that the characterization is a bit spotty. King handles the main Batman cast well enough (especially Dick Grayson, whom King is plenty familiar with by now). But as has been the case in We Are Robin so far, most of the new Robins apart from Duke himself are poorly defined. It’s still tough to care much for these characters as individuals, which renders the big dramatic twist in this issue dull and inert.
Finally, Robin War #1 suffers from having entirely too many artists tackling one issue. In addition to Rob Haynes, who provides breakdowns for the entire issue, there are five artists and four colorists on board. Luckily, Haynes’ efforts ensure that there’s a certain uniformity to the storytelling and page design. And the coloring at least remains fairly consistent from one sequence to the next. But the various artists simply have too wildly different styles to achieve any sense of cohesion. The tone of the book shifts dramatically from one scene to the next, not because the script dictates it, but because the art style forces the change.
There’s plenty of potential with this new crossover, even if this first issue only occasionally takes advantage of it. The idea of Gotham’s new army of teen vigilantes being force to account for their actions and prove their valor is sound. But between the sporadic quality of the characterization, poor framing of the conflict and the haphazard artwork, this issue makes too many missteps along the way.
