What They Say:
With Batman gone from Gotham City, Robin must stop the gang warfare that threatens to overrun the city. And what does the mysterious Red Robin have to do with the situation?
The Review:
I have to say that I feel like I got into the Batman family of books at the wrong time. After being out of the comics game for about a decade, I got into DC Comics again with the One Year Later storyline and watch both Nightwing and Robin fall prey to changes that stemmed from there, creative changes and now the change in the main Batman book as Bruce Wayne essentially went off the market. While I was never a huge Chuck Dixon fan, I was even less of a fan of Fabien Nicieza and was disappointed when I saw him being tagged to finish out the series. This collection gives us issues 175 through 183 as Robin deals with the return to Gotham after Bruce goes on his path of rediscovery and death. While we do get some flashbacks to the One Year Later storyline at times in order to provide context for Tim, by and large it takes place in the present day.
With the time that Bruce, Dick and Tim were away from Gotham, the city has definitely fallen harder with the growing amount of crime. Tim’s attempting to get things back on track since there isn’t as strong a level of fear now that Batman is no longer stalking the night but it’s not easily done. Nightwing has been helping out but even with the darker costume he doesn’t have the same level of intensity that Bruce brought to the game. The gang activity is up but that turns out to not be the real focus of this final run. Much of what has made Robin work as a series for me is watching him cope with growing into the role, which he’s certainly done over the years, as well as finding a work/school/life balance as it goes along. Tim’s had a lot of trouble with that in general and he hasn’t exactly had a good run with women in general considering who he keeps ending up with.
The relationship side does play into these final issues in a pretty good way but the rest of it falls off the map for the most part. Tim’s life has gotten complicated with the return of Stephanie, aka Spoiler, and she’s unlike she was before she disappeared. She’s become more confrontational with him which we learn is because she’s been asked to do so by Bruce before he disappeared. His goal was to have her manipulate situations to help create a Robin that could handle the weight of the world that Batman often does, to push him further than before. When you have Jason Todd showing up on the scene and the Red Robin in addition to him along with other foes, he’s certainly being given a run for his money.
Where the book works is when it deals with the tension between Tim and Steph as he’s unable to trust her like before since she lied about what happened to her and she’s pushing him in ways he’s not quite understanding. Part of him just doesn’t want to believe what she’s doing, though since he obviously knows Bruce so well he can’t help but think in the back of his mind that that is what Steph is up to. The Robin in the present is a tense, frustrated and unhappy young man who is trying to live up to something that he’s not sure he’s truly suited for but realizes he must do. It’s not a bad role for Tim, but it’s the contrast that makes it difficult to accept for a closing run in the series.
When this volume deals with Tim’s time during the One Year Later storyline as he and Bruce and Dick are flitting about the world and getting involved in all sorts of adventures, we see a more lighthearted and alive Tim. There are the complicated areas, particularly at the start when Tim has to confront the idea that he will have to be the one to take down Bruce should he go crazy, but it is by and large a series of flashbacks that hark back to the personality that I’ve long associated with Tim. Even when he was getting screwed over by relationships, school and the death of his father, there was something about him where he’d be able to handle it without coming across as oppressive like he does here.
The guest cast that parades here through the end isn’t bad but it lacks something compelling. Bringing Jason back is one of the better moments, especially at the end when there’s an unspoken revelation made to both him and Tim. Ragman has a couple of decent panels but his appearances felt more tacked on than anything. Red Robin, a character that I have felt has been mishandled since Countdown series, is brought into the story as it progresses but it lacks any serious connection. Granted, this changes to something much better after this series when Red Robin gets its own series, but that’s immaterial here. The portrayal here with Ulysses Armstrong in the role adds more to the revolving door aspect of the costume. There are few characters that have gone through this kind of change in the space of a couple of years. There’s a wonderful if brief piece with Shiva as well that ties things together nicely with the series overall, but again it feels like it was something they were doing just to get it done before the series drew to a conclusion.
From a technical perspective, this volume really disappointed me with how they laid out the individual issues. All the cover artwork is kept to the back couple of pages and they put multiple covers on each page, reducing the size and the amount of visible detail and quality. This is bad enough but by putting them there the flow of the graphic novel is quite stilted. When you have the covers where they belong within the book proper, separating up each issue, it allows you to flow from one issue to the next in an easier way. Without them here, and with the heavy recap and repetition that Nicieza uses in his writing, the start of each new issues is like a stumbling block when read in trade form like this. If the covers were placed where they should have been, it would have been a more natural “chapter end” before starting the next issue.
In Summary:
While I understand why they drew this series to a close and the plans for the future for Tim, this was a less than stellar conclusion to a title that started off so strongly years ago with multiple foil editions, hardcover slipcovers and more. Like any series of this length there are uneven points throughout it but in the end it was another title, like the Outsiders and Nightwing, that got thrown heavily off course by the One Year Later storyline and never truly recovered. The best material in here is the time spent between Steph and Tim as their past relationship is now tense, even more so because of the mission that Batman has given her. Unfortunately, the bulk of this book comes across as wildly uneven, generally uninteresting and almost out of character at times. I like the Tim Drake character a lot and the kind of life he breathed into the Robin character. He feels like a shadow of himself here as he’s about to step into a different role, a role that I hope is better handled by another writer.
Grade: C
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