It's Dave-El's Spinner Rack as I look at some recent comic book purchases.
Today's focus is on Batman.
We're gonna start at the bottom and work our way up.
Batman#162 - Hush 2
This Arc was supposed to finish up before Matt Fraction came along the reboot the title.
Instead Matt's 5 issues into his run and this... thing is running several months late.
I'm gonna blame the lavish detail art of Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair for the delays.
I hate to think we're waiting for Jeph Loeb to type up this dreck.
Tommy Elliot, Bruce Wayne's boyhood friend turned villain Hush, is up to stuff to make Bruce/Batman... feel bad?
Whatever is up, it's turned Batman against his fellow Bat family in an extended fight sequence with great art but feels so flat and lacking in any substance or significance.
Jeph Loeb is going through the motions to have Hush go through the motions in a vain attempt to recapture the magic of the original Hush arc from 20+ years ago.
Batman#4 - The Minotaur
I'm not sure we need yet another Machiavellian master manipulator working behind the scenes to control all crime in Gotham. Some strange dude with a mystery motif comes into town with the idea that he (and ONLY HE!) can crime actually work and outwit the Batman.
SIde note: I really like Dr. Annika Zeller and she and Bruce are seriously sparking right now.
I hope Matt Fraction does not give us a big reveal she's some kind of secret super villain or something.
Batman & Robin: Year One#12
The epic year long series by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee has reached it's conclusion and I am going to miss this series.
Bruce Wayne has been cut off from his money, his home and his resources thanks to the schemes of (yeah, yeah, I know) a Machiavellian master manipulator working behind the scenes to control all crime in Gotham.
And he's been separated from Dick Grayson who's been taken from Bruce and placed in a foster home.
But nothing can keep Batman & Robin down!
They reunite to take down Two-Face and Clayface once and for all! Yay for the good guys!
The big plot aside, this series really shines in tracking the growing relationship between Bruce Wayne and his young ward, Dick Grayson. Robin can be reckless at times but he has serious skills as an acrobat and is dedicated to the crime fighting mission he shares with Batman. The pair are working out the kinks of working as a team but it's coming together.
But Dick Grayson... well, he's only 10 years old and at times acts like it. Which puts Bruce at a disadvantage. He was never 10 years old. Bruce Wayne immediately became an old man in a boy's body after the death of his parents. He has no point of references for how to raise a 10 year old child.
Batman & Robin: Year One is a series that does not deny the darkness of it's setting and themes. Gotham is a city steeped in shadows and riddled with grim violence.
But it is a series that has a lightness of spirit. Batman may not be subsumed by the darkness he struggles against thanks to this young man who fights by his side.
Individually, they have been wounded by violence and loss.
Together, they have a better chance of surviving those wounds.
As Robin proclaims in the last panel of issue #12, "Look out, Gotham! Here comes the Dynamic Duo!"
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