Batgirl #17

Review: This issue gets started with Damian Wayne(Robin)being his regular, annoying, creepy little self to Alfred. Upon Alfred leaving him alone, Damian makes a journal entry to his red casebook(HA!)about Alfred's skills as a butler(HA!!). Meanwhile, Stephanie Brown(Batgirl)races out of her home to look into a case Batman had set up for her. A bit later, Damian(as Robin)accosts a school crossing guard for telling the children he was safeguarding to move faster. Damian finds that suspicious, and is annoyed when Batgirl swings over to question the crossing guard herself. It seems the mission Batman assigned Steph was to find out who was kidnapping children from Gotham's middle class. Damian knows nothing about Steph's mission, and chalks it up to all of the other missions he was given by Batman. Now aware of Steph's mission, Damian decides to tag along, and the two head over to the school and watch as a class of children are put on a bus for a field trip to a museum. The two follow and Steph has Damian dress as a child to do some undercover work. While Steph manages to make her way into the museum's security room, Damian(or “Bruce” as he tells one of the children his name is)has to suffer through acting like a normal 10 year old, something he is painfully unequipped to do. After surveying the cameras, Steph spots the school bus driver bound and gagged in the museum and alerts Damian to this. By this time, the kidnappers have taken the children back onto the bus and are ferrying them to their safehouse to be held for ransom. Damian quickly switches back to his Robin clothes and in a matter of minutes, him and Steph have caught up to the bus. The two heroes manage to gain access to the bus, and defeat the kidnappers in short order. With the kidnappers caught, and the children safe, Steph offers to help Damian learn a few things he was lacking in. To that extent, later on that night, Steph takes Damian to an amusement park and pulls him into a bounce house, actually getting a smile out of the little hellspawn and ending this issue.

Thoughts: Ahhhh, Bryan Q. Miller... Why do you do these things to me? You know, it couldn't have been more then a year ago when Damian Wayne would have easily, EASILY have been counted among my most despised characters. I mean he was just an unlikable, nasty, all around sucky character. However, after Damian had been written almost exclusively by Grant Morrison from his creation, last year saw many other writers use Damian, most notably Fabian Nicieza, Paul Dini, JT Krul and of course, Bryan Miller. These writers were able to do what Morrison either couldn't or wouldn't do, they began to fill out Damian's character. He ISN'T just the little ball of hate that Morrison had been writing him as, there actually was more to him. And let me tell you, nobody has done more to help with Damian's development then Miller has. I mean, I actually felt for Damian after reading this issue. Sure, he was still an obnoxious little punk here, but there were so many great little character development moments here as well... His annoyance that Batman had given Batgirl the kidnapping case over him, using the name “Bruce” when asked by the girl in the museum his name(which was AWESOME because it shows how much Damian WANTS to be his father), being unable to blend in and act like a normal 10 year old, and the ending with the bounce house. I mean god help me, but if there was a Robin series put out written by anybody BUT Grant Morrison, I'd be one of the first people in line to buy it. That's how drastically my feelings towards Damian have changed. Now onto the story of this comic. It was a pretty basic, one and done tale that told a simple story. Kidnappers try to abduct children, Damian and Steph(who aren't exactly best of friends)have to work together to foil the villains, and in the end Steph gains some measure of sympathy for the type of life Damian has lived. Was it technically perfect? No, not really, the stuff with the school crossing guard really didn't go anywhere, but did I enjoy it more than any other comic I've read so far this month? Without a doubt. And with that in mind, figuring out what to score this comic really wasn't that difficult...

Score: 10 out of 10. Yeah! The first perfect score of 2011!Yep, I'm a Damian fan now. Deal with it.