Batman and Robin #8:
Summary: Batman takes Robin(who had just murdered Nobody) back to the Batcave to get patched up by Alfred. Bats then gets depressed that Nobody's blood was on Damian's hands as opposed to his own. Bats leaves Damian with a recorded message about Nobody, telling Damian that he had wanted to kill Nobody back in London and then after he brutalized Damian. But Bats managed to fight back his urge to kill. The lesson being? Much like Bruce, Damian has an urge to kill, he has to learn to fight those urges back lest he turns out like the villains he was battling. Bruce and Damian then have a bonding moment and decide to take some time off, as Alfred recommended, and play ball outside with Damian's dog(which he named Titus). Unfortunately for Alfred, while playing ball outside, Bruce and Damian spot the Bat signal high in the Gotham sky, and know what they had to do...
Thoughts: This was a pretty good read. The art was strong(as usual) and the story was solid. Yeah, I was a bit bugged by how easily Bruce pushed aside Damian murdering Nobody right in front of him(can you IMAGINE what he'd have done to Jason Todd had he pulled a stunt like that?!), but I guess I'll chalk that up to Bruce finally looking at Damian as more than another expendable soldier in his war on crime and more like a family member. So yeah, this was a good issue, but it's probably not something I'll remember two months from now.
Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.
That poor dog has no idea where Damian's fingers have been...
ok, killing Nobody is one thing but standing there jaming your fingers in to the guys skull while semi confessing to your dad is just Wrong! DAMIAN IS FREAKING NUTS!
ReplyDeleteExcellent point, if it was Jason he would've delivered his ass to Arkham personally...
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Damian killed Nobody by jamming his fingers into his skull makes that scene that much better! I mean there were probably a dozen ways Damian could have killed Nobody, but the way he did it was awesome!
ReplyDeleteRight, JT?! And without a second thought, too!
You know a small part of me truly believes that Bruce is starting to learn that maybe if he didn't abuse all his Robins physically and mentally so much and giving them hell for ever single mistake they won't tragicly turn against him and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteEither that or I've seen that Red Hood movie to many times.
It be great if Bruce finally DID realize that! Especially since this Robin is his own flesh and blood! That's kind of what I think it is though. Damian's not some kid off the streets, an orphan or a neighbor, Damian is Bruce's own son, so I kind of think there's a bit of nepotism going on there. It could make for an interesting story if one of the former Robins(Jason for example) called Bruce on it.
ReplyDeleteI don't know I don't think new 52 Jason has what it takes to stand up to Bruce properly anymore.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Pre-reboot? There's no doubt in my mind Jason would stand up to Bruce(and then some!). But post-reboot? I don't know... Jason's relationship with Bruce hasn't been THAT filled out yet. We know he was a Robin, we know he died(although I'm not sure if we know HOW he died yet), we know he was taken in by the All-Caste and then ended up running afoul of Bruce a few times. But now he's wearing the bat-logo and doesn't seem to have that same hatred of Bruce that pre-reboot Jason had... It's weird, you'd think after 8 months we'd have a better grasp of Jason's relationship with the various Bat-family members, and yet we don't.
ReplyDeleteyou see this is the the problem with rebooting your entire franchise, you can't characters that we've known for years and have seen their development both mental and physical and then just act like they're completely different people one day but they just so happen to have the same name and costume so we'll buy the comics because we expect the characters we know and love (looking at superboy and starfire among others).
ReplyDeleteBingo. That's the problem with the reboot in a nutshell. Superboy is the example I always point out too. If the character who is currently Superboy was called ANYTHING else, I'd probably be enjoying that series way more. But there's simply no way the current Superboy compares to the pre-reboot SB... I still think DC should have done a soft-reboot as opposed to the hard one they ended up doing. They could have altered a few things, renumbered all of their issues to #1(so they'd still get the sales they were after), while still leaving most of the characters untouched.
ReplyDelete