Batman and Robin...

Last year's Grant Morrison penned Batman R.I.P. arc was pretty great - rife with Silver Age references (the Batman of Zur-En-Arh, The League of Bat Men, etc), the arc was a great read. Bruce was worn down and defeated by a new enemy - Doctor Hurt and a society known as The Black Glove - and put on the streets before finally redeeming himself. It was implied that at the end of the story's arc, his struggle with Hurt on an exploding helicopter was to be his final curtain.

Not so.

At the same time as R.I.P., Morisson was also penning the DC company wide cross over Final Crisis - a story line widely decried even now for its highly pretentious writing and unlived up to plot points. In issue 6, we find Bruce is still alive after all and has a gun holding the bullet that killed the God of the Fourth World known as Orion. Facing off against Orion's father, Darkseid (the man responsible for all the chaos in the plot), he makes a passing remark about how he never uses fire arms - 'but this time he'll make an exception' - before proceeding to nail the god of Apokolips with it. Before beginning to succumb to the poison within the bullet, Darkseid Omega Sanctions (go look that junk up in the old Super Friends cartoons from the 80's!) Bruce and by the end of the comic, he's back in the prehistoric days scrawling bats onto cave walls.

Is Bruce dead? Is he truly alive and just looking to find a way back from Dinosaur land?

Whatever.

In the aftermath of all of this, Tony Daniel's mini series Battle For The Cowl covered the vacuum left by Bats in Gotham with second Robin/now big bad Jason Todd now running around in a robotic Bat suit killing anything he finds. Dick Grayson of course is on the scene to stop him but is reluctant to take up the mantle of the Bat despite third and current Robin Tim Drake's pleas to do so. At the end of the series, Todd is defeated and Grayson takes on the mantle while Bruce's son Damien takes over the Robin mantle in the wake of Drake leaving to travel the world in his search for Bruce (apparently, he's the only one in the DCU who just won't buy that he's actually passed on...).

Starting last June, Morisson returned to helm (in what would presumably be considered the reason he offed Bruce in the first place) the new title Batman and Robin. His idea to juxtapose a more lighthearted Batman (in both his Robin and Nightwing guises, Dick was always comparable to Marvel's Spider Man in that he cracked jokes and utilized sarcasm in situations) and a more serious Robin (Damien being the son of Bruce and Ra's Al Ghul's daughter Talia was born into the League of Assassins and was being taught how to kill after his first moments walking) was initially met with detraction by the majority of the comics community.

When the first issue dropped however, all of us had to pick our mouths up off of the floor. Morisson's considerably dialed down and more straightforward writing combined with Frank Quitely's exquisite and crisp art were a 1 2 punch. The team cranked out the first three issues without trouble and fleshed out the Professor Pyg villain first introduced briefly back in Bats # 666 while showing the working dynamic between the new Dynamic Duo. Trading insults towards each other as much as blows towards their foes, this new pair were starting down a bad road. With Dick used to his own role as Nightwing, taking on an act as complex as Batman was proving hard and he had issues being comfortable with it. Sensing this and in turn comparing him constantly to his father, Damien often went off on his own and did whatever he wished regardless of Dick's instruction.

Now we're in November and the second arc has wrapped up. With Phillip Tan on artwork (something of a step down from Quitely's) and a re-introduction of Jason Todd now reclaiming his Red Hood guise as well as a new villain called the Pink Flamingo, Batman and Robin hasn't let up steam in the writing department at least. With atleast seven more issues ordered for the run of the series (with Quitely coming back for atleast one more arc), there's much to look forward to. Issue 7 will be released after Wednesday's Blackest Night #5 in what appears to be something of a coinciding crossover.

While I'm sad that Bruce isn't with us right now, the current era of Reborn books - B & R, Detective Comics (featuring Batwoman), Paul Dini's Streets of Gotham, etc - are all proving to be solid reads with great writing and wonderful character development. While I may seem six months late on the Reborn era, I let things stay on the burner and simmer for awhile so that I could look at the line of books more objectively. It's easier to assess them when they have half a year's worth of issues under their belts more so then when they only have a month or two.

Your comic book shop has these in mass - go try them out now!