Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Special: Checking In On Batman And Robin Eternal (#1 - #5)

Okay folks so I apologize for this special being stupidly late but I didn't have as much free time as I expected to on Sunday, let alone yesterday, but I'm here now wrapping out what I hope will be the first of many posts of this ilk where I check in on a comic book series after 5 issues or so, what better place to start than with Batman and Robin Eternal, DC's follow-up weekly series to last year's hit Batman Eternal.

In case you didn't know Bruce Wayne is without memories so he has no idea he's Batman, instead the police department have put Batmen out on the street, mostly robots but some have police inside, like Commissioner Gordon moonlighting as Batman in the main Batman title. Dick Grayson on the other hand has been out spying on the spy organization Spyral by infiltrating them as an agent but reporting back to Bruce, who is no longer there obviously. For his next mission Spyral has sent him back to Gotham where he meets up with his old pals Tim "Red Robin" Drake, Jason "Red Hood" Todd and Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon. He also meets Harper "Bluebird" Roe for the first time as well as her new friend and roommate Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown.

The plot flashes back to one of the first cases that Dick and Batman ever worked on together, it was a giant human trafficking ring run by a mysterious woman named Mother, Batman has ties to her somehow, but Grayson doesn't know how. All he has to go on is a recording he found of Bruce advising that if he's watching this video he's no longer around to help and they need to clean up "his biggest mistake".

Grayson's unsure who he can trust since he finds out Mother can control anyone at anytime thanks to some nanobots. His immediate thought is that Tim and/or his parents could be suspect, seeing that he was the only one who wasn't orphaned... Did I forgot to mention that orphans are Mother's favourite? Anyway when Tim finds out about this he's none too happy, he and the rest of the Bat-family feel betrayed by Dick, rightfully so.

Will the gang be able to get to the bottom of this and overcome their differences? Will Bruce get any shred of memory back so that he too can help out? And who's the mysterious woman Mother? Also can the mysterious woman in black going around seemingly testing the Bat-Family be trusted? After all she can only say "mother" and that's about it. For what it's worth Harper seems to trust her new friend.

As far as the review goes, as with most weekly series the book is pretty slow moving. Which is disappointing given my excitement but again not all that surprised. The art is constantly in flux but Manapul did issue #5 which was awesome, though Steve Orlando's dialogue isn't the strongest in that issue or the preceding one. Overall it's still good, still has me pumped but enough set up already let's get into the dirty details and the action!

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