Dick Grayson has operated below the nom de guerre of Nightwing since 1984 — a stretch of time that’s simply seven years shy of the 44 years he spent preventing crime as Robin, DC’s first-ever Boy Wonder.

What’s extra, it’s been 20 years since DC initially printed Robin: 12 months One, the final definitive tackle Dick Grayson’s first perilous yr because the colourful, smiling counterpart to Gotham Metropolis’s grim Dark Knight. As we shut in on the yr 2022, some would possibly say it’s time for a generational refresher course on the historical past of the DCU, and with Robin & Batman, Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen present Dick Grayson exactly that.

Robin & Batman #1 is a revised look again on Dick’s formative days as a crimefighter, one which exhibits us simply how shut the newly-orphaned Robin got here to dropping all the pieces about himself that’s good and pure in his quest for vengeance. Provided that, it’s a darker story than what you would possibly discover in your typical Robin guide. So how is the Descender group’s first united foray into the storied legacy of the Batman, and what untold risks does their saga maintain in retailer for the Boy Wonder?

Who’s making Robin & Batman #1?

Robin & Batman is helmed by Eisner-award winners Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen, with letter work by Steve Wands. As author and artist respectively, Lemire & Nguyen are additionally the artistic group behind Picture Comics’ Descender, which simply wrapped up its 5-year run earlier this yr with the eighteenth subject of its sequel collection, Ascender. Nguyen is actually no stranger to Gotham Metropolis; on prime of drawing and portray a sterling 20-issue run on Batman: Streets Of Gotham (written by Paul Dini), Nguyen additionally noticed a stretch on the weekly Bat-Household occasion collection Batman Everlasting, the DCU future shock collection, Batman Past Limitless, and co-wrote Batman: Li’l Gotham with frequent collaborator, Derek Fridolfs. Lemire’s time in Gotham is extra restricted, however DC lately printed Joker: Killer Smile which paired Lemire along with his Gideon Falls co-creator Andrea Sorrentino, and so they capped off the DC Black Label miniseries with the epilogue one-shot, Batman: Smile Killer.

What’s Robin & Batman #1 about?

Robin & Batman is a three-issue status format collection that explores the emotionally fraught days simply earlier than Dick Grayson stepped into his function as Robin. The proceedings are documented by Dick himself, who scrawls out his emotions in a journal and broodingly muses to himself about his new function as a vigilante’s protégé. Later, Dick’s historical past as a circus acrobat is revealed to have a connection to a bigger nemesis in Batman’s rogues gallery.

Why is Robin & Batman #1 occurring now?

Picture: Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen/DC Comics

1987’s Batman: 12 months One set the bar for a way a superhero origin story might be advised in a contemporary context, whereas 2001’s Robin: 12 months One supplied context to a superhero origin story that was generations outdated. As Nightwing, Dick Grayson’s reputation has solely boomed within the twenty years since DC final revisited his formative first yr because the Boy Wonder, and whereas DC did make a wild try at synthesizing a brand new “Batman & Robin: 12 months One” story in 2005, Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder turned out to be a calamitous Gotham Metropolis cul-de-sac that continues to be unfinished — and contentious — to at the present time. Robin & Batman #1 is a vastly extra sober try at recontextualizing Dick Grayson, with a tackle how he survived these essential first days because the accomplice to a darkly pushed vigilante.

Is there any required studying?

Robin & Batman takes place on the very starting of Robin’s profession, not very lengthy after Batman began working in Gotham Metropolis himself. A passing familiarity of the idea of Robin — being a child who runs round rooftops in a brightly-colored uniform and cracks sensible alongside Batman — is absolutely all that’s required earlier than cracking Robin & Batman #1.

Nonetheless, Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne’s distinctive partnership is usually thought-about the second-most steady out of all of the variations of Batman and Robin — with the notably chill Tim Drake taking the highest slot on this regard — which prompts me to advocate Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and Jim Aparo’s A Lonely Place Of Dying, a narrative that ran by means of Batman #440-#442 and New Titans #60-#61 and asserted the significance of Robin’s function in Batman’s battle on crime, significantly how his presence has a optimistic psychological impact on Bruce Wayne and makes him a greater Caped Crusader. If something, A Lonely Place Of Dying must be required studying after having learn the upcoming three problems with Robin & Batman, if solely to raised recognize how tenuous Batman’s management over different folks truly is, and the way cool Dick Grayson in the end turns into as a superhero.

(Additionally: a viewing of the two-part “Robin’s Reckoning” from Batman: The Animated Collection after studying this may additionally be so as, if sobbing overtly at a tv display is one thing you’re into.)

Is Robin & Batman #1 good?

Robin & Batman #1 spins a barely totally different form of yarn than most Robin origin tales, no less than by way of temper. It’s largely advised from the angle of Dick Grayson, in a surprisingly grownup voice, by means of captions that weigh his emotions as issues between him and Batman rapidly flip south. (Generally his musings are pulled from his journal; typically they’re pulled from his ideas as they occur.) Lemire clearly delineates the variations between what Batman needs out of this new relationship — which, at this level, is virtually an experiment to him — and what Dick believes he needs.

Picture: Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen/DC Comics

As a result of that is largely advised from Dick’s perspective, we’re allowed into the grimmer elements of his thoughts as he kicks across the thought of letting himself develop into as devoted to this new harmful life as his mentor clearly has. (“[The] darkness has weight. And now it feels prefer it’s beginning to pull me down with it. And the deeper I fall, the tougher it’s to see my method out.”) It’s considerably unnerving to see a child mess around with such ideas (Dick’s future isn’t assured, so far as he’s involved, so what’s this journal imagined to be documenting?), however Robin & Batman #1 excels when it’s centered on the child who holds dominion over the marquee.

It’s not tough to search out parallels to All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder in Robin & Batman. These are parallels that lie past the storied iconography of the duo and relaxation solely within the textual content and imagery of the Miller/Lee collection, which makes me surprise if Lemire & Nguyen took the general unfavorable reception of the previous in thoughts once they have been establishing the latter. In Robin & Batman #1, Alfred is extra passive-aggressive in his criticisms of Batman’s remedy of Dick than he’s in All-Star (there’s no shoving matches right here); the phrase “soldier” is used as a critique of how Batman chooses to understand Dick; and Batman is likely to be a scruffy, distracted maniac right here as he his in All-Star, however no less than he’s lightyears extra well mannered about it. Wonky as it’s, All-Star Batman & Robin nonetheless casts a shadow, and it’s exhausting to not spot Miller’s influences on this work.

As for Nguyen, he’s forging new inventive metal with Robin & Batman. His Gotham Metropolis feels extra summary than something I’ve seen from him earlier than, which supplies this subject a foreboding temper. The streets are choked by plumes of steam and smoke, the concrete canyons really feel like they go on without end, and through one significantly singular second of indignant silence between Batman and Dick, the exteriors scream purple. Nguyen’s watercolors bend to the blacker inks on this subject — which solely employs Robin’s trademark reds and yellows and greens in the direction of the latter half, the place it turns into clear that Dick’s future as a crimefighter is much less sure than we would have initially believed. As the difficulty involves a detailed, these vivid colours instantly develop into Dick’s solely touchstone to a life that’s now lengthy gone.

Beneath him is darkness. Wrapped round him is the house he’ll by no means have once more. What’s going to tomorrow carry? For Lemire and Nguyen, it’s one other profession excessive.

One panel that popped

Picture: Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen/DC Comics

“We are able to’t have any secrets and techniques.” It’s a line that can without end drive a wedge between two folks and create a rot that runs by means of the whole relationship between Batman and Robin till they lastly, maybe mercifully, break aside. What this declaration means within the quick time period for this fledgling Dynamic Duo is the massive cause why you ought to be studying Robin & Batman; the stakes is likely to be private however they’re no much less great.