Dick Grayson has operated beneath 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 revealed Robin: Yr One, the final definitive tackle Dick Grayson’s first perilous 12 months because the colourful, smiling counterpart to Gotham Metropolis’s grim Dark Knight. As we shut in on the 12 months 2022, some may 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 reveals us simply how shut the newly-orphaned Robin got here to dropping every part about himself that’s good and pure in his quest for vengeance. On condition that, it’s a darker story than what you may discover in your typical Robin e book. So how is the Descender staff’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 staff behind Picture Comics’ Descender, which simply wrapped up its 5-year run earlier this 12 months with the eighteenth difficulty of its sequel sequence, 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 sequence Batman Everlasting, the DCU future shock sequence, 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 revealed Joker: Killer Smile which paired Lemire together with his Gideon Falls co-creator Andrea Sorrentino, they usually 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 sequence that explores the emotionally fraught days simply earlier than Dick Grayson stepped into his position 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 position 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: Yr One set the bar for a way a superhero origin story could possibly be instructed in a contemporary context, whereas 2001’s Robin: Yr One supplied context to a superhero origin story that was generations previous. As Nightwing, Dick Grayson’s reputation has solely boomed within the twenty years since DC final revisited his formative first 12 months because the Boy Wonder, and whereas DC did make a wild try at synthesizing a brand new “Batman & Robin: Yr 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 is still unfinished — and contentious — to this present day. 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 associate 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 clever alongside Batman — is basically all that’s required earlier than cracking Robin & Batman #1.

Nevertheless, Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne’s distinctive partnership is usually thought-about the second-most secure 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 Batman #440-#442 and New Titans #60-#61 and asserted the significance of Robin’s position in Batman’s battle on crime, notably how his presence has a constructive 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 higher recognize how tenuous Batman’s management over different individuals really is, and the way cool Dick Grayson finally 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 brazenly at a tv display is one thing you’re into.)

Is Robin & Batman #1 good?

Robin & Batman #1 spins a barely completely different type of yarn than most Robin origin tales, at the least when it comes to temper. It’s largely instructed from the attitude of Dick Grayson, in a surprisingly grownup voice, by captions that weigh his emotions as issues between him and Batman shortly flip south. (Typically his musings are pulled from his journal; generally they’re pulled from his ideas as they occur.) Lemire clearly delineates the variations between what Batman desires out of this new relationship — which, at this level, is virtually an experiment to him — and what Dick believes he desires.

Picture: Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen/DC Comics

As a result of that is largely instructed from Dick’s perspective, we’re allowed into the grimmer components of his thoughts as he kicks across the concept of letting himself change 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 purported to be documenting?), however Robin & Batman #1 excels when it’s targeted on the child who holds dominion over the marquee.

It’s not tough to seek 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 sequence, which makes me marvel if Lemire & Nguyen took the general destructive reception of the previous in thoughts after they had been developing 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 could be a scruffy, distracted maniac right here as he his in All-Star, however at the least he’s lightyears extra well mannered about it. Wonky as it’s, All-Star Batman & Robin nonetheless casts a shadow, and it’s laborious 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 offers this difficulty 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 notably singular second of indignant silence between Batman and Dick, the exteriors scream purple. Nguyen’s watercolors bend to the blacker inks on this difficulty — 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 problem involves an in depth, these vivid colours abruptly change into Dick’s solely touchstone to a life that’s now lengthy gone.

Under him is darkness. Wrapped round him is the house he’ll by no means have once more. What’s going to tomorrow deliver? 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 may without end drive a wedge between two individuals and create a rot that runs by the whole relationship between Batman and Robin till they lastly, maybe mercifully, break aside. What this declaration means within the brief time period for this fledgling Dynamic Duo is the massive motive why you have to be studying Robin & Batman; the stakes could be private however they’re no much less super.