Batman and Robin #19 – Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Writer; Javier Fernandez, Artist; Marcelo Maiolo, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Damian Wayne dropped a bomb on Bruce last issue – he wants to stop being Robin. It’s the culmination of an ongoing plot involving the growing tension between father and son, spurred on by Damian’s increasingly close bond to his mentor Dr. Bashir. The fear of losing his son has led Bruce to obsessively seek out connections between his father’s old friend and Ra’s Al Ghul, as well as trying to bond with Damian in awkward ways. But Bruce was never good at pretending to be normal, and his paranoia takes him over, leading him to track Damian when the boy leaves to go visit Bashir in the hospital. Bruce’s interactions with Oracle are particularly strong here – she was always one of the only members of the Bat-family who wasn’t afraid to call him out on his BS, and I’m glad to see more writers using her in this way again, as a core supporting cast member in all Bat-titles.
And of course, there’s the ongoing threat of Memento, the serial killer who is reviving the old MO of a dead man who used to be Bruce’s detective mentor before being exposed as the very killer they were chasing and dying in prison. Bruce has always held some doubts about the way that whole thing went down, and now he has the opportunity to potentially clear his friend’s name – with the help of LeClerc, his fellow student back then, who has been working with Damian. Memento has created a series of horrifying hallucinations for Bruce to endure, driving him close to the point of insanity, and some of the visuals in this issue are pretty disturbing – so intense they even seem to be unsettling Scarecrow. This is one of the few recent Batman books to truly capture a horror vibe, one that leaves us doubting the characters’ very perceptions. It’s a great mystery anchoring a book with lots of personal turmoil.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
