Comic Review: Batman and Robin #1-2

"Batman is dead.* Robin is now Batman and Batman's evil son is now Robin. Everything is new again."

This is how writer Grant Morrison answered when asked how he would sell the new comic Batman and Robin to non-Batman readers.  The title's a success on many levels, not the least being that despite the seventy years of history bearing down on the characters, this is really all incoming readers need to know.

For the last few years, Morrison has been mining the more outlandish areas of Batman’s history. In particular, he's sought out ways to make the kid-friendly, day-glo stories of the fifties and sixties cohere with the
approach taken by writers after Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. When talking about Batman and Robin, he has a tendency to name-drop the '60s TV series and David Lynch in the same sentence. The first issues feature new-Batman-old-Robin Dick Grayson and hyperviolent ten year-old Damian Wayne confront a new group of villains who are equal parts Wind in the Willows and Brazil. It's a conscious pop pastiche, and fun, inventive genre storytelling.

Frank Quitely is Morrison's illustrator here, as in earlier collaborations like an early-2000s stint on X-Men and the near-perfect All-Star Superman. Quitely's a master draftsperson, and a true original. Where other artists’ lines would be straight, Quitely’s have minute ripples--his figures and objects are expertly composed but unreal, unstable.  His characters designs, similarly, are funhouse mirror takes on old standards--cartoon grotesqueries with convincing density and weight. Issue two is worth checking out for Quitely's handling of a fight sequence alone. It's rhythmic, humorous and totally distinct.

* Mild spoiler: Bruce Wayne isn't really dead, he's trapped in time, which Morrison made an open secret for readers at the end of almost-end-of-the-universe comic Final Crisis.

BUT DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT--!

Issue 1
Issue 2
BONUS: All-Star Superman #5, maybe the best example of what it is Morrison and Quitely do so well