Dick Grayson has operated underneath 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: 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 reveals us simply how shut the newly-orphaned Robin got here to dropping every thing about himself that’s good and pure in his quest for vengeance. On condition that, it’s a darker story than what you would possibly discover in your typical Robin guide. 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 inventive staff behind Picture Comics’ Descender, which simply wrapped up its 5-year run earlier this yr with the eighteenth difficulty of its sequel sequence, Ascender. Nguyen is definitely 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, 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 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 taking place 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 instructed in a contemporary context, whereas 2001’s Robin: 12 months One supplied context to a superhero origin story that was generations previous. As Nightwing, Dick Grayson’s recognition 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 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 sensible alongside Batman — is actually 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 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 suggest Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and Jim Aparo’s A Lonely Place Of Dying, a narrative that ran by way of Batman #440-#442 and New Titans #60-#61 and asserted the significance of Robin’s position in Batman’s battle on crime, significantly 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 raised recognize how tenuous Batman’s management over different individuals really 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 Sequence after studying this may also be so as, if sobbing overtly at a tv display screen is one thing you’re into.)

Is Robin & Batman #1 good?

Robin & Batman #1 spins a barely completely different form of yarn than most Robin origin tales, at the very least when it comes to temper. It’s largely instructed from the attitude of Dick Grayson, in a surprisingly grownup voice, by way of captions that weigh his emotions as issues between him and Batman rapidly flip south. (Generally 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 elements of his thoughts as he kicks across the concept of letting himself turn 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 more durable it’s to see my means 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 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 sequence, which makes me surprise if Lemire & Nguyen took the general unfavorable reception of the previous in thoughts after they had 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 could be a scruffy, distracted maniac right here as he his in All-Star, however at the very least 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 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 significantly singular second of offended silence between Batman and Dick, the exteriors scream pink. 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’d have initially believed. As the problem involves a detailed, these vivid colours immediately turn 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 is 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 may without end drive a wedge between two individuals and create a rot that runs by way of your entire 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 large motive why you have to be studying Robin & Batman; the stakes could be private however they’re no much less super.