More words than anyone could possibly want on 2025's Nightwing Vol. 1: Bludhaven (collecting the 1995 miniseries and the first eight issues of the ongoing)

While I read a lot of Batman comics in the '90s, I sat out Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel's Nightwing ongoing series. I mean, as a teenager and college student with limited income, I had to draw the line somewhere, and that seemed like a good place to draw it. 

I had obviously read a lot of Dixon, and while he was not a particularly colorful nor imaginative writer, he was great at coming up with new crimes and heists on a monthly basis, and penning comics that read like mini action movies that happened to have a superhero in them. I wasn't familiar with McDaniel at all. I imagine if the book had been drawn by Norm Breyfogle or Tim Sale or Vince Giarrano or Jim Balent, I might have snapped it up, but it was not (I am now trying to imagine the book drawn by any of the above and can't quite see it).

Also, I remember balking at the very existence of Bludhaven, the fact that Gotham City happened to have a neighboring big city that was even more corrupt and crime-ridden that no one had ever mentioned before. That was too much for Teenage Caleb's suspension of disbelief (Grown-up Caleb doesn't care and, in fact, I now see it was completely integral to making the Nightwing ongoing interesting; having Dick as Batman Lite fighting crime in Gotham City just wouldn't have worked).

So why am I reading it now, especially given the fact that the reputations of the series' creators are now so, as Travis Hedge Coke pointed out on my Bluesky post about it put it, "tarnished"...? Well, as I explained a few posts back, my teenage nephew is starting to get into comics, and  he said he liked Nightwing. I ordered this particular trade paperback online for him and, when it arrived, I noticed that not only did it collect the beginning of the monthly, but also a four-issue 1995 miniseries penned by the late Denny O'Neil. 

That was of particular interest to me, as not only had I not read the miniseries, but I don't think I had ever even known it existed. Released when it was, the mini, penciled by some guy named Greg Land and inked by a Mike Sellers, would have slotted in between the events of "Prodigal", the multi-book event storyline during which Dick Grayson temporarily became Batman after "KnightsEnd", and the launch of the Nightwing ongoing.

So, after giving my nephew a brand-new copy for his birthday ("Can you pose like that?" his mother asked after he unwrapped it, trying to strike the pose Nightwing did on McDaniel's cover for the trade), I ordered a copy from the library to read for myself...and, of course, blog about.

Having now read the four-issue miniseries, I'm not entirely sure why it was published (Pretty great Brian Stelfreeze cover though, right? Unfortunately, it has Dick in his previous costume, and probably wouldn't have worked for the collection cover; Stelfreeze also drew the cover of the second issue, and McDaniel provided those for issues #2 and #3, neither of which are quite as strong, and McDaniel covered the fourth and final issue).

It's not exactly that nothing happens, but not much of real consequence does. The plot provides a couple of potential big, life-altering events for the Dick Grayson—he decides to quit superheroing and try out life as a civilian, he meets a new love interest and he learns a secret that might mean he was wrong about who actually killed his parents—but, by the fourth issue, all of those things are resolved in such a way that he's pretty much right back where he was at the beginning of the series, albeit it wearing a new costume. 

If the point was simply to get him into a new costume, DC probably didn't need to a publish a 90-page story. Surely that could have happened in Nightwing #1...or simply off-panel. I wonder if perhaps the reason DC published a Nightwing miniserires was to test the waters and gauge market interest in a Nightwing ongoing series.  DC had just published a one-shot—Nightwing: Alfred's Return—a few months previous, and the monthly launched about nine months after the mini concluded.

Regardless of the why of it, let's discuss the what of it.

The opening scene finds Nightwing, still wearing the costume seen on the cover above, atop a rooftop at night, looking down on a quartet of very large men in an alley, one of whom is about to execute a young woman with a pistol. He intervenes, chattily beating everyone up and saving the girl...but not before the leader of the gang forcefully drives her face into a brick wall, knocking off her glasses and knocking her out.

"Without her glasses, she's beautiful," Nightwing thinks, and then follows that up with "I can't believe I thought that.

For reference, here she is with glasses:

And here she is without: 

Jeez, what does Dick have against glasses...? If he went to the high school in She's All That, I suppose he would have thought Rachael Leigh Cook was some sort of hideous monster before Jenna Malone gave her a makeover. 

Ironically, the last I knew, Dick was in a relationship with Barbara Gordon, who famously wears glasses.

Anyway, Batman shows up and the two glare at one another as if they are about to fight, but, instead, they chat a bit about what just happened.

The girl is Miggie Webster, she had been kidnapped and the cops were unable to crack the case...but Nightwing was able to find and rescue her in the nick of time. The former Dynamic Duo talk about their history over the course of a few pages of climbing a wall, swinging from extremely thick ropes that get all McFarlaney below where they hold them and running across rooftops.

At the end of the scene, Dick says he's going to quit the hero business, and hands Batman his old costume: "Put it in a trophy case. Give it to the Salvation Army. Burn it."

The next day, Dick goes to see Miggie in the hospital, and gives this weird-ass explanation:

You probably don't remember me...My name is Dick Grayson. I was there--in the alley a couple of hours ago... I have a friend who was one of the paramedics... Anyway, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd see how you are--

I found this amusing because not only does Nightwing have a relatively small mask (It's not like it might disguise his facial features the way that Batman or Daredevil's masks hide theirs) but at this point he also has a very distinct, flowing blue-black mullet. I mean, if you encounter two such young, fit guys with that same exact hairstyle in a matter of hours, you might be a wee bit suspicious, no...? I think of this hairstyle a little like I've always thought of Oliver Queen's distinct goatee; it's just a little too distinct to successfully pull off a double identity with.

I don't know if Miggie does recognize Dick as Nightwing or not. As he's leaving, she says, "I feel I owe you something...a cup of cappuccino?"

If she knows he's Nightwing, sure, that makes sense. He did save her life. The least she can do is take him out for coffee. But if he was just some guy in the alley with his friend, what does she owe him for...? For checking on her the next day...?

Well, whatever. Dick returns to his dusty, grocery-less Gotham apartment and lays atop his blanket-less bed in a tiny pair of red and blue briefs.

(A little something for the ladies, from Greg Land and Mike Sellers.)

The next morning, Alfred, who Dick's narration tells us is his best friend (Take that, Wally!), arrives with a plate of pancakes, a thermos of coffee and a bunch of papers, in order to feed Dick and talk about how happy he is that he's considering a life beyond vigilantism. (Dick is considering law school, he says).

Among the papers, however, is something that will fuel the events of the rest of the series. A threatening letter written in yellow scrript—what, did the writer use a highlighter?—addressed to his parents, mere days before their deaths. It reads:

If you say anything about what you saw, they will kill you and your whole family.

Be warned.

Pickles The Clown

It was in an envelope postmarked from the Principality of Kravia, one of those little fake countries that must make the maps in the DC and Marvel Universes so much more complicated than those in ours. Apparently, Haly's Circus visited there shortly before the Flying Graysons were killed, and now Dick is questioning whether it was really Tony Zucco who killed his parents all those years ago...or someone from Kravia.

Just when he thought he was out of the hero game, he finds himself pulled back in...!

Kravia is ruled by a rather ridiculous looking dictator named Prince Balsik, who wears a blue, green, purple military uniform with lots of medals, shoulder cords and a sword. His face is badly scarred with big, thick scars that look like a wild animal had mauled him. 

His soldiers wear orange and yellow armor and helmets that looks like something out of a video game...or, perhaps, the future, and though their guns fire bullets, Land draws them more like laser guns. 

When Grayson starts making inquiries, the prince sends an assassin after him, but between meeting the assassin and then having the first of two fights with him, Dick manages to go on a date with Miggie, who seems oddly desperate to spend time with Dick (This is, for the detectives at home, Clue #2 that Miggie's life isn't as perfect as Dick, who spent his childhood training under the World's Greatest Detective, assumes it must be).

Eventually, Dick visits the Batcave, gets a briefing from Oracle, whom he just refers to as "Oracle" (no mention of how she looks in glasses) and, now regretting his decision to give Batman his superhero outfit, is in need of something to wear.

Enter Harold, "Batman's chief mechanic, computer whiz and all 'round genius...not to mention costume maker!"

It is Harold who is responsible for Nightwing's new costume, the simple, mostly-black one with the stylized blue "V" over the chest that runs down his arms. I'm pretty sure this is the very best of all of Nightwing's costumes (and, notably, all of those that followed it over the course of the next 30 years have mostly just been slight variations of it). While Harold is responsible for it in-comic, I wonder which real-world artist designed it.

Anyway, here's Dick's first appearance in it:

For some reason, Land gave him long, claw-like nails on two of the fingers on his right hand and, amusingly, once Dick puts his hair into a ponytail, it seems to be about five times as long as it was when he was wearing it down. Did Harold also give Dick extensions...?

From there, Dick infiltrates Kravia, and does so during Prince Baslik's first night of an ethnic cleansing. In a rather grim scene, one that prefigures that one gag from Family Guy, Baslik hands a subordinate a light brown card and asks, "Your men have copies of this card, Colonel?"

When he responds affirmatively, the prince follows up with, "They understand they are to terminate anyone whose skin is darker than this?"

Dick's not there to save the country or end Baslik's rule, but he inadvertently does so, in the process fighting lots of those weird futuristic-looking soldiers, discovering a very dark and melodramatic secret about the Kravian leadership, escaping a particularly scary-sounding deathtrap, deciding whether or not to kill someone who might have had his parents killed and ultimately learning the truth behind Pickles The Clown's threat to his parents.

As I said earlier, after his little adventure, Nightwing's status quo reverts to where it was on page one, the only real change aside from his costume being his acknowledgement or acceptance that Batman and Alfred had given him a good childhood after all. "You and Alfred gave me a home and you gave me what we don't mention," Dick tells Batman on the penultimate page. "The L word." (Unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim ruined the moment for me.) 

I've shared enough imagery above that you probably have a good sense of what the miniseries looked like. It's always interesting to see Land's work from this early in his career, when it seems to have genuinely been created by Land putting pencil to paper...something that can't be said of his work in the 21st century.

I mean, I have no idea exactly how he creates his artwork, but, when I think of Land, I think of images like this now, images so obviously photo-referenced that it seems as if he is finding photographs and then digitally manipulating them to add on superhero costumes...and not even with much care, so that, say, Reed Richards or Sue Storm's face may look like those of completely different people from panel to panel.

I honestly don't get it, as that seems just as tiresome to me as drawing would. (But maybe easier on the hand?)

 There are a few examples of...well, let's say shortcuts in this series, published 31 years ago.

Here, for example, is an image of Batman and Nightwing swinging through the night together:

And here, on the very next page, is Batman and Dick-as-Robin swinging through the night together:

Obviously, the point is that the images should be similar, demonstrating how Dick has changed even if his partnership with Batman hasn't, but jeez, if Land was going to repurpose the Batman pose, couldn't he at least have changed up the exact weird tangling of the ropes, or the angle of his wrists, or which foot is visible or something...? Like, gestured towards making them look different...? Colorist Cathi Bertrand did a little bit more work in distinguishing the two images of Batman, making his costume seem a bit bluer in the second image.

(Again, these images appear on consecutive pages; in fact, there are only five panels between them). 

Here's another, more obvious one, in which Dick punches the assassin four times in the mid-section in four panels, although Land only drew two panels and then repeated them:

A pre-cursor of what was to come, perhaps...

With the miniseries now out of the way, the rest of the trade is devoted to the first eight issues of Dixon and Beatty's ongoing, which was inked by Karl Story. 

That's a pretty hefty chunk of comics there, twelve issues total, in a $19.99 trade paperback. Pulling up the calculator on my phone, that works out to $1.66 per issue...a pretty solid value, really. 

Now, while the miniseries isn't really necessary, and doesn't really come into play at all in the events that follow, those first eight issues of the ongoing do all belong together, as they are all more-or-less a single storyline. 

In it, Batman sends Nightwing to Bludhaven in order to find out who was responsible for killing 21 men in a very particular fashion (Their heads were all turned around backwards and they were thrown in the water, eventually floating into Gotham), and Dick spends those eight issues trying to get to the bottom of that particular mystery...which involves the city's kingpin of crime Angel Marin going missing, and some unknown player seemingly assuming his role in secret.

It's only in the later issues that Dixon and McDaniel start to hint at the new kingpin of crime (and yeah, I'm using "kingpin" on purpose, as the title seems less Batman Lite and more Daredevil Lite, including having a very large villain in the suit in the antagonist role). 

Fist he's just a voice, then a figure in the shadows, and then a civilian name being bandied about and, ultimately, on the very last page of the seventh issue, hie revealed visually and his supervillain identity spoken aloud (In a very dramatic lead-up to that splash, McDaniel draws three consecutive panels of Nightwing addressing him, gradually falling under a shadow as the gigantic crime boss apparently stands up in front of him).

Now, these comics are from 1996, so, chances are you already know who this mysterious villain is. I mean, I did, and, as I said, I didn't read Nightwing back then...I just knew Dixon had made use of the character via osmosis I guess, seeing issue of Nightwing on the new comics racks and, eventually, reading about it on the Internet. 

If the comics weren't 30 years old, I'd be hesitant to name the character at all here, but, well, they are 30 years old, so I guess I will name him eventually, so I guess you can stop reading now if you don't want his identity spoiled.

The book isn't presented as a mystery—that is, there are no suspects, and Dixon doesn't provide the reader with enough clues to guess at who the crime boss might be—but it is mysterious, and Dick spends seven issues trying to get to the bottom of it as he feels out the local criminal underworld.

It seems unusual to me as it is essentially a single, eight-issue story arc, with the mysterious villain revealed at the end and, while the conflict isn't resolved, it is only at that particular point that the book's premise is finally unveiled and the hero gets a new status quo. 

The hopelessly corrupt city lacks anything approaching a hero and is portrayed a lot like Frank Miller presented the Gotham City that Batman returned to in the Batman arc "Year One" (Although Bludhaven lacks a Jim Gordon and a Harvey Dent to help Batman do his work) and, realizing all of this and the fact that it is in the clutches of an honest-to-goodness supervillain, what started as a mission for Dick becomes his vocation.

Just as Batman has his Gotham City, then, here Nightwing gets Bludhaven.

While I said these eight issues basically constitute a single storyline, this isn't any sort of Bendis-ian decompression...in fact, was there decompressed storytelling in mainstream comics circa 1996...? Dixon breaks the eight-issue story into smaller chunks, one-issue stories and short arcs, even if they are all part of the same story (Outside of the big crossover events, I'm having a hard time thinking of a Batman arc from the '90s that went on quite as long as this; that is, Nightwing #1-8 weren't advertised as an event, but the story was more event-sized than most comics from the Bat-office at the time).

Each issue has a big action sequence and features Nightwing foiling some kind of crime. In some cases, these are the work of "Reynard", a member of Gotham gangster Black Mask's False Face Society who wears a fox mask; in other, they involve Nightwing going after pressure points in Marin's organization in an attempt to find out where he is and who it is that is replacing him.

Along the way, Dick rents a seedy apartment in a terrible neighborhood, an act that introduces a running gag and, I assume, a potential love interest. The building's super is a woman named "Clancy" with an Irish accent that seems to always be behind a closed door or somehow covering her face when Dick tries to talk to her (washing her hair in the sink, carrying a stack of boxes, etc.) She turns out to be of Chinese descent (Though she was adopted by an Irish family, which is where she picked up the accent, before moving to the states).

Dick also takes a job as a bartender at a local cop bar, which he hopes will provide him with a source of intel.

Oh, and he loses the ponytail during his first encounter with Reynard and Black Mask's gang.

Dixon and McDaniel thus stock the book with brand-new supporting characters, although familiar faces do pop up. There's a page in the first issue, in which Batman charges Nightwing with the murder investigation and Bats later checks in via computer. Oracle and Wally West literally phone-in appearances. And Robin Tim Drake guest-stars in issue #6, where, during some downtime in crime-fighting, they discuss how different the pair are when it comes to the role of Robin.

Ah, the simpler days, when there were only ever three Robins, and one of them was totally dead forever...!

The creators also introduce the first of several new villains created for the series: Lady Vic, a British aristocrat/assassin who fights with various bladed weapons. McDaniel gives her an interesting look, although I have to admit it's one of those designs that doesn't quite look right when someone else draws it (And thus probably isn't the best of designs). I think it's the mask/helmet that does it.

As for the major villain, that is of course, Roland Desmond AKA Blockbuster. The second Blockbuster, to be precise, although he was basically just like his brother, the fist Blockbuster: A big, strong, simple-minded engine of destruction. 

During 1995 event Underworld Unleashed, he had sold his soul to the devil Neron, and in exchange was given brains to match his brawn (visibly signified by his huge, swollen head, from which dangled a skullet). He menaced Manchester, Alabama in the Impulse tie-in issue to the event series before Dixon decided to use him as a Wilson Fisk-like giant, super-strong crime lord in Nightwing.

Earlier in the post, I mentioned that it was hard to imagine this series being drawn by some of my favorite Batman artists of the '90s, and that was largely because of how distinct it was visually. Yes, the cover of the trade that my sister made fun of isn't that great (That of the first issue, or #7 might have been better choices), but the art inside is much better.

McDaniel is a completely original artist, to the point that, looking at his art, I can't really see who might have influenced him, nor can I think of other artists with whom to compare him. His art is instantly recognizable and, although I wasn't a big fan of it back then, I've come to appreciate more and more. 

His page layouts are all quite dynamic, but his art doesn't necessarily look animated or invigorated on a panel by panel (or panel to panel) basis. Many of his static images nevertheless seem to violently fly off the page at you; there's a real in-your-face quality to much of the action, particularly when it involves Nightwing leaping, which he does a lot of.

A signature technique that McDaniel employs, and the thing I think of when I think of his art, is to draw multiple images of Nightwing in the same panel to indicate how much and how fast he moves. It's an old comics trick, although I find it notable that McDaniel doesn't accompany the multiple figures with speedlines, nor does he draw the "past" images of Nightwing as less substantial than the "current" one...he'll just draw 3-12 Nightwings in a panel or splash, inviting the reader to follow the character as he jumps and flips and swings around.

It is, of course, a great trick for a character known for his athletics and acrobatics—and the sleek, cape-less character design makes it easier to pull off than it might for a character like Batman—and it allows a reader to appreciate how Nightwing moves. 

It's also pretty effective in fight scenes, as it gives one the impression that Nightwing is everywhere all at once (One thing I always liked about Breyfogle's art is how he would pose Batman so that he was fighting multiple opponents at once. So that, for example, he might be standing on one leg while he kicks one guy in the face, his right hand might be smashing a second guy's face against a wall or table, and his left hand extended in a throw, as a batrang whizzes across the room at a third guy. Sometimes when McDaniel draws Nightwing fighting a group, he does so by drawing four Nightwing figures in the panels executing different moves against different guys).

It looks like the previously linked-to cover for Nightwing #7 is the first time we see McDaniel's multiple Nightwings on a cover. Inside the book, it's on the tenth page of the first issue, wherein he leaps from a rooftop onto a speeding truck below:

Later, there's a fight atop a speeding train going through a tunnel, and McDaniel draws Nightwing doing what looks like a combination of an acrobatic routine and a live-action game of Frogger as he jumps off the train before it enters the tunnel, crosses the traffic on the overpass while thet train is passing through the tunnel, and then lands back on the roof of the train right behind his opponents, who used the more traditional strategy of guys on top of a train when it's about to go through a tunnel and ducked.

This is probably my favorite example, though, as Dick Grayson leaps back and forth between buildings in a way that suggests the old Ninja Gaiden videogame to me:

So yeah, I passed on this book in the '90s and, given the reputations of the creators of late, I hadn't felt any urgency to check it out, but I'll be damned, this is a pretty good action comic about a vigilante fighting crime and, thanks to McDaniel's idiosyncratic work—which often I appreciate more than I necessarily like—I can't think of another book that looks anything like it. (Other than, maybe, other McDaniel-drawn books, of course). 

The pair certainly did their job with these first eight issues too, as I now kind of want to know what happens next...

DC Vs. Marvel Omnibus Pt 13: Daredevil and Batman #1

Batman was, obviously, a popular character for DC and Marvel to feature in their crossovers, having already shared stories with The Incredible Hulk, The Punisher, Spider-Man and Captain America. Perhaps the most obvious character to pair the Dark Knight with, however, was his fellow martial arts expert and urban vigilante Daredevil, and the publishers finally got around to that particular team-up finally in 1997. 

It's not just the several major similarities of the two characters—both of whom, it could be argued, are descended from 1930s pulp fiction character The Black Bat—that made them seem like kindred spirits. It was also their general presentation and the sorts of stories they tended to appear in. 

These factors are likely due to the influence of Frank Miller, who had a pair of highly influential runs on Daredevil in the 1980s (including 1986's "Born Again") and similarly redefined Batman in a pair of stories, 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and 1987 Batman arc "Batman: Year One".

Miller's shadow loomed (and continues to loom) large over both characters, and many (perhaps most?) stories featuring either character that followed his work on them seemed to either be in debt to Miller's take, or else a reaction to that take. 

Let's here pause to remember that when DC and Marvel were putting together their first crossover, 1976's Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, they took care to find a writer and artist who had experience working on both characters. Now imagine if that was still the case in the 1990s, when the crossovers became so much more frequent. Imagine a Frank Miller-written Batman/Daredevil story, drawn by one of Miller's collaborators who had worked with him on both characters, Klaus Janson or David Mazzucchelli...!

Instead, we got the 48-page "Eye for an Eye," by what the back cover said is "the creative team behind the best-selling Daredevil: Fall from Grace," which I, of course, had never read, neither by the time this was first released, nor in the years since ( It doesn't look like there is a trade collection of it available, either).

That team consisted of writer D. G. Chichester and pencil artist Scott McDaniel. 

Chichester if the first writer or artist whose work appears in the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus whom I had never heard of at all. Looking him up on the Internet, it seems he was a Marvel editor turned writer whose career spanned the decade of the 1990s, and his longest comics-writing gig seemed to be a run on Daredevil. 

McDaniel, on the other hand, is of course familiar to anyone who's read many Batman-related comics in the last few decades, or DC comics in general, having drawn substantial runs on Nightwing and Batman in the late-90s and early-00s, and drawing most of their related characters at one time or another, and then a huge swathe of the DC universe in the 2008 series Trinity. 

By the time of this one-shot, though, most of his work was for Marvel, where he had drawn plenty of Spider-Man appearances and had a healthy run on Daredevil. Particularly germane to our discussions of these crossovers, the previous year he was the artist on the Amalgam comic Assassins, which featured the new characters "Dare" (an amalgamation of Daredevil and Deathstroke that also happens to be a woman for some reason) and "Catsai" (an amalgamation of Elektra and Catwoman). 

Though I haven't seen his work in some time now, I've always liked McDaniel's art style, which is...well, I want to say "weird," but I think "peculiar" might be the more accurate word. I can't think of any other comics artists whose work resembles that of McDaniel's.  I don't see the influence of any earlier artists in his style, I don't see any later artists whose art seem inspired by his, and I have a hard time even describing his work.

His figures may often be quite big, and they are usually well-muscled, but they always seem to be drawing themselves inward, looking somewhat compressed and coiled, even when they are drawn exploding outward physically, as they so often are.

There's also a sense of flatness and unreality about them, a very...well, a very, drawn look to them. McDaniel's art is very comic book-y, for a lack of a better word, as it doesn't look like art you would find in any place other than a comic book. 

He is, of course, a perfect fit for both characters (although he was still in the process of proving himself as a Batman artist at the time this crossover originally shipped), and his presence gives this particular comic book a unique look, his dynamic figures and the charged atmosphere of his style making for a particularly action-packed read, even during the slower or down scenes. 

A comic featuring these two particular characters probably doesn't need any villains—I mean, Batman and Daredevil could always just fight one another, given their particular natures and skills, right?—but the by now well-established formula of these inter-company crossovers demanded a villain from each hero's rogues gallery.

The most obvious villains would of course be their respective archenemies, The Joker and The Kingpin, but neither appear here. I'm not sure if it was Chichester's decision or that of the editors to not use those characters, but it was probably the right call...regarding The Joker, at least. 

Perhaps it was feared readers were starting to tire of the character who had, after all, appeared in every single DC/Marvel crossover that Batman had appeared in so far, which meant he had been in four crossovers in just the last three years alone (Five, if you count DC Versus Marvel, in which he also, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, appears, sharing the opening scene of the series with Spider-Man).  

So instead of The Joker, the Batman villain we get is Two-Face, and he is teamed with off-and-on Daredevil villain Mr. Hyde (who was first introduced as a Thor villain by Stan Lee and Don Heck in the early 1960s). Hyde would seem an unusual choice, but perhaps Chichester zeroed in on the character as one that represents a sort of duality akin to that of Two-Face...although, in this story, Hyde is always his more dangerous, super-powered self, with no apparent connection to his version of Dr. Jekyll, scientist Calvin Zabo.

(As for The Kingpin, he would be featured in two future crossovers; 1997's Batman & Spider-Man #1 and 2000's Batman/Daredevil: King of New York #1, the writers of which would both make pretty great use of him in Batman narratives.)

The inside front cover sees the return of origins of the starring characters, here presented in melodramatic prose paragraphs, next to black and white images of the heroes. These paragraphs, though colorfully written, don't really give readers the necessary facts of the heroes' origins and backgrounds, but then, I suppose that by 1997, everyone knew their whole deals...at least, those likely to pick up this particular book from a comic book shop would have known their deals.

Below these origins is the Elseworlds logo and spiel; as with the previous Batman & Captain America, DC Comics seems to want readers to know that this isn't a canonical crossover, but a one-off that occurs in a standalone world all its own (the previously mentioned later Batman/Daredevil crossover, King of New York, does not bear an Elseworlds logo anywhere on it though, despite the fact that it refers back to this crossover in a couple of places). 

Anyway, we see here the various ways the two publishers handled crossovers after the fact that the Marvel and DC universes were established as different, parallel realities in Green Lantern/Silver Surfer and DC Versus Marvel and its sequels. 

The first page of the story features a long strip of prose running down the left border of the page beneath a big bat-symbol, while McDaniel draws five panels of Batman (his first official drawing of Batman?) investigating a Waynetech crime scene, where the room has been split in half, one side pristine and clean, the other a mess...and full of bodies. A clue to Two-Face as the responsible party, of course.

Batman follows such clues to New York City, where a TV talking head reveals that a rash of "violent robberies have plagued over a dozen technology supply companies in the city." Some of these seem exceedingly low-rent for a villain of Two-Face's caliber, especially compared to what he stole from Waynetech (Which will only gradually be revealed throughout the story, but, to spoil you now, is a "neural net", a sort of advanced organic super-computer than can be grown in living human brain tissue...but with the side-effect that it kills its host.). These crimes include things like stripping and selling copper wire and stealing the quarters from arcade games. 

In the sewers of New York, Batman sees Daredevil with the blood of a murder victim on his fingers, and leaps to attack him ("No external sensation warns Daredevil he's being stalked-- --The Dark Knight is that good--"). DD's radar sense warns him of Batman at the last moment, leading to a brief, not too terribly well-choreographed fight scene that lasts about three pages.

Neither character seems to gain the upper hand, so I'm afraid this comic can't tell us who would win in a fight, Batman or Daredevil. (It's a fan-ish question I'm actually curious about the answer to, having no solid answer of my own. Batman's training is wider and more diverse than Daredevil's, and he's got a utility belt full of weapons, but, on the other hand, maybe Daredevil's super-senses would give him the advantage? No comics professional seems to have ruled on this particular match-up, as the two didn't face off in DC Versus Marvel, and they won't have a conclusive battle in their next team-up either. And while earlier versions of the characters briefly meet in Unlimited Access, they don't come to blows there at all.)

I should here pause to note that I really like the way McDaniel, inker Derek Fisher and colorist Gregroy Wright depict Daredevil's radar vision. McDaniel draws a panel shaped like a big circle, like that of a radar screen, with smaller circles bubbling around its edges. That main circle is black, while white lines emanate from its center, these forming the very rough, sketchy shape of Batman reaching out towards Daredevil, whose eyes we are of course seeing through in this image. 

We'll see a couple more examples of it throughout the story, including one where Daredevil sees the handful of Batagrangs Batman throws at him and then, later, when he sees the Batmobile parked in an alley ("You drove that from Gotham?").

After the allotted space for their fight ends, Daredevil finally says, "We're both sewer-diving for the same reason, am I right? Thieves...and murderers." He proposes a team-up, and soon the pair are running across city rooftops, an image that McDaniel would draw many different versions of on Nightwing, where his Dick Grayson moved across urban environments much like his Daredevil does here. 

Batman is, as always, reluctant to work with another hero, and after the pair share some intel and have a disagreement about whether or not Two-Face Harvey Dent might be redeemable—and after Batman picks up on clues to determine that Daredevil is "visually impaired" and likely has sensory enhancements—Batman tries to ditch Daredevil. 

This leads to a scene in which Daredevil leaps on the hood of the speeding Batmobile, and the pair ultimately play a game of chicken, Batman driving straight at Daredevil, who stands in his way. (The Man Without Fear wins that particular conflict.)

Meanwhile, Two-Face and Hyde are on a rampage of their oddly petty, but extremely violent, crimes, terminating in a hostage situation in an Internet cafe. As to what's really going on, you've probably guessed it from what I've already written, but Harvey is using Hyde to grow the neural net, egging him on with drugs and violent crime to help "cook" it faster.

A big fight at the end pits the two vigilantes against the super-strong Hyde—who, again, was a Thor villain, and is thus a little out of their weight-class—and sees Daredevil testing his theory that there's still a bit of good in Harvey Dent. The two went to law school together, you see, and so Matt Murdock knows Harvey...or at least knew him before his transformation. (I guess that might be part of the reason Chichester chose Two-Face as the villain, as he shares a legal background with Daredevil?).

The adventure over, there's a pretty fun three-page epilogue, in which Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson run into Bruce Wayne at a Gotham fundraiser, and Murdock and Wayne seem to intimate to one another in a rather intense conversation that they each know who the other is, and Wayne doesn't seem too happy to see him, leading to a clever, almost punchline-like last word from Matt. 

Despite my complete unfamiliarity with the writer, and the rather narrow focus and low stakes of the crossover, it was fun to finally see these two particular characters share a story. It does seem like there's a bigger, better Batman/Daredevil story yet to be told (I believe Brian Michael Bendis and Marvel had made some pretty public noises about trying to get DC to go along with doing one when Joe Quesada was still Editor-In-Chief at Marvel).

As I said, the two will meet again in a few years, in what will prove to be the last DC/Marvel crossover...at least until 2003's outlier crossover, JLA/Avengers. 

But as for Batman, he would be back in another crossover almost immediately. 

Next: 1997's Batman & Spider-Man #1

"Robin War," reviewed

Janin

Gotham City–it's always something with that place.

Last December (and one week in January) it was a war on the streets between two bird-themed factions: The Robins and The Court of Owls. The conflict was called "Robin War," a six-part storyline that ran through two bookend Robin War specials and four issues of ancillary Bat-family titles, plus three inessential tie-ins in three other ancillary Bat-family titles.

Before we plunge into the storyline proper, let's review where Gotham City and many of the storyline's players were in December.

In the wake of perhaps The Joker's most ambitious attack on the city ever (in Batman story arc "Endgame"), Batman was presumed dead...and he kinda was. Bruce Wayne survived his fight with The Joker, but under still-unrevealed circumstances that resulted in Wayne not only having no memory of his time as Batman, but somehow having an entirely different brain. Also, he had a beard. And you can't trust anyone with a beard.

To replace Batman, a private/public partnership between The Powers Corporation and The Gotham City Police Department stuck former police commissioner James Gordon in a silly-looking mechanical battle-suit and deputized him (Mostly in Batman story arc "Superheavy," but Batman III has also been in Detective, Batman/Superman and elsewhere).

Meanwhile, inspired by Batman's sacrifice, a movement of Gotham-based teenagers took up the name of the original Batman's sidekicks, calling themselves Robins, and they began fighting crime on a vigilante basis (in We Are Robin).

And as for the original Robin, Dick Grayson, he was outted by The Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 on worldwide television (in Final Crisis), which resulted in his abandoning the Nightwing name and costume, faking his own death and joining the super-secret spy agency Spyral, from the pages of Grant Morrison's run on Batman, Inc. Everyone except for Batman and, I don't know, maybe Lex Luthor, thought Grayson was dead, but he had just recently returned to Gotham City to give Alfred Pennyworth, Batgirl Barbara Gordon, Red Hood Jason Todd, Red Robin Tim Drake and (Just) Robin Damian Wayne the heads-up that he was actually totally alive and a spy now.

And that's what the board and the players looked like when DC started shipping issues of "Robin War," which we'll look at chapter by chapter.

Robin War #1 ("Robin War" Part 1) by writer Tom King and artists Khary Randolph, Alain Mauricet, Jorge Corona, Andres Guinaldo and Walden Wong; 38-pages/$4.99

Throughout the first, over-sized chapter, writer Tom King uses characters declaring "I am Robin!" upon introduction as a motif, beginning with a young member of the Robin movement on the first page. This self-declared, amateur Robin, Travis, attempts to foil a liquor store robbery. It goes horribly wrong, with the perpetrator and a police officer both dead, and the inexperienced crime-fighter bleeding from a gunshot wound of his own and kneeling next to the bodies, arranged to suggest the image of young Bruce Wayne kneeling next to his dead parents.

King then engages in the laziest, most dated type of comic book exposition, the medium's equivalent of the spinning newspaper headline from old movies: Pages of TV talking heads. That's followed by Gotham City Councilwoman Noctua, eating a fancy dinner consisting of a small game bird (symbolism!) telling those seated around her fancy dinner table about the council's "Robin Laws."

These inherently unconstitutional laws basically outlaw all Robin paraphernalia, including masks, R's, Batman: The Animated Series posters on your walls and even the wearing of Robin's colors (which must be rough, as red, yellow and green aren't exactly unusual colors). Any kids with any of that stuff are subject to arrest (The outlawing of the letter R struck me as similar to the premise of a Sesame Street sketch, but the comics never go there; everyone continues to use the letter R in their speech, and we don't learn a valuable lesson about the R sound in the English language or anything).

Mauricet

This gives King (and the other writers and artists who contribute to the storyline) the opportunity to explore police profiling and even brutality (Mauricet opens a montage of zealous police enforcement with a white cop tazing a little black kid in a Robin hoodie from behind), but the opportunity is never really taken. If there's anything of politics of this storyline, it basically amounts to something along the lines of "Evil Secret Societies Are Bad." As sophisticated as superhero comic making may have gotten since 1939, the messaging can sometimes seem to have gone in the opposite direction).

Corona

The first of the "real" Robins, the ones starring in comic books, to be introduced is Batman character Duke Thomas, the head of the ensemble cast in We Are Robin. He is arrested by a (white) police officer for wearing red, an officer who also calls Thomas (who is black) "boy" and slams his head against the car. Thomas escapes custody in pretty spectacular fashion, proving there's a huge spectrum of ability within the Robin movement.

From there, we start to meet the Robins who were given their Rs by Batman himself, in rapid succession. Jason Todd is drinking in a bar when he sees Councilwoman Noctua on the news, and punches out some scrawny loudmouth next to him for talking shit on Batman. Tim Drake radios Todd to tell him that not only is the Robin movement hosting a big meeting at a high school gym, but that Damian Wayne is there and ready to crash the party.

Damian tosses calls them all frauds, tosses Duke around and tells them to all go home before he makes them. When they refuse, he starts beating them all up.

Luckily for Damian, who is outnumbered like 100 to 1 or something–or maybe luckily for the Robins, actually?–Councilwoman Noctua sends in the new Batman to arrest them all.

This is Damian's first encounter with the new Batman, whose suit Guinaldo draws as unusually small and man-sized, and it's a pretty awesome moment.

Guinaldo and Wong

That's what we all thought too, Damian!

All of the Robins scatter save Damian, who stays to fight the new Batman, and he takes that new Batman down (unfortunately for Gordon, this issue shipped the same month that Bluebird Harper Row also took him down in Batman & Robin Eternal, putting him at 0-2 when it comes to apprehending Batman's teen sidekicks).

But wait, there are still more Robins! Red Hood and Red Robin arrive, and they are soon followed by Dick Grayson. They reconvene a meeting with the Robin movement, so all 104 Robins can figure out how to respond to Gotham City declaring war on Robins.

But of course it wasn't really Gotham City, or Councilwoman Noctua, it was The Court of Owls. They have a Talon assassin kill off the Robin who started everything in the first scene, and convene their own meaning. They are apparently happy that Grayson is back in Gotham, and they say something about Nightwing rising again because...they wanted Dick Grayson to be an assassin or something back during "The Court of Owls" and "City of Owls" story arcs in Batman back in 2011-2012.

And that's how the first chapter ends, with meetings! But don't worry, these are just meetings that are about to begin. You won't have to actually sit through the meetings. At least not all of them.

Grayson #15 ("Robin War" Part 2) by writers Tom King and Tim Seeley and artist Mikel Janin; 22/$3.99

Grayson sticks out like a sore thumb among the other Robins now. Since joining Spyral, he's worn a spandex, short-sleeved gray shirt with light blue piping and a pair of cargo pants, with random straps all over. He also wears a big, blue letter "G" badge for, um, reasons. The change in colors does draw a distinction between him and every other character in the opening scene, as all of the Robins wear red, yellow, green and black.

After a long inspirational speech, Grayson tells the members of the Robin movement that he and his "brothers" (Jason, Tim and Damian) are going to try and teach them the skills they need to survive the war declared against them, and ends his speech with the words "WELCOME TO ROBIN SCHOOL."

Dick! What are you doing? This is not what Batman would want!

From there they break into smaller groups, with each of the "official" Robins training a small party in a different skill, and each finding one among those groups that excels (Not coincidentally, those that excel all happen to be from the cast of We Are Robin). In each of these scenes, there are little FLashbacks of Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian strategizing about why they're doing this.

So Tim teaches blind-folded staff-fighting, Jason teaches tire-boosting, Damian teaches kicking-the-shit-kicked-out-of-you, and Dick tries to meet with as many of them one-on-one as he can. King, Seeley and Janin dramatize his meeting with Duke which, this being a super-comic, happens while they spar. Duke uses Dick's real name, and Dick sound surprised, as if figuring out that the original Robin was Dick Grayson was all that hard after Nightwing was unmasked and named on international television.

Dick takes these stand-outs–Duke, Dre, Dax and Isabella–and pairs them up with himself and the other three, giving them all missions relating to the Robin War. He takes Duke with him, and they strike gargoyle poses atop a high building and wait "in reserve."

But! Things go wrong! The police and/or Batman were waiting for each of the teams, and there's a massive raid at "The Robin School," in which those not on the missions are all arrested.

What the hell is going on? Dick explains to Duke just before he jumps off a building to escape the police, leaving Duke to get arrested: All this while Dick was feeding intel to the new Batman, so that he could get everyone arrested, the idea being to keep all the Robins safely tucked away in jail, along with his "best men," who could keep an eye out for them. He didn't tell Jason, Tim or Damian this plan.

This almost makes a small amount of sense–it's certainly one way of keeping all the self-declared Robins from getting killed by police officers on the streets–but it's also kind of insane, as it would mean Jason, Tim and Damian would all have their secret identities revealed, which would likely mean to getting Bruce Wayne and Alfred in pretty horrible legal trouble (and/or siccing supervillains on them).

The plan is also kind of insane as it means Dick figured Jason, Tim and Damian wouldn't be able to elude a Gotham City Police Department trap, and each of them should be able to do so pretty easily, even if they were saddled with an amateur Robin to protect.

Damian, for example, is captured by Batman James Gordon–who he took out pretty easily solo in the previous chapter.

The whys of Dick's plan will make a little more sense in the next issue, but only because the GCPD behave in incredibly unlikely ways.

This chapter had particularly strong art and, being an issue of Grayson, time was made for a joke about Dick's awesome butt:

Detective Comics #47 ("Robin War" Part 3) by writer Ray Fawkes and artist Steve Pugh; 22/$3.99

The first Tom King-free issue of the crossover kicks off with Batman Jim Gordon, wearing his under-armor Batman suit and narrating old man thoughts about playing cops and robbers as a kid, while he fights with Dick Grayson for a few panels. On the third page, the narrative jumps back "one hour earlier," where things are just plain...goofy.

So it turns out that having his peers get arrested by the GCPD didn't actually compromise anyone's secret identity or anything, because once the GCPD arrested the Robins, they decided not to take off their masks. Tim and Damian have their little domino masks on, Red Hood has his helmet/mask that covers his entire head. This is, for me, the point in the story where I lost my suspension of disbelief, and while I enjoyed moments of the narrative that occurred after this point, I just couldn't get it back. This was just silly.

Based on Pugh's art, it doesn't seem like the police so much as searched the Robins either; I mean, Red Robin's still wearing his utility belt, utility harness and utility armbands, even if he never pulls out any hidden weapons...as Damian will at one point.

That's not the only weird thing about the Robin arrests, though. Not only did the police not, like, take any of their stuff, or apparently finger-print them, but they tossed them into these weird, elevated cages in pairs, with high-tech cannons pointed at them.

Harvey Bullock and Batman cluck about how fucked-up the situation is, and, yeah, it's pretty crazy that the city had put together this superhero super-max prison for a youth gang (Arkham, Blackgate, Belle Reeve...none of those places have this kind of security).

Damian pulls a stunt to get them to lower the cages, and just as the police begin to search them one by one, a guy in an owl mask comes in and dismisses them all. Behind him? A small army of Talons.

Owls versus Robins! The bird war is on now...! And by now, I mean, next issue, as that was the cliffhanger ending.

As for Grayson and Gordon, they fight for a while, with Grayson getting the best of Gordon (who is still outside his battle-suit; throughout this issue he mostly uses it as a vehicle to get from place to place), before they take a breath and decide to figure out who benefits from all this.

What's really weird about this scene is that Gordon knows exactly who Grayson is, and that Grayson used to be Robin. That should mean Gordon also knows who Batman really is, but as far as I can tell, Batman writer Scott Snyder has been pretty coy with whether or not Gordon knows Bruce Wayne and Batman are one in the same or not, never explicitly saying that Gordon does know.

Of course, that's one weird aspect of the post-Final Crisis DC Universe. Everybody knows that Dick Grayson was Batman's ally Nightwing, but no one has been able to make the leap to even suspect that Grayson's amazingly physically fit, billionaire guardian whose parents were the victims of violent crime and who was the public face of Batman, Incorporated might also be Batman (except, of course, for Lex Luthor).

We Are Robin #7 ("Robin War" Part 4) by writer Lee Bermejo and artist Carmine Di Giandomenico; 22/$3.99

Really great art from Di Giandomenico on this chapter; it's detailed but not weighted down by detail, and, as colored by Mat Lopes, the individual panels often have the look and feel of animation cels. That said, Di Giandomenico seemed to have different reference material than the other artists when it came to drawing Damian, whose costume is a little off throughout. He also draws Damian as more of a teen, which looks fine here, but undercuts the basic appeal of the character, the contrast between his age and size and his imperious attitude (and incredible fighting ability).

Bermejo has Grayson narrate the issue, which will likely grate more when these are read in trade (with narrators coming and going, and the P.O.V. constantly shifting). This means it opens with a a scene of The Flying Graysons, who, at least in this comic, wear blue, white and green, their costumes looking closer to Grayson's Grayson get-up than his Robin costume.

As for the plot, Grayson and Gordon continue their investigation of Noctua, stumbling upon her plans for "The Cage," where the Robins are being kept, and a big-ass owl statue in her apartment.

Speaking of owls, they drag Tim and Jason from their cells, and tell them they must fight to the death, with the winner becoming their new "Gray Son." They do for a while, and Di Giandomenico does a pretty great job drawing their combat.

It may shock you to learn that despite playing along for a few pages, Tim and Jason do not actually fight to the death, but at one point Tim breaks away from the fight, opens all the cages and the Robins and they rain down en masse on their Court of Owls guards. They then all escape to the roof...where some Talons are waiting for them.

Robin: Son of Batman #7 ("Robin War" Part 5) by writers Patrick Gleason and Ray Fawkes and artist Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens; 22/$3.99

It was a pleasant surprise to crack open the cover of this issue and see Scott McDaniel's artwork; he pencils this issue, while his frequent collaborator Andy Owens inks. McDaniel has done a lot of work for DC, but is probably still best known for his work as a Batman artist and what I have to imagine is the longest-running Nightwing artist, so it was a treat to see him drawing Dick Grayson again, along with so many of Dick's peers.

The Robins vs. Talons battle occupies the first seven pages, with the cast of We Are Robin joining forces with the three captured official Robins to fight the undead assassins. Damian ends the battle by setting off a pretty huge explosion.

From there, the Robins follow Riko's lead to Gotham Academy, where she had previously discovered (in the tie-in, discussed below) that the Court was "hatching" undead super-Talons. They're joined by Batman Jim Gordon, who helps them shut the operation down.

Meanwhile, Grayson has fought his way through the Court of Owls for a face-to-face with Lincoln March, who reveals that the Court is no longer interested in Grayson, as they've found a new "Gray Son," the one character Dick feels most responsible for:

McDaniel and Owens

I really like the way McDaniel draws Damian, especially in "owl mode." I kind of wish Damian had a special Court of Owls costume though, to go with that mask.

The next official chapter is the final one, but let's here pause to look at the three tie-in issues.

Gotham Academy #13 ("Robin War" tie-in) by writer Brenden Fletcher and artists Adam Archer and Sandra Hope; 20/$2.99

This seems to be the only of the three tie-ins that is necessary, or at least necessary-ish; it's mentioned or alluded to in just about all of the official chapters, albeit sometimes obliquely. Behind regular interior artist Karl Kerschl's excellent cover, featuring Maps turning in her GA badge for a Robin R, is the work of occasional guest-artist Adam Archer, inked by Sandra Hope.

The story, "Robins Vs. Zombies," opens with a Gotham Academy answer to the Robin movement–appropriately, preppily attired in a costume that includes a red, button-down vest and a tie–pursuing a criminal...into a greenhouse, where a zombie has just climbed out of the ground.

During a school assembly in which the kids are told about the Robin Laws and the school's zero-tolerance policy towards Robin-ing (which should help catch-up regular Gotham Academy readers), We Are Robin's Riko Sheridan is introduced to the regular gang: Olive, Maps, Kyle, Pomeline and Colton. Together with Riko, they investigate the recent zombie sightings and, it turns out, the zombie isn't just any undead creature shambling around campus, but is a Talon assassin for the Court of Owls...albeit a befuddled one.

Dr. Kirk Langstrom, one of the school's sometime supervillain faculty members, keeps the Talon in his lab. Riko gets arrested, in order to rejoin the rest of the Robins in the main crossover. Maps is about to rush off to help her, when Damian makes a return appearance to the title, if only briefly, in order to warn Maps to stay out of it for now.

I really dig the interplay between those two characters. I hope Maps asks Damian to Gotham Academy prom or something some time.

Fletcher does a pretty great job on this issue, as it functions pretty perfectly as just another issue of Gotham Academy, where this sort of extremely weird thing happens on a fairly regular basis, but it also ties-in to the "Robin War" storyline and, as I said, it does so more strongly than the other two tie-ins manage.

Red Hood/Arsenal #7 ("Robin War" tie-in) by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Javier Fernandez; 20/$2.99

Lobdell's tie-in, "All's Fair in Love and Robin War!", is strange in that he rather evenly divides the space allotment to the title characters, one of whom is heavily involved in "Robin War" and the other of whom has nothing to do with it. The result? Half of the comic kinda sorta has something to do with the crossover, the other half has nothing to do with it.

Set during the events of Robin War #1, the relevant portion merely involves Tim and Jason meeting up with one another, just before they called in Dick Grayson to help them stop Damian from doing anything stupid when he learned of the Robin movement and the Robin laws.

The two tell one another their origin stories, which is weird; they're explaining them for readers, of course, but Lobdell doesn't have them play out all that organically. The scene ends with the two giving one another a fist-bump.

I've never taken to this title, or the Red Hood and The Outlaws title that preceded it, mainly because of the poor craft usually involved in its creation, but also because of the fact that the characters were rebooted into unrecognizability. I loved Roy Harper, but don't know him post-New 52. I loved Tim Drake even more, but ditto. It's weird to see Roy and Tim both now being played as Jason's best friends in the whole world.

The Robin-less pages of this issue, which are many, basically involve Jason telling Roy to stay out of the Robin Wars and to keep an eye on their new partner, The Joker's Daughter (Hey, how come that face she's wearing hasn't rotted yet? It was getting pretty ripe before the end of "Death of the Family," and that was long before she even found it). So instead they go off to fight The Circus of Crime a circus-themed group of criminals.

Then some lava men capture them.

Teen Titans #15 ("Robin War" tie-in) by writers Scott Lobdell and Will Pfeifer and artists Ian Churchill, Miguel Mendonca, Norm Rapmund and Dexter Vines; 20/$2.99

Much like the issue of Red Hood/Arsenal, this one is divided between scenes featuring the involved character (Teen Titans's Red Robin) and what the rest of the team is up to while that member of the cast is busy participating in a crossover.

It's actually divided a little more neatly, as there are two art teams involved: Churchill and Rapmund handle the Teen Titans scenes, while Mendonca and Vines draw the "Robin War" scenes.

The relevant portions are set, according to the editorial boxes, between the events of Robin: Son of Batman and Robin War #2, but they actually seem to occur during the pages of Robin. Tim and Jason lead the We Are Robin Robins through the streets of Gotham to Gotham Academy. That takes up...let's see... three pages. Yes, just three pages. That is how much of this issue ties-in to "Robin War."

The rest? The current Titans line-up–Beast Boy, Bunker, Raven, Wonder Girl and Power Girl–are hanging out in a mansion that Wonder Girl rented for them in Kane County, outside of Gotham. They eventually venture into the city, where they run across a Gotham villain, Professor Pyg, who is secretly in league with a Titans villain, Brother Blood.

It's much like all of the other New 52 Titans comics I've read–nigh unreadable.

Robin War #2 ("Robin War" Part 6) by writer Tom King and artists Khary Randolph, Alvaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Steve Pugh, Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens; 38/$4.99

Much like the over-sized first issue, this one has a single writer but a whole mess of artists. They are all good artists, but the changes in style make this a far from smooth read, particularly since those styles vary so much, as do the designs. Remember what I said about Di Giandomenico's Damian? Well, here his Damian is separated by just the turn of the page from the more on-model drawings of the character offered by other artists (Actually, Pugh's Damian is even more off-model, as he seems to be using early issues of Batman and Robin for reference, rather than current issues of Robin: Son of Batman, where Damian sports a new, slightly different costume).

Just as King used various formulations of "I am Robin!" throughout the first issue, here he uses formulations of "I am not Robin," beginning with an overweight member of the movement who decided to sit this one out, and stay home and play videogames instead.

Having accepted the mantle of The Gray Son, Damian orders Red Robin, Red Hood and the We Are Robin Robins to all go home, telling them he's fixed the problem for them. They, naturally, refuse, and so Damian fights them. All. He takes Red Hood down in the space of a few panels. He takes Tim, who puts his hands up and doesn't fight back, with a single punch. Two more panels take out four more Robins, until it's only Duke left standing.

Back in Owl-ville, March explains to Grayson that Damian beat him to there and, when told about the new super-Talons–a sort of Court contingency plan, should they ever lose complete control, to raze the city of Gotham–agreed to accept the mantle of The Gray Son in order to save the city.

Just as Damian debates and fights with the Robins, Dick talks and fights with March.

Remarkably, Duke holds his own against Damian for a really long time...at least compared to, like, all of the others. Using a pair of nunchucks, he fights the owled-up Damian while psychoanalyzing him, telling him that he's figured out that he's really Damian Wayne and that his father, Bruce Wayne, was really Batman, and that by sacrificing himself to the Court like this, Robin's just trying to emulate his father and, essentially, to be Batman instead of Robin.

It's actually a pretty great bit, getting to the heart of the Robin character, and tying this in rather nicely to the Batman mega-story. It works, and Damian stops fighting Duke and turns his attention to the marauding Talons, along with the rest of the Robin movement.

March's sales-pitch to Grayson also worked. Explaining that there was some kinda nano-poison something-or-other in the owl mask he gave to Damian, he tells Grayson if he doesn't become the Gray Son, he'll kill Damian. So Dick does what Batman would do, and what Damian tried to do: He agrees, sacrificing himself for everyone else.

There's a series of little epilogues after these dual climaxes, including one where everyone yells at Dick in the Batcave, and he's basically like, "Yeah, whatever, I'm just doing what Batman would do." (He does not look down at the WWBD? bracelet on his wrist at this point, although that woulda been awesome). There's another where Duke and the We Are Robin Robins gather around the grave of Travis, the Robin who kicked off the Robin War during the liquor store robbery gone wrong, and Duke essentially says that he's out, and that they're not ready to be Robins. There's a two-page sequence in which we're introduced to the international Parliament of Owls, and see Dick in an owl mask (this seems like simply a new version of what's been going on in Grayson; Dick infiltrating a sinister, international organization).

And then there's what may be my favorite part of the whole damn crossover:

Randolph

Duke and Damian...friends?

Overall, I think "Robin War" was a pretty successful crossover. If you look at the numbers, it definitely seems as if DC convinced retailers to up their orders on several of the lower-selling titles involved (like Gotham Academy, for example), although whether or not those extra issues actually sold to readers, and if many or any of them decided they liked what they saw enough to want to add Gotham Academy or Teen Titans or We Are Robin to their pull-lists will remain to be seen.

Creatively, I liked the structure, which designated the essential (the ones with "Part Something-or-Other" on the cover) from the inessential (the "tie-ins,") and how quickly it all played out...it was essentially a weekly story that all went down in a month or so, with the conclusion following the month after.

As a comic? Well, there was some pretty great art in it. I particularly liked that of Randolph, Janin, Di Giandomenico, Mauricet and, to my surprise, McDaniel.

The story, as I mentioned, had a few too many jumps in logic to be taken too seriously, even by the standards of a Batman comic. Jason, Tim and Damian all being captured by the police, the police not processing anyone, the high-tech, Marvel Universe-style super-prison...it required too many leaps of faith in the writers, which were never rewarded. I understand how King and company got there, as they likely wanted to include all of the Robins as quickly as possible, but I think a scene here or there or tweaks to the script could have achieved the same goals, without making readers have to do any cognitive gymnastics, like the fact that Damian could take out Batman James Gordon in one issue, and then get taken down by him in another.

It certainly seemed to set up plotlines for Grayson and We Are Robin, and while neither strike me as particularly promising, I don't regularly read those books anyway. Maybe the best things the story accomplished are two in number.

First, it offered a series of meetings between characters in roles that are temporary. Gordon's time as Batman is almost certainly coming to an end, so we get to see him meet Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne before he takes off his Batman suit for good, for example. We Are Robin seems to have an expiration date on it, with either sales or a change in the Batman line's status quo providing reasons to cancel it, so it was nice to see those kids interact with the other Robins. And, of course, it was interesting to see a big Batman line crossover sans Batman. I believe Lincoln March mentioned Bruce Wayne at one point, but the "real" Batman was otherwise absent, aside from, perhaps, as an abstract, inspirational force only occasionally alluded to.

Second, I thought the series went a long way toward establishing Duke Thomas as a character in the Batman universe. Diversity is an admirable goal in comics, and the Batman corner of the DC Universe has been whiter than most, having a great deal of trouble establishing any credible, cool black characters who have gained traction, despite several attempts, including Orpheus, Onyx, Azrael II and Batwings I and II. The Bat-office hasn't even created any memorable black villains, and so for a long time the most prominent black characters in the line have been Lucius Fox (who started appearing more often in The New 52, thanks in large part to the prominent role he played in Christopher Nolan's trilogy of live-action Batman films, I think) and pre-New 52 police officer Crispus Allen who was briefly The Spectre).

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have done a fine job of gradually integrating Duke into the cast of the Bat-family, with a brief but memorable appearance as a little kid in the "Zero Year" storyline, before appearing as a teenager in Batman (his appearances in the Futures End as a young adult, officially-sanctioned Robin partnered to Batman was cool). He's become the closest thing to a lead in the ensemble We Are Robin, and here we get to see his smarts (he figures out Dick's secret ID...as well as Damian's and Bruce Wayne's), his fighting skills and his leadership skills. His one-on-one moments with Dick and Damian were both pretty great, and could prove quite key to the character moving forward.

I'm not sure what Snyder, We Are Robin writer Lee Bermejo or DC's editors have in store for Duke. There are already too many Robins–I'm still a little annoyed that Tim isn't Robin, as much as I've grown to love Damian–and only so many good bat/bird codenames out there (Harper Row took "Bluebird;" "Blackbird" sounds cool, but probably isn't a good choice for the only black sidekick..."Redbird" is maybe a possibility, though it sounds kinda lame). Besides, given that there's never been a Robin who wasn't a black-haired white dude–with the exception of one brief stint by a blonde, white girl that's no longer continuity/canon–having a black Robin would be a greater achievement. But, again, how is Duke supposed to shoulder Damian and Tim out of the way?

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, that character's development is probably the most interesting and important aspect of this event, and, depending on where he goes in the future, could make "Robin War" a relevant story going forward.