DC Round-Up: Sometimes, dead is better in DEATH IN THE FAMILY – ROBIN LIVES! #1

THIS WEEK: Explore the alternate timeline where Jason Todd survived in From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #1.

Note: the review below contains spoilers. If you want a quick, spoiler-free buy/pass recommendation on the comics in question, check out the bottom of the article for our final verdict.

From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #1

Writer: J.M. DeMatteis
Artist: Rick Leonardi
Colorist: Rico Renzi
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
Cover Artists: Rick Leonardi & Dave Stewart

Back in December, when DC Comics published the “fauxsimile” edition of the alternate Batman #428 in which Jason Todd survives his brutal encounter with The Joker, I mused on all the exciting What Ifs the story raised. “The outcome of A Death in the Family changed Batman forever,” I wrote then, “And it’s almost hard to imagine what would have followed had Jason not died.” If you’re anything like me you’ve been pondering what might have been had Jason lived for 35 years, so the announcement of From The DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives!, a new limited series picking up after the events of that “fauxsimile” edition, felt like a long-held wish finally granted.

What is it they say about being careful what you wish for?

Writer J.M. DeMatteis is no stranger to the dark knight, having written him for years in the late ‘80s as part of the Justice League International, along with a number of sporadic solo Batman stories over the years since. Of late DeMatteis’s primary work-for-hire has been on throwback Spider-Man series for Marvel, so he seems a natural fit for a period piece at DC. His writing on Robin Lives! #1 is overblown and over-the-top, with pages that buckle under the weight of excessive captioning. There’s no subtlety in this book, and nothing is left to the imagination, as every character’s feelings and motivations are laid out plainly by an unknown observer who it should’ve been obvious from the beginning was a therapist thanks to all the psycho-babble present in the narration.

The captioning weighs down the narrative terribly, and important, basic elements like the timeframe in which events take place are lost. There’s no indication of how long Jason was in a coma, or how much recovery there was once he woke up. No indication of what Batman has been through during that time, or if he’s even been through anything at all. It’s honestly really disappointing work from a writer who’s done much better over his many decades in comics.

DeMatteis is teamed with artist Rick Leonardi on this series. Leonardi’s work is highly stylized, with loose linework that is at times very detailed and at others downright minimalist. His Joker is a mess of lines, wild hair and chaotic movement, which fits the character well. Other characters and sequences suffer from a lack of definition, though, which leads to messy storytelling and an unfinished look to the art. Perhaps the captions are so overdone with explanation because the characters themselves aren’t always rendered enough to convey any emotion in their minimal faces. Rico Renzi’s colors work hard to add clarity to Leonardi’s lineart, going a long way towards improving the reading experience on some of the looser pages.

It’s not all that rough, though. An action sequence in which Robin takes on Scarecrow is the visual highlight of the issue, with enjoyable choreography between the two characters, and Leonardi’s scratchy style fitting a disorienting fear-induced hallucination for Jason well. Batman’s arrival during that scene, and his unrelenting punishment of Scarecrow, mirrors The Joker’s own beating of Robin during A Death in the Family right down to the page layout, and silently goes farther to tell readers what the characters are going through than any narration does.

From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #1 is a rough start to a series that still feels like it has a lot of promise. There’s a lot to be mined from what Batman and Robin went through with The Joker, and where their partnership goes in its aftermath. Hopefully in future issues the script can get out of the story’s way and do more showing than telling, and the visuals can deliver on that showing with clear, emotive storytelling. If this first issue is an indication of how the rest of the series is going to go, though, perhaps it would’ve been better to leave those What Ifs to readers’ imaginations.

Final Verdict: BROWSE.

Round-Up

• Elsewhere in throwback tales, Gail Simone and Eddy Barrows’s Action Comics #1067 presents a story set in the early days of Superman as he takes on an alien invasion. The story and visuals evoke a number of different eras of the Man of Steel, with narration out of the ‘40s, a sci-fi threat from the ‘50s, fashion from the ‘60s, and characterization from the ‘70s. It’s an impressive feat to have fit all of that into 20 pages, but Simone and Barrows do it quite well. The backup story from Rainbow Rowell and Cian Tormey, meanwhile, is set firmly in the present, and spotlights an unforeseen predicament for Lois now that she’s the Planet’s editor-in-chief. It’s a smart setup for a story with a lot of dramatic potential. I’m looking forward to seeing how both of these tales play out.

• And in other Dynamic Duo news, Batman & Robin #11 sees Joshua Williamson and Juan Ferreyra send Bruce and Damian to Dinosaur Island. Batman, Robin, and dinosaurs – what more could anyone want?

• Absolute Power: Task Force VII #1 kicks off the event tie-in anthology as Leah Williams and Caitlin Yarsky present Billy Batson and Mary Bromfield vs the Superman Amazo. The events in this story take place after those in next week’s issue of Wonder Woman, which seems needlessly confusing. Once you get past that, though, it’s a fun little story that sheds a bit more light on Waller’s machinations and on what’s happening in other corners of the DCU outside of the main event series and ongoing series tie-ins.

Miss any of our earlier reviews? Check out our full archive!