Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Batman and Robin #14
DC Comics
Morrison & Irving
This series turned the corner in a big way in this issue. If you have been following along with Morrison's work on Batman you get, what I consider, to be a major payoff here. With the Joker's involvement in the issue we get the dots connected. It's great stuff all around as the pieces (or dominoes) get put into place. This was an excellent read.
The brunt of the issue deals with the interaction between Robin (Damian) and the Joker. Robin is beating the Joker with a crowbar. The obviously reference here is that the Joker beat the second Robin, Jason Todd, to his seeming demise with a crowbar. Ah, but the Joker isn't taken so easily. The Joker pulls off a nice little trick on the young Robin and regains an advantage. One he plans to use against Batman.
The comic book excels with the Joker scenes, both with Robin and then with Batman. There are a lot of appealing ways to present the character and this is as good as any I've seen in a long time. The dialogue and delivery matches with the personality type and story very neatly.
The comic book then folds in aspects that have been running throughout Morrison's Batman books for a couple of years. Dr Hurt, The Black Glove, Pyg, the Batman box and some more little pieces are all somehow connected within this issue. It's a dense story that is really bringing a lot of plots to a nice dovetail.
The obvious problem here is that you probably need to have been buying Batman for a while to understand all that is going on in here. Perhaps some of the references don't matter all that much, but it sure seems the potential to be lost is present here.
Frazier seems to be the only credit for the artwork. I'm not sure that is the ideal situation. In some panels the art jumps off the page as if it's a mix of painted, noir-like, dark, layered pencils. In other panels, particularly the ones of the mask-less Batman in the cave, appear to literally have no depth and look flat as a pancake. Overall I liked the art but there is a level of unevenness that I wasn't thrilled with.
The Joker takes control of the comic book, the arc and the Morrison run in this issue. What's not to like? This is the comic book where the bulk of Morrison's run becomes very clear. I enjoyed this issue probably more than any other in this series.
4.5 out of 5 Geek Goggles
