I struggled with Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen’s original Robin & Batman. Ultimately I felt Lemire didn’t offer many new ideas about the early days of the Dynamic Duo, but at the same time introduced some problems to the partnership that the narrative never resolved. Aside from spotlighting two popular creators, I wasn’t sure what Robin & Batman brought to the table among a glut of other Batman books and even Batman and Robin origin stories.

I knew, then, that Lemire and Nguyen’s follow-up, Robin & Batman: Jason Todd, would get extra scrutiny from me. When I might otherwise know better than to pick up the sequel to a book I didn’t like, that the original Robin & Batman got a sequel at all surprised me. I’m also a sucker for stories of “rebellious” Jason Todd’s early days, given that period is largely apocryphal in the split between “good” Jason pre-Crisis and “bad” Jason post-Crisis, swiftly killed off.