Review: Batman and Robin Vol. 3: The Quiet Man trade paperback (DC Comics)

In my review of Batman and Robin Vol. 2: The Gotham Cycle, I praised writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson for his range, which has taken us from Superman’s gladiator revolution on Warworld to a supernatural Batman whodunit.

With Johnson’s third and final volume of this run, Batman and Robin Vol. 3: The Quiet Man, he works in another genre, now a more straightforward story of Batman versus his villains (still with a touch of whodunit). It’s great, in the sense that the story is as well done as Johnson’s previous, and also that toward the very end, I think Johnson hits upon a paradigm for the Batman and Robin book that might actually work going forward (just as the title ends, naturally).

There are still some treacly bits that feel manufactured to me, Robin concerned about things Robin doesn’t really need to be concerned about, and the whole of Johnson’s conception of Batman is slightly odd. But this interim-ish Batman and Robin run was of much greater quality than perhaps it needed to be, and as I’ve said before, DC could certainly make a nice compendium out of it.

[Review contains spoilers]

Going into the third volume of Johnson’s Batman and Robin, Bruce Wayne has promised to help son Damian find a balance between normal life and his activities as Robin. That’s a fair and even interesting premise, the adventures of Robin trying to be not-Robin, particularly for a reader of only this Bat-title.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

But in the broader scheme, it clashes with a lot — the general opposite vibe of Joshua Williamson’s fight club Robin series, where it really seemed that Robin would be Damian’s identity, normal life aside; and also how awkward Johnson’s Bruce is in doing something as simple as going to a movie, when he manages to sweep Arkham doctor Annika Zeller off for a date in Matt Fraction’s Batman Vol. 1: Daylight with aplomb. Could be Johnson’s Batman and Robin, established to eat mostly “protein and electrolyte gelatin,” are the true representations of these characters, and going out for a movie or tacos is the anomaly, but I’m skeptical.

As such, when Damian feels the almost requisite guilt later on that the Dynamic Duo weren’t first on scene to a mob shootout because they were at the movies, this also seems a stretch — as if there aren’t other crimefighters in Gotham such that Bruce can go see a movie? As if Bruce can’t get a text if there’s trouble brewing, letting alone a heads-up display on his high-tech Bat-contact lenses? So some of the beginning, Batman and Robin’s heart-to-heart and sentiments like “You’re as capable as any partner I’ve ever had, Robin … You deserve to hear how proud you make me” felt flat to me, Johnson creating emotion only through the contrivances he put in place to create it.

That’s balanced, however, by some fine work at the end, the emotion less contrived and more earned. Batman and Robin are up against the Quiet Man, a grand superheroic nom de plume for a regular guy who’s really just good at shooting Penguin’s goons before they shoot first. It’s revealed later on that Quiet Man Cyrus Mercer is after Ventriloquist because Ventriloquist caused the death of Mercer’s son. Batman pursues Mercer like one of their rogues, and Robin calls him on the perceived double-standard.

In essence, Damian sees Mercer as what Bruce or he himself might have been if not for the resources at their disposal — what kind of Batman that Bruce would have grown up to be if he only had a gun and not access to the Wayne fortune. This moment is exactly who we want Robin to be, the utility even of a Batman and Robin series: not for familial drama of whether Batman tells Robin enough that he’s proud of him, but for this to be the series where Robin offers meta-commentary on the very concept of Batman and his blind spots, a stand-in for the critical audience particularly where it comes to Batman as an older man of privilege.

I was sold on many things in Quiet Man — the no frills and no supernatural story of Batman and Robin versus Two-Face and Penguin, that Johnson used Ventriloquist at all (a personal favorite), and that it’s a mystery where the solution is that Ventriloquist is pulling the strings, so to speak. But I thought this moment, where Robin takes Batman to task and Batman actually hears him, was good for the Batman and Robin series overall.

Too, the sequence where Damian talks Mercer away from murdering Ventriloquist, and Mercer tells him, “Maybe you oughta be the one in charge,” and then artist Fico Ossio draws just the barest smile from Damian in acknowledgment. A Batman and Robin title where we suspect maybe Robin is actually the brains of the operation is a way to go, too.

As such, when the violins play at the end and Bruce and Damian manage to bring another father reconciliation with his son, it was not so maudlin. One, because as soon as Ventriloquist and Scarface come on the scene, Johnson, Ossio, and company drop a bucket of blood on the proceedings, more than I would have expected but I think it helps a bit. And two, the emotional moment comes after a final detective success on Damian’s part, so this also feels earned.

It would figure that Johnson’s Batman and Robin would find it’s path just as Johnson’s run ends. On the art side, Batman and Robin has been solid in its identity for a while now. I didn’t mind Simone Di Meo’s more bombastic art on Joshua Williamson’s Batman and Robin, but Javi Fernandez’s moody, sketchy style worked well with Johnson’s Memento serial killer mystery, making Batman and Robin more grown-up even if a kid gets second billing. Simililarly Ossio has art here that’s maybe sometimes busy, but the only-almost-connected lines and spot colors from Marcelo Maiolo evoke Fernandez. (See also Ossio’s devoutly DeVito Penguin.)

I’m not sorry to see Batman and Robin ending; for many reasons I’ve described, I don’t know that it brings out the best in Batman writers. Then again, Damian’s in some trouble over in Batman Vol. 1: Daylight and I’m uncertain if Matt Fraction has quite decided which Robin he wants to use, so maybe a dedicated Robin (or and Robin) title is preferable. Either way, Phillip Kennedy Johnson did well on Batman and Robin Vol. 3: The Quiet Man and his run overall; no qualms if he did another limited Bat-run.

[Includes original and variant covers]

Rating 2.75