HOT PRESS 10/16/24: Batman & Robin: Year One is really good, you guys
DC's new debut strikes a balance between nostalgia and top-flight storytelling.
Braving the gauntlet of tentpole events, off-the-radar releases, and a non-stop avalanche of movies, TV, comics, and other stuff that's bad for you is DoomRocket's HOT PRESS. This week: nothing but effusive praise for Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s Batman & Robin: Year One #1.
Hello! How’s your week been?
With the 60th Chicago International Film Festival in full swing, my week has been a rush of screenings both in-person and virtual. I’m grateful to have been invited back to CIFF; you’d think they might have lost my email at this point. (I kid! But also, ?) So far, I’ve caught Joel Potrykus’s Vulcanizadora and Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, and you’ll be able to read my thoughts on both and maybe a couple other films later this week. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already so you don’t miss out on all the fun — provided you, like me, considering reading movie reviews “fun.” Because it is!
In the meantime, I hope you’ve been getting a kick out of this All-New, All-Different DoomRocket. I’m very proud of the work that my team has put in as I find my Substack sea legs. I strongly recommend you check out Matthew Amuso’s thoughtful retrospective on the 1990 Marvel Graphic Novel Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth, and Arpad Okay’s latest REQUIRED READING feature on Volume One of Knapsack Magazine. There’s also my coverage of this year’s Screamfest waiting to meet your gaze, as well as my review of Synapse Films’ Blu-ray release of the 1996 home invasion thriller, Killers.
Before we get to DC’s very good new Batman and Robin title, I’d like to thank those of you who have hopped on this new DoomRocket train with us. Getting fresh eyes on this Substack of ours has been something of a trial, so if you’ve been enjoying our work, I’d sure appreciate you taking the time to share our links on social. Tell your friends about us! It’d mean the mint.
Okay! With all that out of the way, what’s this about Batman?
If you, like me, follow Chris Samnee on social media, you're likely aware of his annual "Batober" event, where he posts a month's worth of daily artistic prompts meant to inspire images related to Batman. It's an incredibly popular thing that gets the creative juices flowing for countless artists of varying stripes, but I'm going to be frank about one thing: Batober is, for me, a chance to watch a singular talent knock out his own digital Batman zine in real time every October. It's a gift. Every piece he cooks up is, without fail, evocative and — here comes an overused word, but I mean it to my core — iconic. Year after year, Batober makes me wonder: when will we finally be able to read Samnee's ultimate Batman opus?
Batman & Robin: Year One arrived this week and generously provided the answer. It's another gift from Samnee, whose cover (see above) was like ogling Batober, only this time I held it in my hands instead of gawking at it on my phone. Batman and Robin, smashing crime in that way we've seen countless times but not quite like how Samnee draws it, boosted with a nostalgic sepia-tinge by Mat Lopes, who provided colors for Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and is among the elite DC colorists I would call an artist in their own right. (The richness of his hues prompts kind parallels to Tamra Bonvillain's work on World's Finest, another stunning book to look at.) Before I cracked the cover, I knew I was looking at one of my favorite issues of the year.
It helps that Batman & Robin is written by Mark Waid, whose return to DC after eons away lured me back into that regular and destructive habit of superhero comics reading with World's Finest. Waid's been in the DC trenches for so long (his absence from the publisher must have been as painful for him as it's been for me) that I shouldn't be shocked that the voices he puts into those Clayton Cowles word balloons still sound exactly like the characters I've been reading since the early days of my misspent childhood, where I haunted the spinner racks at my local Texaco station. Batman's been through countless overhauls, but in Waid's hands, he is in his element.
Batman & Robin: Year One is pure nostalgia fuel, there's no question about that, designed to pull in graying readers like me who have grown jaded after years of empty continuity building and an unwieldy Bat-Family that DC simply refuses to prune anymore. One could rightly suggest that the existence of yet another Batman: Year One book is owed primarily to the cynical concept of nostalgia as the easiest sell; Batman prints money, and Year One suggests prestige. (Though, even as one of DC's most enduring brands, it rarely stacks up.) Set through Lopes's amber prism of halcyon reflection, Waid's era-specific ear for character dialogue, and Samnee's visual fusion of Timm, Toth, and Wagner, the nostalgic vibes are impossible to overlook.
Keep looking. Stare at it if you have to; Samnee's made that easy for us. Batman & Robin: Year One is a gorgeous work of cartooning rife with the noir alleyways, pulp danger, and dynamic derring-do I so often hope for from DC's high-profile Bat-projects. This is just an observation, but Samnee seems supercharged by this assignment; he's even worked his way into Cowles's purview, sketching BA-KOOMs, BAM BLAMs, and BOOMs into his panels to maximize his action. In one especially fun panel, those BAM BLAMs are answered by "pews" and "p-dings" from Cowles, which makes it feel like the artist and letterer are riffing during this process from page to computer screen. It's rare to feel that kind of artistic harmony on a comic production this high-profile.
One issue in, and I already know we're in for a dramatic walloping. A Batman unsure of his choices, a Robin looking for an outlet for his anger at every turn and finding it to the dismay of his new mentor — these Caped Crusaders are still learning the ropes. It's the small touches that make the issue feel rich: a be-cowled smirk here, a furrowed domino mask there, it's captivating stuff. I'm just as impressed by the way Samnee renders the environment through which these heroes fly, either by grapple or Batmobile; it reestablishes a sense of foreboding that overshadows the relative safety of a Year One story. We know Batman and Robin will survive their first year as a dynamic duo. But look closer, and you'll see the jagged edges of Gotham at its worst hidden in Samnee's onyx shadows. Something gnarly is about to snag our heroes, which is fitting; I'm already hooked.
8 / 10
Batman & Robin: Year One #1 is in stores now.
DC / $3.99
Written by Mark Waid.
Art by Chris Samnee.
Colors by Matheus Lopes.
Letters by Clayton Cowles.
Check out this 6-page preview of Batman and Robin #1, courtesy of DC:
That's all I got for this week. Read any good comics lately? See any movies? Drop your new favorites, recommendations, and questions (any at all!) in the comments or The Chat. Or, heck, just shoot me a line: jarrod@doomrocket.com.