Episode 59 - Robin and Batman by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen

This week we are doing Mostly Spoiler Free review of Robin and Batman 1&2 by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen.

Next week we are doing Batman: Under the Hood! We are going Nuclear with spoilers!  Read up on DC Infinite, or Compact Edition or any other edition.

Hosted by Vic 

Please Send Questions and Feedback to Any of the following: 

Bluesky: @comicbooksbeyond.bsky.social
Instagram: @comicbooksbeyond
Gmail: comicbooksbeyond@gmail.com

Check us out on Youtube as well!

Comic Books Beyond would like to thank:  The Crew of the Talking Comics Podcast, Brandon McNulty, Lisa and Brad from Comic Book Couples Counseling, Alex Jaffe, Jeremy Whitley, Jimmy Gaspero and John Klein III of Shadow and Flame with Magik Podcast and David Pepose. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Comic Books Beyond Podcast. We're here to demystify the weird parts of comics. Comics can feel weird and gatekeepy, and that sucks. You can start reading comics anywhere, but our goal is to point you to the good spots. Hey everybody, and welcome to Comic Books Beyond. I'm your host, Vic, and I'm just gonna tell you, it is hot as fuck today. So uh oh boy, this recording is gonna go uh as quickly as I can get it to do, and uh hopefully we get you out of here at a reasonable amount of time. So I am batch recording these uh because I was at a wedding this past weekend, if if my math is right, and I definitely needed time to decompress and everything. So we are talking about two books today. Uh, we have Robin and Batman's volume one and two by Jeff Lemire and Dustin to Wynn. Jeff with Jeff Lemere on writing, Dustin to Wynn on uh art. Uh so it's absolutely friggin' criminal that uh I have not talked about these two yet. They are one of my top ten or even top five partnership teams. It's like up there with uh Pat Pat Gleason and or or Pete uh Pete Tomasi and uh Pat Gleason and you know uh Tim Sale, Jeff Loeb, which is the correct order for them, and and even uh Scott Snyder, Greg Capo, and Brew Baker and Phillips. Like these guys, they're that good. They bounce off each other so well, they play into each other's strengths super well, and uh I absolutely love what they do. Now, does that mean I love this? Well, sorta. So let's uh let's do some disclaimers here. There's nothing too much here, but Jeff Lemire has a tendency to uh dial up the dark themes in his work and the tragic backstories a little bit. And we are dealing with Batman and uh the first two robins. You know, these are two separate books, but I kind of wanted to talk about them both at the same time because there's this weird antithesis of what they each do uh to each other that I think is kind of relevant to talk about. Now I don't know if they're gonna do uh ones for the other two robins, or the other robins like, you know, uh Tim Drake or Stephanie Brown or Damien. I hope we don't get a Damien because I hate the little fucker. Let's talk about the let's talk about these in order first. So these are totally both pretty dark books, and uh it's hard to say which one is darker because well, they each do something that bothers me in a way that I really don't like, but I still do enjoy these books for the most part. I I would probably reread these books based solely on if another volume comes out. Now, the nice thing about these stories is they're pretty short. They're I I don't know if these were prestige format or anything, but these were uh more than 22 pages and they're each collected into a nice hardcover. Uh I see their names on something and I snap by. I uh I could have read these on uh the app, but I just I wanted to pick them up because I wanted to support that team and I want to see more from them. So sorry, these are early days of Batman picking up his first orphans to hang out with. Uh now, spoiler disclaimer, we're gonna try to go light on spoilers. There is one plot point I really need to talk about in each to really talk about these books. And yeah, we're we're we're probably just gonna have to spoil one one little line of each. Let's get into this. So totally, these are very somber books. Dustin Ewen uses a lot of he uses a watercolor style. And Jeff Lemire, when he writes and draws, he write he draws a lot, you know, either a scratchy pencil style or a watercolor style, where their styles are actually pretty similar, which is why I didn't actually click with them the first time because I thought Dustin Ewyn was like kind of trying to imitate him, but that was just me being a jackass. So, as far as the art being easy to understand, for the most part it is, but this is very stylistic watercolor stuff. Thematically, these books are about Batman adopting a child, rebuilding his family. The second book I think has a little bit more to say about this, because while he was already a stepfather, father, whatever you want to call him, in the first one, he's dealing with a whole different personality in the second. Jason Todd and Dick Grayson are polar opposites. But you can see in this one, for as naturally good as Dick was, Bruce wasn't the best father. Jason was not as naturally good. He was good, but you know, if we're talking like tier rankings in natural talent, if if Dick gets an A, Jason might have got a B, but I think he put in more effort than Dick did. But it was because he had to. And I think that's even more true of Tim, where he had to put the most effort in, where he's the smartest, arguably even smarter than Bruce. You know, he he wasn't as good of an athlete, but we're really only talking about Dick and Jason for right now. Let's talk about the major issue I had with the first one. Um, how do I want to put this? So if you want to know nothing, this is your time to skedaddle. If you just want to get out, just just hit the hit the pause button. Because we're gonna spoil one scene that I think is very important. Then we're gonna go immediately into another scene from the other book. All right. So there's this scene in the first one where Bruce takes Dick to the Justice League Watchtower, the Justice League, you know, to kind of meet like the Teen Titans in the Justice League. And they have a great little father-son day where you think that's what's gonna happen. The problem is he took Dick on an infiltration mission. If you're familiar with Justice League Tower of Babel, Bruce has a contingency plan for every Justice League member. He forces Dick to tell him exactly how he would take down every member of the Teen Titans, or I'm not even sure if they said Teen Titans, but all the sidekicks. And Alfred gets wind of this. I think it happens right in front of him. Alfred flat out calls him a bastard, and I agree a hundred percent. There's basically you're teaching a child to be as paranoid as you, and like that really rubbed me the wrong way. But on the same token, this is kind of the major conflict plot point of the series, and the the the book, the first book, is largely about not um how to be a good father and how to get over stuff like this. Uh, I I think this was Jeff Lemure pushing the envelope a little bit. Now, he's not necessarily a uh I I wouldn't call him a controversial writer at all. We all know I love Jeff Jeff Lemur. He uh I think he was just pushing something to really show a character flaw, but there's no nuance here. This is dialed up to the tenth degree, and that's just what bothered me about this. You can fix that, but it just took a lot of effort. Now that brings me to the next book. So, the next book with Jason Todd. Now, we all know, well, we don't all know. We're gonna be talking much more heavily about Jason Todd next week. Oh boy, are we gonna be talking about Jason Todd. Jason Todd, when you when when he was done with Dick Grayson, he got a new Robin. Now, it's comparison is not healthy, it's really not good for anyone. Uh, the the only time you should really compare is when you're, I don't know, shopping for a car. Comparing people, very, very wrong, especially when you're comparing children. And whether you're intentionally trying to compare or get someone to live up to someone, those expectations often are there, especially in this, where you're kind of cycling through sidekicks. Uh, even if you directly told Jason, hey, I'm not trying to compare you guys, those he's gonna have those feelings, and that's what he did. He was constantly in a state of, I'm not as good as Dick. There was one scene in here, and again, spoiler warning, in one, two, three. Okay, so there's a scene where Bruce is trying, and Alfred basically says, I don't know if this is a good idea with him. I think he's too damaged. And I have more of a problem with this than the scene with Dick because Alfred's not the kind of guy that gives up. It feels like it's out of character. If Alfred didn't, you know, give up on Bruce, why is he gonna give up on Jason? It's just one thing that I really didn't care for in this. But again, these two books, they work really well together. I don't think they're the absolute best, and I do still like them, but this is one of my least favorite collabs they've done together just because I think the writing is so pushed in a direction that's there for it's hard to say shock value, but almost controversy value, or just without nuance, is the best way to put it. Do I recommend these books? Softly, yes. Here's here's the first here's the problem with the first one. We're getting a lot of early days of Dick Grayson stories. Mark Wade is writing him in uh World's Finest, and he also did a seminal work in uh his Batman and Robin Year One, which is now getting a sequel. Uh, we did an episode on that a while back. Uh Mike was on the show. The audio quality sucks on that one, so maybe don't go back and listen to that one. As far as Jason, though, one thing I think I enjoyed this book better is that while Alfred I thought was out of character, I think Bruce is on point. When I think of Bruce, I kind of think of a more compassionate person than I think other people do. I think Alfred is overall more compassionate than Bruce, but I think Bruce is very, very loving and caring about the kids. Like he he truly thinks of them as his family, and his main part of his character is to rebuild what he lost. And I mean, I I think some people just interpret his character as, you know, just a fascist who wants to beat up, you know, people with mental health issues, but I don't think that's accurate. He's a dude who does a lot of charity work in his his time. He also, you know, he takes in these kids constantly, and he tried his ass off with Jason. So these books are soft recommendations. I think jumping on DC Unlimited is where you want to go for these. Now, if you do appreciate Justin DeWyn's art like I do, picking these up and owning them, sure, go knock yourself out. But I think I would honestly start with these on the Unlimited app. And no disrespect to either creator. These just happen to be some of my least favorites, but I still like them enough where I wanted to talk about them. But it's also important that I occasionally talk about things that I don't love. I know normally on this show, I talk about things that I like more than I dislike, and I just want to give some criticism out there just so you know I'm not just trying to encourage everyone to buy everything and do all that. That's the last thing I want to do. I want you to buy and find what's for you. Hell, I don't even want you to buy it. I want you to find the cheapest, sorry, I want you to find the cheapest option. Libraries, borrow it from a friend. The digital options, they're great. But if you wanted some other good Jason Todd stories, here's kind of the problem. They don't really exist. And that's one thing I like about this story. It's a good representation of Jason Todd. It's a good representation of Bruce. It's just a suboptimal representation of Alfred, which bothers me a little bit. This could have just been a much better story. It just didn't quite get there for me. It's not as egregious as what happens with the scene with Dick that I referenced earlier, but it's there. I know this was a bit of a shorter episode, guys, but I am a little wiped out now. Rather give you one episode than a not episode at all. So if I if I want to give you some other recommendations, I already recommended uh both what Mark Wade was writing, but let's uh let's jump into what we're talking about next week. Next week we are gonna be doing Under the Hood, which was written by Juddwin Heck. This is arguably my favorite Batman story of all time. It's a pretty, pretty seminal work. It is pretty well known, and we're gonna have a very special guest. I hope we get this all squared away and we're gonna have a good time with it. I you it also wouldn't hurt for you to uh read A Death in the Family, which is kind of the uh precursor to Under the Hood, uh, because now I'm gonna spoil a 40-some-year-old comic book. Uh Jason Todd dies in that book. So there's a reason why he's around again. No one stays dead in comics. It's fun times. All right, guys. Well, we're gonna go to closing thoughts and credits. Have a great day. Have a great week, and uh I'll see you back here next week for some good stuff. Take care. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. If you'd like to support the show, please consider leaving a comment or review. We ask for honest reviews only, and nice reviews and comments will be right on the air. If you're a creator and have something for us to review, or if you'd like to do an interview, let us know. Or if you'd just like to get a hold of me. I'm at comicbooksbeyond at gmail.com or comic books beyond on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I'm mostly hanging on Blue Sky though. I hope you're all safe and doing well. I hope you have a great week. Please remember to check in on your people. I'd also like to give a quick thank you to the following people the crew of the Talking Comics Podcast, Brandon McNulty, Lisa and Brad from the Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast, Alex Jaffey, Jeremy Whitley, Jimmy Gasparo and the crew of Comic Book Yeti, John Klein III of Shadow and Flame with Magic, and David Peppos. Most importantly, we'd like to thank all of our listeners and supporters. Alright, everybody, have a great week.