DCU Comic Book Reviews

ROBIN #130

War Games Act 2, Part 5: The Only Light in Gotham

November 2004

Written by Bill Willingham

Pencils by Jon Proctor

Inks by Robert Campanella & Rodney Ramos

Cover by Dustin Nguyen

Synopsis

The Black Mask encounters Stephanie Brown (aka The Spoiler).  After a short scuffle, Black Mask beats her down and then tells her he will keep her alive until he learns what she was attempting to tell Orpheus.  He ties her up and starts the torture.  Elsewhere, Tim Drake (aka Robin) makes the call to to tell his father, Jack, that Tim has returned to being Robin.  His father is not pleased, but Tim asks him, “what would you do in my place?”  Tim tells him that his sense of duty and responsibility came not from Batman, but from his father.  Jack reluctantly agrees, but wants to go along to help his son.  Tim tells him that would makes things worse, but if he wants to help, he should go to Dr. Leslie Thompkins’ clinic.  Things are getting worse at the clinic, especially with the power being cut off.  Tim introduces his father and stepmother, Dana, to Leslie.  Both Jack and Dana offer to help anyway they can.  Meanwhile, Black Mask continues his torture of The Spoiler.  Black Mask wants to know, who is Batman’s inside man with the gangs.  Spoiler tells him it was Orpheus, whom Black Mask killed.  Black Mask, however, still thinks Orpheus will be of use…

Review

This is probably just me, but I really think that when Tim put the Robin uniform back on, it should have taken place in the pages of Robin and not in Detective Comics, which is where the event occurred.  However, given the sprawling nature of this mega-crossover, I suppose it was impossible to manage that.  At least within this issue we are able to see Tim tell his dad about his return.  We saw his reaction when he first learned who Tim was and now we get to see his reaction to seeing his son put the costume back on.  As much as I liked the confrontation between the two, there seemed to be something missing.  I can’t quite place my finger on what that was, so I can just chalk up to the unresolved issues category.  Unfortunately I get the feeling that whatever it may be (including Jack’s death, which many people suspect will occur) it may not happen in the pages of Robin, which is a shame since it robs loyal readers who may have skipped paying money for the War Games series.

Despite Tim and his dad bonding in a semi-resolution of previous storylines, the biggest moment in this book is not the revelation of Black Mask as the unknown force behind a lot of what is going on (which should’ve been a bigger deal but falls flat), but rather the biggest moment is the torture of Stephanie.  This is not for it is implication on the plot so much as how readers are reacting to it.  There will be a lot of outrage for this scene partly because of the CCA seal on the cover (its okay for kids to see torture?).  There will be outrage partly because Stephanie is a girl (not a woman, but a girl; she and Tim are in high school, remember?).  Is the torture wrong or do we think that because of Steph’s gender?  What would we think if it was Tim in that role?  Personally, I could have done without the scene; I don’t care who is being tortured, I don’t want to see it.  All the scene does is reinforce everyone’s opinion that, yes, Stephanie will either be crippled or dead at the end of this series.  And if she is crippled, she’ll join Oracle for a new series:  Hell On Wheels.  Ba Da Bump.

If my math is correct this issue marks the beginning of the second part of this mega-crossover (although it seems to be divided in thirds, but you get my drift).  Yet, I’m not really sure about the resolution.  The in-story resolution of making Orpheus the overall gang lord obviously won’t work since he is dead, so the story is heading into some other direction.  For the life of me I can’t quite see where it might be heading.  I am not sure if this is a good thing or not.  With a dozen or so issues to go, it looks like this meandering mess of a series is going to drag on and on.-- MRB