DCU Comic Book Reviews

ROBIN #153

Run Through The Jungle

October 2006

Written by Adam Beechen

Pencils by Freddie E. Williams II

Inks by Freddie E. Williams II

Cover by Patrick Gleason & Prentis Rollins

Synopsis

Now...Robin and Captain Boomerang Jr. are on the hunt in Gotham City for a nuclear device originally set up for explosion by the Joker.  They have found in the Ventriloquists old hideout, but are confronted by an army of robot Scarfaces with loaded Tommy guns.  Earlier...Boomerang provided Robin with a list of various hideouts in Gotham.  Robin still doesn’t trust Boomerang, so he contacts Killa ‘Nilla for corroboration.  First hideout they search belonged to the Mad Hatter, who had it booby trapped as the ceiling collapses on them.  They escape.  Outside they are joined by Dodge, a young kid with the ability to teleport who wants to be a hero.  Robin tells him to go home.  Dodge gets angry at him, but does leave.  Meanwhile, at school, Tim Drake is marked absent.  Robin and Boomerang check hideouts throughout Gotham but find nothing until they reach Ventriloquist’s old place.  After fighting through the robots, they reach the nuclear device and Robin is able to disable it.

Review

“Now, can we just do Butch and Sundance already and get this thing over with?”

This was a very solid, enjoyable issue that I think benefits from being the second part of a two-parter rather than the middle portion of a longer story arc.  Once could see how this story could be stretch (decompressed) over multiple issues, but instead this one issue is all the space it really needs to tell the story.  This is mostly because there is no resolution to the relationship between Robin and Boomerang, just a sort of understanding.  As such, the dynamic between the two can be explored later.  The bits with the various hideouts also work in short bursts; reading several pages of each villain’s hideout would get repetitive and boring after awhile. 

Part of me is annoyed at the way Robin acts towards Boomerang.  It seems as if Robin is antagonistic towards him for no particular reason; to me, it seems artificially created to provide some tension between the two of them.  There does not seem to be any reason for Robin to think Boomerang wants to kill him and certainly he should accept the word from Nightwing that Owen is not the same as his father.  Yet, I really think that if Robin were to be nice and friendly to Owen, I would probably complain that he really should be angry at the son of his father’s killer.  With that point I can accept the ending to the story in which Robin can at least be civil to Boomerang, but is not yet ready for a friendship.    

For the last issue, I commented that we might start seeing some good writing from Beechen now that the editorially mandated plot of Batgirl’s turn to the eeeevil side is finished.  The first thing I noticed in this issue is that all of the various incidental subplots (Dodge, school) flowed real well and fit nicely within the context of the main story.  For the first time I can see some cohesion and forward thinking, which gets me excited to see what Beechen has in store in future episodes. -- MRB

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