Batman and Robin #24 - Mobile Edition

DC Comics
Batman and Robin #24
By Dan Horn
June 8, 2011 - 19:05

DC Comics
Writer(s): Judd Winick
Penciller(s): Greg Tocchini
Inker(s): Greg Tocchini
Colourist(s): Artur Fujita
Letterer(s): Patrick Brosseau
Cover Artist(s): Guillem March with variant by J.G. Jones
$2.99 US

Oh, if only reviewing DC titles didn't suddenly feel like pissing into the wind. It's not that I believe there will be many severe repercussions on Batman continuity succeeding Flashpoint (see a Batman reboot announcement summation here), but I can't help but feel that for DC these next two or three months will be the comic book equivalent of an enfeebled octogenarian helplessly waiting for death to steal him away some cold, lonely night. These books are taking their last breaths, desperately trying to wrap up unfinished business and tie together loose ends. Judd Winick's Batman and Robin feels just as futile.

Jason Todd was liberated from a prison convoy last issue by a ragtag bunch of anthropomorphic D-list villains, blah blah blah, Scarlet's been kidnapped, forcing Batman and Robin to join forces with Todd, blah blah blah.

It's an intensely insipid story, made even more irksome by Tocchini's languidly inconsistent interiors. Without the idiosyncratic oddness and the technicolor pizazz that made Batman and Robin a must-read for just shy of two years, the book is nearly intolerable. Guillem March's cover work remains inspired, though, more than his painfully restrained panels in last month's Batman and Robin were.

Humdrum plot, pedestrian art, and little bearing on the future of the Red Hood, Batman, or Robin make this a book to pass over. Hell, this example of the pointless absurdity that DC's monthly titles are becoming makes almost all of their series that much easier to pass on.

Rating: 4/10