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A review by hobbes199
We Are Robin, Volume 1: The Vigilante Business by Lee Bermejo, Jorge Corona, Khary Randolph
3.0
This review was previously published as part of Saturday Scribblings over at If These Books Could Talk
I suppose, when there’s no Batman, there’s no Robin right? Wrong. Teens across Gotham are donning the red, green and giant ‘R’ to collectively right the wrongs of the city. Even though they have the best of intentions, things soon start to go horribly wrong for them when the death of a team member not only shakes them, but makes them question why they are fighting. With no real leader, apart from a mysterious contact called ‘The Nest’, they drift from fight to fight, eventually falling out and splitting into separate factions. It takes a violent encounter to make them realise they need each other if they’re to survive.
Even though ‘The Vigilante Business’ comprises of 6 issues of the We Are Robin title (and a sneak peak at Convergence: New Teen Titans) it still feels like there’s an awful lot crammed into a very small space. Initially a team of six, the Robins are a varied mix of races and genders, but we really only get beneath the skin of a few by the end of volume 1. Duke Thomas* gets the privilege of having the most background, as is typical of any new recruit to a team, as we see him farmed out to another foster family while he secretly hunts for his parents, missing since the events of ‘Endgame’. Isabella (Codename: Robina) has a deeply intense back-story that erupts into violence within her family. A more light-hearted story is given to Riko (R-iko) a Batgirl fangirl with a split personality, who takes on all-comers.
The action is fast-paced and the plotting tight, but it does get a bit frantic on occasion, leaving this reader having to double check previous pages. Lack of depth is obvious here, and as I said previously, this is down to too an uneven character balance. With an equal number of team members to issues, ‘The Vigilante Business’ could have been more even as far as characterisation is concerned, especially with a completely new set of characters.
The graphic style is often eye-poppingly bright and powerful, with the action scenes getting the bigger panels and most attention. Line work is sharp, and the use of narrative captions and alternate coloured speech bubbles for the text convos is a great way of splitting the action between so many characters. Panel placement is a bit frantic, but the use of greens and blues instead of a heavy over-reliance on black makes up for it.
(* Also appears in Batman Vol 8 ‘Superheavy’)
I suppose, when there’s no Batman, there’s no Robin right? Wrong. Teens across Gotham are donning the red, green and giant ‘R’ to collectively right the wrongs of the city. Even though they have the best of intentions, things soon start to go horribly wrong for them when the death of a team member not only shakes them, but makes them question why they are fighting. With no real leader, apart from a mysterious contact called ‘The Nest’, they drift from fight to fight, eventually falling out and splitting into separate factions. It takes a violent encounter to make them realise they need each other if they’re to survive.
Even though ‘The Vigilante Business’ comprises of 6 issues of the We Are Robin title (and a sneak peak at Convergence: New Teen Titans) it still feels like there’s an awful lot crammed into a very small space. Initially a team of six, the Robins are a varied mix of races and genders, but we really only get beneath the skin of a few by the end of volume 1. Duke Thomas* gets the privilege of having the most background, as is typical of any new recruit to a team, as we see him farmed out to another foster family while he secretly hunts for his parents, missing since the events of ‘Endgame’. Isabella (Codename: Robina) has a deeply intense back-story that erupts into violence within her family. A more light-hearted story is given to Riko (R-iko) a Batgirl fangirl with a split personality, who takes on all-comers.
The action is fast-paced and the plotting tight, but it does get a bit frantic on occasion, leaving this reader having to double check previous pages. Lack of depth is obvious here, and as I said previously, this is down to too an uneven character balance. With an equal number of team members to issues, ‘The Vigilante Business’ could have been more even as far as characterisation is concerned, especially with a completely new set of characters.
The graphic style is often eye-poppingly bright and powerful, with the action scenes getting the bigger panels and most attention. Line work is sharp, and the use of narrative captions and alternate coloured speech bubbles for the text convos is a great way of splitting the action between so many characters. Panel placement is a bit frantic, but the use of greens and blues instead of a heavy over-reliance on black makes up for it.
(* Also appears in Batman Vol 8 ‘Superheavy’)