- Written by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, Scott Snyder & James Tynion IV
- Pencils & Inks by Roge Antonio
- Colours by Allan Passalaqua
- Cover by Romulo Fajardo, Jr., Carlo Pagulayan & Jason Paz
Red Robin and Red Hood’s search for the truth leads them to the island of Santa Prisca-right into the hands of the island’s most infamous son: BANE!
Pickup your copy of ‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ #9 at Comixology now!
It’s time to diversify this week in ‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ as issue #9 takes us to the familiar shores of Santa Prisca where we find Red Robin and Red Hood moving on from their recent visit to Gamorra.
The Santa Prisca settling allows for a guest spot for cover co-star Bane and also brings the story of the two Red’s to the forefront and pushes the action in Prague to the B storyline this week but of course there is still time for flashback to put both Bruce and Dick back in their old costumes and on the hunt for Scarecrow.
As we have become accustomed to with the ‘Eternal’ series there are a lot of different balls in the air at any one time. Over the past few weeks the writers have done a good job of juggling all those balls without the stories become too convoluted or form being unnecessary additions. This week, however, issue #9 feels overcrowded and there is no way to escape it.
We a thrown in to midst of the action before being torn away to catch up with Harper and then we are off to the past to see Batman and Robin before coming back to the present to introduce the St Dumas crowd, Bane and then on the final page have a slightly obvious, given the St Dumas element, introduction to a character who has been MIA from the Bat-verse for some time.
There’s ALOT going on in issue #9 so no room for complaints about a lack of action but it is all a little much to take in. Bane’s introduction is nothing more than a consequence to Red Robin and Red Hood taking their investigations to Santa Prisca and I hadn’t previously tied Bane to the St Dumas/Azrael crowd so it will be interesting to see how this develops and ties back in to the story of Mother but sadly this isn’t the most interesting aspect of the story.
‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ #9 is at its most interesting when it puts Bruce Wayne/Batman back in a room with Mother. We’ve seen the two meet when he was out of costume but now to have the two meet in costume we get to see the other side of their relationship and by that I mean that she has him completely figured out and cornered. What this issue does do is show that Mother is a lot more resourceful and clever that she has so far been depicted and I’m very happy to see that she is getting some heavy development rather than remaining a token villain.
The artwork continues to resign itself to the generic but its better than being an ugly book with brilliant writing. I’m willing for the series to drag itself out of the doldrums but if it doesn’t I’m not going to complain too heavily. Considering the fast turn around time required to publish this series weekly I would be much more concerned if the writing were patchy.
As for the writing… it’s creating a hugely interesting mystery around Bruce and his feelings for the young Grayson at the beginning of his crime fighting career as Robin. Everything that we have known about Batman and Robin as a team is being thrown upside down by his actions in this series and I, for one, cannot wait to see what kind of conclusion this comes to.
4 stars
