Batman & Robin Eternal #4

‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ #4 cover by Tony Salvador Daniel, Sandu Florea & Tomeu Morey

• Written by Steve Orlando, Scott Snyder & James Tynion IV
• Pencils by Scot Eaton
• Inks by Wayne Faucher
• Colours by Gabe Eltaeb
• Cover by Tony Salvador Daniel, Sandy Florea & Tomeu Morey

Mother’s sleeper agents are after Bruce Wayne! And one of those sleeper agents might be right by Grayson’s side!

Pickup your copy of ‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ #4 at Comixology now!

Another day, another issue of ‘Batman & Robin Eternal’… picking up directly where issue #3 left off Bruce Wayne has found himself surrounded by Mother conditioned citizens all out for blood.

Since his return Bruce has only understood his involvement with Batman as much as the public does in that Wayne Enterprises has been funding the Batman operation from the start. He has no idea who Dick Grayson is and until this issue their only exchange was made with Dick in disguise. This is also the first time that the returned Bruce has found himself in mortal danger, sadly for us he doesn’t quite seem to remember those fighting skills.

The fight sequence itself takes up around half of this issue and also serves as an introduction for the Robins and Batgirl to the ‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ series. Lucky for Dick the Robins happened to be working the party and somebody at The Nest (see ‘We Are Robin’ #5 review for more on that!) kindly gave Barbara a heads up that they might need some help.

The cast of characters in ‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ is growing at a steady pace which is making it much easier for the reader o keep up. I keep discussing my issues with ‘Batman Eternal’ so I’m starting to feel like I have to remind you that I really enjoyed it as a series but one of my complaints was that the world expanded far too quickly making the story difficult to follow.

What Snyder and Tynion, joined for this issue by Steve Orlando, are doing is crafting a much more well paced story that understands the limits of its reach. In fact this issue does away with the flashback story which has been an important part of the last few issues in order to pack in the continually separating stories of the present.

Issue #4 continues to separate the guys from the girls with Jason and Tim ensconced in helping Bruce whilst Harper, Stephanie and Cassandra remain in the mede-bay of the Batcave. There’s less development to this B-story as Cassandra escapes from the group and is followed by Harper, leaving Stephanie behind. It’s enough to stop the story from stagnating and will clearly pick up speed in later issues.

After a month of laying down the ground rules it was time for ‘Batman & Robin Eternal’ to start throwing out curve balls and the ending of this issue does just that by throwing doubt on a character for whom we have all felt familiar for many years.

It’s a little out of left field but that’s what you expect from a curve ball so run with it and let’s see how is plays out.

Paul Pelletier is replaced behind the pencil this week by Scot Eaton though little changes in terms of the visuals. I’m going to give this series a break considering it’s put together for a weekly release because I’m sure the deadline time to complete it is no doubt much shorter than on a monthly title. I do however still wish that the quality of the artwork would improve.

Stick with it guys!

3 stars