Robins #3 is another book in a thankfully short series that dives farther and farther into exactly where I don’t want it to go. I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall at this point, but can we please stop having every Batman book involve a secret plot that no one has ever known about before now? It’s tiring, and at this point, it feels like it’s about time every character Batman has interacted with should hate his guts. So, begrudgingly, and with a heart full of disappointment, let’s jump into…
A Big Ol’ Mess!
This book is infuriating. I don’t, however, want every review I write for this series to be a grand statement on the nature of comic books and the moral, ethical, and cosmological failings of Robins, so I’ll keep that part brief. What I want to do instead is point out that, even for a story as generic as “Batman hasn’t told the Robins something! Oh no! Again!”, Robins still manages to stay just, like, SO generic. Right down to a scene towards the end of this issue where all the Robins are driven apart, prompting Dick to go argue with Bruce, prompting Bruce to double down on the secrets, prompting Dick to get mad and leave. At this point, why doesn’t Bruce just tell them? It should be obvious from the countless other times this has happened that refusing to share with the class when something this drastic is going down only makes things way worse.
LITERALLY JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER OH MY GOD
It’s cheap narrative tension, and to be quite honest, it doesn’t feel earned. I have no real reason to care about this plot, other than no one seems to be happy about it, and they’re not happy about it for reasons that are incredibly and easily solvable by just communicating!
A Rant in the Key of Spoiler
There is one very big plot point that I take some pretty big issue with, but it is THE twist of the issue, so the remainder of this review will be in spoiler tags.
You have been warned. Click at your own peril.
Hey so Jenny was Tim this whole time? Like, I don’t see a point when they could have swapped out, or even when it was made clear that they did swap. There’s this big twist at the end that Jenny has been pretending to be Tim, but there’s absolutely nothing hinting at that, except for the huge explosion of anger at the end that was EXTREMELY out of character for Tim. I get wanting to do this reveal, and it’s fun to plant spies and have your villain right under the heroes’ nose the entire time, but if you’re going to have them blow up and do this big dramatic reveal, it’d be nice to see little glimpses and peeks at the person underneath. I don’t want to harp on this too long, but I was extremely underwhelmed by this in particular.
This book isn’t even fun, and I think that’s its worst crime.
Recommended if…
- You voted for Robins.
- What have you done?
- I hope you’re happy with yourself.
Overall
We lost JLQ and Super Pets for this.
Score: 2/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
