By Judd Winick (writer), Greg Tocchini (artist, pgs. 1-16), Andy Smith (artist, pgs. 17-20), Artur Fujita (colors), Patrick Brosseau (letters)
The Story: The Red Hood, Batman and Robin continue to work together for ostensibly mutual benefit. Can Jason Todd actually be trusted, or does he have his own plan and agenda? (Hint: he’s Jason Todd.)
What’s Good: Winick continues to knock his Batman and Robin scripts, and his characterization of the protagonists, out of the park. Watching Dick and Damien play off of each other, and argue about their different approaches to crime fighting, is so much fun. Their dynamic reaches a happy balance that very few pairs or teams have, where they are able to disagree (in Dick and Damian’s case, almost constantly), yet still work together very effectively and believably. Adding Jason Todd to the mix only improves the verbal ping-pong between the characters.
Talking of Jason, it’s very apparent that Winick still has a great affection for the character, and a phenomenal ear for his voice. It may be blasphemy to say, especially being the Bat-fan that I am, but by the end of this issue I was truly rooting for Jason and Sasha to make a clean getaway. (In the interest of spoilers, I’ll refrain from mentioning if my hopes were dashed or met.)
What’s Not So Good: So the good news is that the last three pages of this issue were drawn by Andy Smith, who does a quite respectable job. Unfortunately, that means that the remainder was done by Greg Tocchini whose artwork remains un-detailed and oddly proportioned. This is especially evident when it comes to facial features, and most especially Batman’s cowl. Most artists make sure they take time to include light, shadow and texture on Batman’s face because without it, he ends up looking quite bland, as he does here. The only character to escape this issue is Jason Todd himself, but perhaps that’s simply because the Red Hood costume is quite simple and involves no distinguishing facial features.
Also, I won’t hold this against the comic itself, but I have to get this off my chest: this trend of making ads in comic books look like comics is becoming a real hindrance to enjoyment. It’s bad enough to have a one-page ad, but to have a MULTIPLE PAGE AD that looks like a comic IN THE MIDDLE OF MY COMIC? Do. Not. Want. I had hoped that it would end this month, that it was an isolated promotion for Super 8, but then I opened this book to find…a multiple page comic ad. For Subway. Please, for the love of comic fans everywhere, make it stop.
Conclusion: A strongly scripted but poorly penciled conclusion to the Jason Todd “Streets Run Red” storyline. As much as I’m looking forward to having Bruce as the one and only Batman again, I’ll miss Dick and Damian’s relationship.
Grade: B-
-SoldierHawk
Grade
Conclusion