Robin II (The Joker's Wild) #4 (February 1992)



"Chill Factor"

Script: Chuck Dixon
Pencils: Tom Lyle
Inks: Bob Smith
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: Tim Harkins

Grade: D


So here it is, Tim's big opportunity to prove himself to Gordon and to all of Gotham:






...except for one small problem. Batman absolutely could have done better, as even Tim admits he's just winging this thing:



All this trust that has been placed in him only ends up being warranted because Dixon is going to make it work out in the end. The fact is, Tim does not deserve all this trust for the half-baked plan he's concocted.

Speaking of which, I still don't understand how the plan worked. So Tim somehow made an image of the childhood dog that used to belong to the computer programmer Joker is controlling appear on his computer console without even knowing where the programmer was operating from. Because the programmer writes back to his dog (he's doped up -- something Tim wildly presumed and ended up being right about), Alfred and Tim are somehow able to trace his location, though I still don't get it:



Dr. Pellinger isn't working from a payphone. Does Alfred mean the payphone he is at, or is Pellinger's computer operating through a payphone? I just don't get it.

But even if I did, the oddest thing about all this is that, while the script spends much of its energy on this portion of the plan, it ends up proving incidental. The police use this info to raid the place after Tim has already captured The Joker and the threat is pretty much concluded.

So how did Tim capture the Joker? After all, wasn't this the entire point these four issues had been building to?

Let's see. He remote controls a truck carrying the Joker's money. The Joker is somehow dumb enough to believe the dummy sitting in the front of the truck that never moves is the real Batman:



He is so confused when he blows it up and it isn't Batman that Tim is somehow able to catch him by surprise. Tim chases him for a while. The Joker then decides to engage in hand to hand combat (because, apparently, Dixon's Joker doesn't have B plans and tricks up his sleeve), and trips into a vat of raw sewage.



No acid spraying flowers, no electric buzzer, no tricks of any kind. Just hand to hand combat, and the best part is, the Joker just sits there in the sewage, waiting to be arrested after:






When the Joker remarks, towards the end, that his "wonderful plans...my sublime machinations" to kill Batman had been ruined, I'm left to wonder WHAT PLANS? He demanded Gotham deliver a truck full of money with Batman driving it and then was surprised to learn it was a fake. That's a plan? Seriously, has Dixon ever even read a Joker story before? This guy is a total amateur.


In the end, the goals of this series appeared to be three-fold:

1. Bring back The Joker. Only that wasn't The Joker.

2. Pander to the teenage nerd demographic reading this thing. Dixon and Lyle give some attention to this, but one moment of forced introspection aside:



Tim's teen life basically got forgotten in this issue, the group of friends we've been following for the previous three issues not even getting mentioned in this one. I really thought they were going somewhere with that one friend who was starting to suspect something was very wrong in Tim's life.

3. Set up an ongoing rivalry between Tim and The Joker.



At this point, it had to be obvious there was going to be a third Robin limited series, or maybe even an ongoing, and one had to wonder how they were going to top this match-up. Sure seems like Dixon and Lyle were hoping for Tim to go Round 2 with The Joker next time around, but that doesn't end up happening. When we get to Robin III in another year's time, I'll have fun trying to figure out how Tim ended up back fighting third rate villains again when Robin II sold as well as it did.

Oh well. That's for another day.


Side-note, though: Does Tim ever get a rematch with The Joker? We're now well beyond the issues I read as an adolescent and into somewhat unknown territory for me. I've read Knightfall. That's about it.


Important Details:

In the granddaddy of all flip flops, The Joker is now very much aware that this isn't the same Robin who keeps coming back from the dead:


The first issue


The second issue


THIS issue

At least he now acknowledges having (seemingly and/or nearly) killed Dick Grayson too.



Minor Details:


- This is the only issue of the series where the title is not a reference to the 1962 musical turned 1966 film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I neither understand why the first three issues made reference to the musical, nor why this one does not.


- This is the funniest The Joker gets in four issues:


It's not the dialogue. It's Lyle's posing. No, it's far from funny, but it's the funniest we get in what is (at this point) the longest single Joker story ever to see print. What a f**king waste.


- Ummm...if Tim is telling his comatose dad all about his adventures as Robin, what happens if/when he wakes up and remembers some of this??


- Lyle's new contribution to the classic Batcave -- the Bat Racks:



Somehow, this seems a little too ordinary for The Batcave.


- I'll be curious to see if any continuity carries forward from this series into the core Batman titles. Will Gotham still be suffering its coldest, snowiest winter in decades, will the phone lines still be a mess, and will Gotham's government still be rebounding from all The Joker just did to dismantle it? Somehow, I doubt it.



Plot Synopsis: Tim confesses his feelings and worries to his comatose dad. Commissioner Gordon has now decided to trust Tim to save the city for reasons we are never given. Tim has Alfred use a laptop at a phone booth to figure out where The Joker's computer activity is coming from. Tim drives a remote controlled truck with a dummy Batman to the location The Joker gave the city. Joker blows the truck up, is astonished to discover it wasn't the real Batman, and Tim chases him, ultimately dumping him in a vat of sewer so the police can arrest him. They then find the hideout and the kidnapped computer programmer.

Batman #474 (February 1992)



"The Destroyer Part One: A Tale of Two Cities"

Script: Alan Grant
Pencils: Norm Breyfogle
Inks: Norm Breyfogle
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: Todd Klein

Grade: B-

Always a marketer first, I can't help but smell Denny O'Neil's ulterior motive for this crossover. Sure, it's an inter-title event with a name and logo, and sure, O'Neil is writing one installment, and SURE, it's going to attempt to legitimize Legends of the Dark Knight to the fans who aren't reading it by involving it in this storyline, but I think O'Neil has an even bigger marketing goal in mind.

Production has just begun on Batman Returns. When the 1989 Batman film hit theaters, O'Neil was ready with bi-weekly publishing schedules, major events planned, and even Tim Drake making his first appearances during that month. Clearly, coordinating the books with the film's release paid off big time (I still maintain the success of the Robin and Robin II limited series were largely due to new fans first picking up the books during that summer of 1989 and getting invested in Tim Drake as a result), so O'Neil is gearing up the office again to coordinate with the new film's release. In addition to all the new content O'Neil will have on the shelves by Opening Night, I suspect what we are seeing here is an effort to change the content of Batman's comic book world itself as yet another means of boosting sales.

The Tim Burton films are distinct for their vision of Gotham City, if nothing else. The mixture of Gothic and Art Deco depicted in those films presents a Gotham still residing in the year Batman was first created, even as time and technology have rushed forward. So I can't help but suspect that a three part story-line being released while Batman Returns is beginning production, in which a villain is knocking down all the ugly modern buildings in Gotham in order to make the old Gothic/Art Deco ones more visible, is a blatant effort to make the visual world of the comics better align with the visual world of the movies.



As much as I think everyone likes this approach of having Batman's Gotham look straight out of 1939, I hate the precedent it sets of changing the comic to align with the movie.



Beyond that, Grant and Breyfogle are enjoying the pacing this time around. Whereas the previous Idiot storyline was a mess of pacing, getting through the conflict far too quickly and then flailing to find new complications for two issues after, Grant and Breyfogle are casually taking their time with this one, filling the space with compelling visuals and powerful narrative.

Why does Batman spend the first three pages taking down a Norman Rockwell art counterfeiter? I have no idea (nor do I understand why this falls under Batman's purview -- his parents were murdered in an alley so that he would be inspired to protect oblivious art buyers??).

Why does Batman spend another six pages interrogating a guy who ends up not being the villain he is looking for? I have no idea.

And yet Grant and Breyfogle turn these scenes on with great art and writing so that you don't really mind that absolutely none of this is important to the story at all:





Breyfogle's art, in particular, is simply on fire in this issue:



And Grant is giving further thought to Batman's characterization and psychology. I love, for example, that Batman takes a break to swing around the city in order to get his thoughts together before proceeding to the next step:





In terms of continuity, while I'm thrilled to be getting back to Jim Gordon and Sarah Essen after they haven't appeared in four months (and even then, it was for a terrible Louise Simonson story that didn't use them nearly as well as Grant does):



this is the first time it's glaringly weird to get no mention of Tim Drake in a core Batman story. He just saved the entire city from The Joker this month in Robin II #4, Batman swinging in on the last page to discover what he missed, and there's no reference to this anywhere?

All along, it's been clear that Denny "Show Me the Money" O'Neil has been carefully keeping Tim out of the core titles (where older fans don't want to see him) and off to the side in his own stuff (where younger fans can't get enough of him), but we just rerouted the core titles for the past two months in order to make the continuity align, Batman not being in Gotham while Tim has to save the day, so NOT having the continuity adhered to at the close of these two months is especially odd. And if Tim isn't finally going to earn his place in the Batman titles now, on the heels of that story that proved the character was a success both in the comics and on the sales racks, then it's likely never going to happen.

I had already stopped reading by this point as a kid, but the adult me always found it strange that Tim spent most of his career developing outside of the Batman titles. I truly think this is the issue that decisively answers the question as to whether this Robin is ever going to function like a full-time sidekick to Batman.



Important Details:

- Gotham City begins to look like Tim Burton's cinematic Gotham City



Plot Synopsis: Batman takes down an art counterfeiter, learns someone is blowing up vacant buildings in Gotham, incorrectly assumes it's insurance fraud and interrogates a building owner, then realizes whoever is doing it is motivated by the artistic/aesthetic quality of the buildings. Batman sneaks into Wayne Enterprises to look up Gotham's architectural history.



All in all, a pretty nothing story with a lot of great art and strong writing.

Right now, there's no plot and some really confusing art. All of that may well change with the remaining two issues. I've never read it before, so I have no idea how I'll feel about the rest.

Batman: Master of the Future (1992)



Script: Brian Augustyn
Pencils: Eduardo Barreto
Inks: Eduardo Barreto
Colors: Steve Oliff
Letters: Willie Schubert

Grade: B-

I guess Batman Returns isn't the only 1992 sequel that fans had to wait three years to see. Master of the Future is the sequel to Gotham By Gaslight, the 1989 graphic novel that retroactively launched the Elseworlds imprint for DC. The main strengths of that story were Mike Mignola's fascination with the look of turn of the century Gotham, and Jack the Ripper as a compelling villain who is perfect for a Batman story.

While Master of the Future is enjoyable enough, it lacks both of those assets, giving us Eduardo Barreto in place of Mignola, who does a nearly as beautiful job capturing turn of the century America in all its detail whenever the script will allow him to:



but the focus of this story is on the future, using a Gotham version of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair as its centerpiece, its villain attacking from a zeppelin that fires solar lens laser beams. Whereas Gotham By Gaslight was a love letter to the past, this is supposed to be a love letter to the future that never was, but Barreto doesn't have much fun with these sorts of moments, presenting them quite dispassionately and without drawing much attention to them:



I want to see the inside of that ship with the kind of space and extraordinary detail Barreto gives to the more mundane aspects of 1892 Gotham. Heck, we never even get a good look at the fair grounds, nor a single one of the exhibits.


And as for the villain this time around, there isn't much to him. He flies a zeppelin, is clearly insane, and has some incomprehensible philosophy about the dangers of looking to the future and needing to teach Gotham a lesson about that, even while he presumably built and is flying the before-mentioned zeppelin that fires solar lens laser beams and has a robot pilot.

How did he pull all that off? Never explained.

WHY did he pull all that off? Never explained well.

Who is he as a character beyond these surface details? No idea at all.


For one brief moment, it seems like Augustyn and Barreto are going to imply that this guy becomes The Joker:



but no such luck.


And so what we get is a pretty generic super-villain plot I might have expected from David V. Reed twenty years earlier, albeit in prestige format and with the visual backdrop of an 1893 World's Fair.

Oh, and Batman fences.



It's...fun, but there's truly nothing remarkable to be found here.




Minor Details:

- Neither the cover nor title in any way suggest this is a sequel to Gotham By Gaslight. I wonder if O'Neil was counting on sales from new readers who had missed the original story.

- A Bruce Wayne who found and stopped his parents' killer might take some time off to debate whether or not to continue as Batman. I like the idea, though it is resolved far too easily with no true internal conflict waged.

- I do like that the corrupt bureaucrat who is about to assume the Mayor's office is named Thorn. A nice nod to one of my favorite Pre-Crisis Batman stories.

- Hey, it's Thomas Edison making a random and unnecessary cameo:




- A Batman that ends up happy might be the one truly unique thing about this story, even if it's pretty incidental to the plot:



but Between this budding relationship and the rise of Mayor Thorn, it sure seems like Augustyn is laying the groundwork for another sequel that we aren't going to end up seeing.




Plot Synopsis: Bruce Wayne has decided to stop being Batman. A random dude calling himself "The Master" threatens Gotham that if they hold a World's Fair, he will destroy it, so Bruce decides to become Batman again. Gotham holds the fair. The Master shows up in a solar-lens-laser-firing zeppelin, Batman fights him, the ship starts to blow up, Batman escapes, and The Master presumably dies in the explosion. Batman determines which bureaucrat was helping The Master from the inside, and Julie Madison reveals that she knows Bruce Wayne is Batman and loves him anyway.

I liked the tone and the overall start of the story but, like most Morrison stories, I had strong opinions by the end .

So Where Does the Post-Crisis Batman Really Begin (REVISED)?

As I have gotten more and more distance from the point I was at when I last posed this question, the answer has moved into sharper focus to the point that it's now painstakingly clear.

Let's review my previous answer:



So Year One is basically what occurred, but the characterization is off.
The Killing Joke is basically what occurred, but minor aspects are off.
Grant and Breyfogle's early run really isn't referenced in later continuity. Of the villains they introduce in that early run, only Scarface and The Ventriloquist come back, and even then, their earlier encounter with Batman is of minor importance to continuity.

Essentially, while elements of all these events happened in Post Crisis Continuity, none of it necessarily happened (or needed to happen) exactly as depicted in these stories.

So here is my new, simpler answer to the question of where Batman's Post-Crisis continuity begins: Batman #426 is the first time after Crisis on Infinite Earths where we get a Batman story that isn't somehow contradicted later on. No competing details, nor conflicting characterizations. Even an issue earlier, Starlin's characterization of Jason Todd was different, as was his implied reason why Jason was soon going to end up dead. He takes a totally different approach to the character in #426, continues to contradict much of the earlier Max Collins and Mike W. Barr runs, and creates both a characterization and major continuity point that last. Jason's death at the end of the storyline begun in #426 forms the basis for continuity in the Post-Crisis Batman titles.

After that, O'Neil starts introducing details about Bruce's training to become Batman, we learn more about Bruce's past, introduce long term characters such as Tim Drake, Anarky, Harold the Hunchback, and the new Ace the Bathound, reintroduce Sarah Essen and create a long term character arc for her and Jim Gordon. This is also around the point where O'Neil stops indicating that Batman is in Year 10 of his career, soon after this point suggesting he is in Year 14 instead.

Did some of the Pre-Batman #426 stories matter? Sure. Is continuity rigidly including and following them? Not really. I'll continue to include key details about Batman's past offered from those pre-#426 stories in my Post-Crisis Batman Timeline so long as they are not contradicted by later stories, but treating the contents of these adventures as absolute gospel seems foolhardy. #426 is where Post-Crisis Batman continuity is first firmly in place, even though it comes more than two years after Denny O'Neil came on to establish a Post-Crisis Batman Office.


Thoughts? Bring 'em on.