Batman and Robin #16

Bruce Wayne as Batman is back. Together with Dick and Damian they take out all of the minions of Dr. Hurt. Bruce goes after Hurt while Dick and Damian go to take out Pyg. Dick and Damian take out Pyg by turning his minions on him. Hurt on the other hand lures Bruce into one of the prisons by using Alfred as bait. Batman escapes since he built the prisoner. He pounds on Hurt a bit and Hurt claims that Bruce can't best him.

Hurt escapes as Bruce chooses to save Alfred instead. Hurt comes across the Joker and slips on a banana peel. Joker proceeds to bury him alive. Damian disarms the nuke that the Joker had set up in previous issues. The issue ends with Bruce revealing the new Batman Inc. and publicly states he's been supporting Batman for all of these years.

My Take: I'll admit it right here. I've enjoyed JLA and Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison. I've pretty much hated everything else he's ever touched in the last decade. I hated his run on New X-Men and I can't recall anything else he's done off the top of my head. I had been enjoying this until he went back to the R.I.P. stuff. I felt R.I.P. was a poor storyline and that the only person that really enjoyed it was... Grant Morrison.

I didn't really enjoy this issue. The art was all over the place as I think three artists had to work on it to get the book out on time. Sometimes I don't notice but it was really jarring in this issue. It ranged from really good to below average throughout the issue.

I don't find Thomas Wayne/Dr. Hurt to be a particularly compelling villain. Morrison has set him up as this big bad that might be the devil himself. He's just a boring deus ex machina to me. He's really a symbol for what has been wrong with Morrison's run on Batman. He takes these obscure little Silver Age characters and then shoves them down our throat as being an important part of the Bat-verse, see also Knight and Squire.

The story wasn't awful or anything. It flowed better than the last issue did. It just wasn't of any real interest one way or the other. Bruce is back... whoop-de-do I guess.

This kicks off having like 6 Bat titles a month. I'm not so thrilled for that. I think DC would be better served to keep it to 3.

I'll give this a C for a boring story with solid writing execution.