Batman and Robin: Year One from Mark Waid and Chris Samnee is a unique comic in DC’s current output. After DC’s Rebirth initiative in 2016 restored some version of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, DC has since shifted focus to restoring its pre-Crisis canon. Initiatives like DC’s Infinite Frontier, Dawn of DC, and now All-In have been working to restore ideas and concepts from that era. But no one has committed more to this initiative with passion than Mark Waid.
Waid’s work on Batman/Superman: World’s Finest is easily a huge love letter to DC’s Silver Age. Likewise, Justice League Unlimited is revitalizing the Justice League and Justice Society crossovers of the Bronze Age on a much bigger scale. With Batman and Robin: Year One, Waid and Samnee are taking a stab at DC’s Golden Age. For this story, a 25-year-old Bruce Wayne and a very young Dick Grayson are investigating General Grimaldi and the gang war he’s orchestrating in Gotham.
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Unfortunately for Bruce, he’s quickly learning that making Dick a child crimefighter may have been a bad idea. In Batman and Robin: Year One #7, Waid and Samnee continue to explore the consequences of Bruce involving a young child in his war against crime as a way of dealing with trauma. This is easily the best thing about Batman and Robin: Year One, as it elevates it above many of the stories that were told with Bruce and Dick throughout their 80+ year history.
Waid and Samnee strike a nice balance between examining important questions like whether or not Bruce is actually a responsible adult by mentoring Dick as a crimefighter without removing the sense of fun. For instance, one staple of the story thus far is the fact that a social worker from child services does check in on Dick to insure he is safe in Bruce’s custody. This is done with both scheduled and unannounced visits, which creates a different type of tension that was never experienced with the Golden Age stories.
In Batman and Robin: Year One #7, the social worker checks in on Dick during school hours, while he’s away from Bruce. Right away, the social worker notices bruising from Dick’s crimefighting alongside Batman. From the perspective of the social worker, she has every reason to suspect abuse, especially given Bruce’s reputation as an irresponsible man. This creates a stirring internal conflict for Dick as he’s forced to come up with justification for the bruises on the fly without throwing his legal guardian under the bus. With this scene alone, Waid and Samnee showcase Dick’s sharp intelligence and quick-thinking.
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The other important thing that Waid and Samnee achieve in Batman and Robin: Year One #7 is showing how much different Dick is as a child, compared to what he is now as an adult. What’s really engaging about Waid and Samnee’s interpretation of young Dick is that they succinctly recapture what made him the perfect crimefighting partner for Batman in his early years without neglecting the fact that he is a child.
Like in the original Golden Age stories, Dick is depicted as arrogant and a bit of a showoff. He’s also presented as sincere in his desire to improve and impress his mentor. Likewise, Bruce is presented as an inexperienced parent figure who is also learning the ropes. He understands that Dick needs to go to school like every other child, even if the latter (like every young child) hates school and prefers activities that are actually fun for him – like crimefighting.
This gives Bruce a unique set of challenges that aren’t easily resolved with his sharp intelligence. Adding to his pressure to be a good parental figure is the social worker watching him like a hawk to make sure he’s not endangering Dick in any way. All of these developments present Bruce with opportunities for character growth that will be useful much later on when he mentors other Robins like Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and his biological son, Damian Wayne. Revisiting Bruce and Dick’s earlier years also allows Waid and Samnee to depict a more nurturing side of Bruce that isn’t consistently portrayed with later Robins, especially Damian.
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Apart from updating Dick’s earlier years as Robin for a new generation of DC fans, another thing that stands out about Batman and Robin: Year One #7 is the focus on organized crime instead of The Dark Knight’s more iconic villains. Though Two-Face and Clayface are featured in the story, they are not the primary antagonists. This allows Waid and Samnee’s story to be more character-driven instead of plot-driven, which is necessary for the more emotional beats between Dick and Bruce to have impact. This mostly comes through in the scene where Bruce discusses Dick getting a bully to punch him at school to cover for his crimefighting bruises.
The other reason the focus on organized crime is refreshing is that it brings Batman back to his Golden Age roots as a pulp fiction hero. This is most notably captured by Samnee’s art and Matheus Lopes’ colors. In combination, Samnee’s somewhat cartoony art style and Lopes contrasting use of warm and cool colors perfectly capture the aesthetics of 1940s noir. It even gives the story a timeless feel to it. The focus on organized crime also helps expand Batman’s underworld beyond the Falcones, Maronis, and Bertinellis.
By creating a new character in the form of General Grimaldi, Waid and Samnee explore power dynamics in a whole new way. Though Grimaldi’s father was already a crime boss, he also feels a need to exceed his father’s accomplishments. This gives Grimaldi more depth as a character and allows him to stand out from the other iconic mob bosses in Gotham, including The Penguin. Part of what makes him stand out is the fact he is a military veteran who sees his crime family as more of an army than a family. This also informs the way he treats the people in his employ (like Matt Hagen’s Clayface), which teases some deadly repercussions further down the line.
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Though Waid and Samnee continue to tell a delightful Golden Age-style story with Batman and Robin: Year One, one thing that could potentially frustrate more seasoned fans is not knowing how this story fits into the main DC canon. This is especially true considering it’s already retconning a lot of Bruce and Dick’s post-Flashpoint history. It’s even rewriting some aspects of both the post-Crisis and pre-Crisis history, as Matt Hagen didn’t debut as Clayface until the 1960s. Instead, the Clayface of the 1940s was Basil Karlo.
While it’s highly likely the question of canon will be answered in Waid’s upcoming project, New History of the DC Universe, at the moment the canonicity of Batman and Robin: Year One is yet to be determined. But even without factoring in the larger DC canon, it’s still a fun, self-contained story that’s easily accessible to new readers. Given that the series has not lost momentum seven issues in, there’s a good chance this will end on a high-note, and will be re-readable for years to come.
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