Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Robin #59 (Dec. 1998)

Next up on our Young Justice Retro-Review schedule? How about a random issue of Robin! The Impulse issue set the bar mighty high, let's see if this issue of Robin can equal or possibly surpass it.

Robin #59:

What Happened: Robin manages to take down one of the many freaks running around Gotham, this one by the name of Steeljacket. From there we put the Robin stuff aside and deal with some Tim Drake stuff. First off, Spoiler(The former Batgirl, Stephanie Brown) asks a shocked Tim to go to birthing classes with her, then one of Tim's friends at school is presumably murdered by the school bullies. Tim is incensed by this turn of events because he could have stopped the bullies from taking his friend out behind the school bleachers, but didn't want to get into a fight and possibly reveal that he was Robin.

The Good: The fight with Steeljacket was fun, and the way Tim took him down was literally like something out of Arkham City! I always liked Tim and Steph's relationship... This comic was an extremely fast read, I finished it off in no time flat.

The Bad: Tim not standing up for his friend when the bullies came to pick on him seemed wrong somehow... I'm sure he could have fought the bullies and beat them without having to go into all-out Robin mode or even taken a beating to protect his buddy... The dean at Tim's school telling him one of his friends had been brutally beaten to death outside the school and then telling Tim to go back to class seemed like a pretty cold-hearted move... “Your friend's dead, Timmy. Now go back to your math class, the police will come by to talk to you later.”

The Verdict: The first two-thirds or so of this comic was pretty good... It just got kind of dumb at the end with the bullies. First off, it makes no sense that the bullies killed Tim's friend because there were witnesses who saw the bullies take the kid behind the bleachers... Besides that, the dean's reaction was just horrible! How do you tell a student, especially one who was friends with the dead kid, what happened and then send him back to class?! Bizarre...

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.Sweet Christmas, Tim went ALL Arkham City on Steeljacket here!

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