Editor's Note: Here is part two.
Red Robin #10, with the current creative team of Chris Yost, and Marcus To, is another issue in the Red Robin versus Ra's al Ghul saga. This issue picks up where Batgirl #8 left off, with Prudence on a rooftop with Red Robin and Stephanie, only now, she’s holding a gun to Stephanie, claiming she has to kill her. Tim then gives us a page of inner monologue about how it is his fault that Stephanie is in this situation and how it is his fault she is going to die. Stephanie then takes down Pru with a kick and punch combo, before it is revealed that Pru owes Tim, and how she’s here to help him.
Next up we have Alfred talking to Vicki Vale who is asking to see Tim, and how she is starting to question where he really is. It’s a boring two page scene that you won’t really care about five minutes later. This is followed up by Hush, who still looks like Bruce Wayne being kidnapped by Ra’s Al Ghul, who knows who Hush really is and wants his help. We go back to the scene of Pru, Batgirl, and Red Robin on a rooftop talking about how things have changed and what they need to do to combat Ra’s.
Next the team of Batgirl, Red Robin, and Pru go to Tim’s hideout, and try to work out what to do next, however before they can plan their next move, they are ambushed by what looks to be DC’s version of the X-Men, except they work for Ra’s and don’t look nearly as cool, or even interesting.
The issue ends with Tam, the person who Tim is meant to care about, left at the wayside outside of Wayne Manor, being told by Vicki Vale that no one is home, and how she wants to talk about Tim. Tam answers with what do you want to know, just as a sniper has their sights set to kill Tam and Vicki, and that is where this issue ends, to be continued.
Well, it’s like night and day with these books, one has great writing, but an artist who decided to phone it all in. The other has an artist who has really grown on me, and whose art I really enjoy be plagued by terrible writing.
To sum that up for you, this is yet another filler issue of Red Robin, nothing of interest happens, Tim’s inner monologue is still very depressing and makes me dislike the character a little more each time I read it, and he is just not very interesting here, most certainly not enough to justify his own comic. Take the Red Robin from Batgirl, Red Robin there, is written to be like a mini Batman, but also, he’s still written to be Tim Wayne. Here, he’s written to be an annoying emo, who every month I find myself hating more and more.
Once again, the art in this book goes from strength to strength. It is not the best art I have ever seen, but it is not necessarily the worst. Over the past few issues, To has grown more and more comfortable with drawing Red Robin and his world, and that really comes across here. It’s really just a shame that Chris Yost is writing a pretty poor comic for him to work from.
Red Robin #10:
Reviewed by Suavestar
Red Robin #8 is the end to the arc known as the council of spiders, and really is the finale to everything that Chris Yost has been setting up since issue #1. That being said, this issue is not something to cheer about, on the contrary, I found this issue to be the most cliched and boring of the entire series, and after reading what has came before this, which is saying something.
The comic really just comes across as Yost not really knowing how to write a finale to an arc and throwing stuff at the page and seeing what sticks. Let me take the final four pages for example, and these will be spoiling the comic: Red Robin blows up the cradle, and escapes with Tam, just as it’s blowing up. Tam kisses Red Robin and screams “I’m alive!"
The villains survive with barely a scratch on them. They were in the middle of the explosions inside the cave, and are walking out without a scratch. When she escapes the cave, the wanderer, leader of the council of spiders proclaims they have a new target, heroes. Well excuse me while I pretend to care that you survived.
The art in this issue, is very average, as usual, I do not really care for Marcus To’s art in this comic. This whole comic under To's pencils really lacks anything to get me interested in Tim and his international exploits.
Chris Yost as usual hands a very average script that achieves nothing and really makes this whole comic feels like Tim is just playing around outside Gotham, waiting for Bruce to come back, so that he can go back to being Robin. I really am not a fan of Yost’s need to have jump cuts every two panels, but after seeing him here trying to keep a story linear, I really want him to actually come up with an interesting plot for this comic, and execute it well.
All in all, this is a very mediocre end, to a very average storyline, with both writer and artist not seeming to know what they want from the character. Leaving me, as the reader of this comic, very disappointed.
Red Robin #8:
Reviewed by Suavestar
Red Robin #7 written by Chris Yost and with art by Marcus To and Dexter Vines is part three of a four part arc called “Council of Spiders.”
Yost who through the past six issues has bombarded the reader with so many flashbacks, flash-forward’s and flash sideways that you did not know where you were half the time. Were you in the present with Tim, were you in the past, or were you with someone else?
These were questions I kept asking myself, thankfully, Yost has found some middle ground with this issue, although he does more jumping around than I’d like, at least it doesn’t feel like he’s using them to fill a mediocre issue. Story wise, Yost has crafted a very nice set-up issue here. I cannot wait to see how the next issue plays out. Though, just because I like Yost’s writing this issue, doesn’t mean I don’t have problems with the issue.
My issues are mainly art related with this comic. Although the art is ok, it does have some very serious continuity problems.
The first of these is when Tam is in the leagues hideout and she finds a sword and hits a member of the council of spiders in the face. My problem with this is that Tam used the sword and hit the assassin across the face with the sword, he should be dead. Instead the comic treats this like he got hit with a stick, even the word treats the shot like that, with a “Krack” sound on the image. Tam hit him with the metal part of the sword not the handle, so the assassin should at least have a scar and at most, be bleeding to death. Also, Tam found the sword in a box. It is nice to know that the league buys their weapons in bulk. They must get them at a nice discount.
Next page Tam has a gun, points it at the assassin before Tim shows up and the gun disappears, where did the gun go? Only Marcus To knows, and he is not telling.
The same problem happens to Red Robin later in the book, when he is stabbed in the back, we are given one panel of Red Robin holding his back before carrying on like nothing happened, and with no rip on his cape. These problems and others run through the entire comic and I have no one to blame but the artist himself.
The coloring for this comic, is just as bad as the art. It cannot decide whether it should be too bright or too dark. One part of the coloring is so bright, I had to shut my eyes a little not get a headache because of the brightness. On the next page, it gets really dark. This happens more and more when we get the flashes back and forth near the end of the comic, really ruining any tension for the last two pages the comic could have had.
Last month I badmouthed Yost for and giving us a pretty mediocre comic, not helped by a new team who seemed to be finding their feet I rated the issue badly all round. This month, I have to commend Chris Yost on a well handled story, which when jumping around, actually felt enjoyable, and everything that he had put in here felt like it had a purpose. It’s a real shame that inconsistent continuity in the art, a color pallet that didn’t know what it wanted from the comic let him down.
Red Robin:
Reviewed by Suavestar
Red Robin #5 is the start of a new story arc in the series. Now that Tim knows Bruce is alive somewhere in the world, everything is going to be alright, and maybe we will get stability to the series. If you believed any of that, then you are as dumb as I was walking into this issue.
We open with a young girl being chased by crazy men in Brazil, the girl runs away and screams for help, and she falls into a pit full of spiders and Tim lets us know “The Brazilian wandering spider is considered the deadliest in the world” and that “One bite can be lethal to a grown man” so, to prove a point, Vitoria gets bitten three hundred and nineteen times, so it really hasn’t been her day.
Next we go back to the present and Tam Fox goes to her hotel room to find Red Robin and Prudence bleeding to death on her bed, like Vitoria, this hasn’t been a great day for Tam either, as who should show up, the league of assassins, and as Ra’s Al Ghul says “No one ever expects the Spanish inqusit….I mean league of assassins!”
Because this issue at this point jumps back between Red Robin trying to make it to the hotel room, Vitoria taking revenge on the men who caused her to die and be reborn and Tim and Tam, who sound like a horrible double act, have a conversation with the league of assassins. So, with all this jumping about, let’s start with Vitoria.
Vitoria, somehow still alive, is now a cheap Poison Ivy rip off finds the men who chased her and kills them, and then goes home to kill her mother, because she has gone crazy.
Next we have the pay off of the end of the last issue and Tim saving the life of Prudence and him by driving to the hotel and passing out in costume. Tim mentions how he just bled out here, and in a nice touch of non-continuity, he doesn’t use the blood saving method from battle from the cowl, instead Tim just bleeds out. Awesome.
Finally we have Tim being brought up to speed on the council of spiders, who Vitoria seems to be the leader of, and Tim having an idea. This idea is to not only take down the league of assassins, but the league of spiders at the same time, how he is going to do this, only Tim knows.
This issue, really felt like middle ground, like Yost was saying “Ok, Tim knows Bruce is not dead, now let’s just move on” and starts to jump ahead onto a new story. The story isn’t all that bad, it really is interesting, I just don’t like all the jumping around, we go through three time frames here, we go from Vitoria’s story, Tim making it to a hideout and Tim learning more about the council of spiders. It all feels like Yost is trying to give us background, but he could have made it so much simpler, have Tim make it to the hotel, Tam finds him, gets taken by the league and is told about Vitoria. This way, you don’t get lost in the narrative of the story; it would all read so much better. Also, I made fun of the Tim and Tam double team, but Tam could work out to be Tim’s personal Oracle or Lucius from the Nolan films, and she is a great normal person for Tim. The only problem with this is, she still hasn’t told us why she needed to bring Tim back.
The art by Ramon Bachs is annoying as usual, now instead of Tim looking fifteen and Red Robin looking like he’s in his twenty’s, now he fluctuates with Red Robin too. If you see Red Robin in the hotel room, when he passes out, he looks like he’s fifteen, but when he speaks to Tam and the league later in the issue, he looks like the normal Red Robin. Ramon is off to Azrael after this issue and for one am glad and sad to see him go. Glad as now we may get a consistent Tim and Red Robin in the comic, but sad because other than that, his art is really good and different and stands out from all the other Bat-books, which is what Red Robin needs. Ramon should have left at the end off issue 4 and let Marcus To, the new artist from issue 5 take over here, as this is the start if a new arc, but he didn’t, which is a shame, because, I like my artists to be consistent through a storyline, when this is collected it is really going to pull you out of the story.
So all in all, this is another solid issue of Red Robin, I am still interested and so will be getting the next issue, not just to review, but to also read for myself. And hopefully, that review will be out on time. My score isn’t five because the comic isn’t perfect, and the change from Tim to Red Robin and Red Robin is still annoying.
Red Robin #5:
Reviewed by Suavestar