In this review of Batman & Robin: Year One #12, the Faces gang has completely taken over Gotham! Can Batman and Robin clear their names and put a stop to them once and for all?
Batman & Robin: Year One #12 main cover by Chris Samnee (DC Comics)
BATMAN & ROBIN: YEAR ONE #12
Written by MARK WAID and CHRIS SAMNEE
Art and Main Cover: CHRIS SAMNEE
Variant Covers: JAMAL CAMPBELL, RYAN SOOK, JOE QUINONES
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: 10/15/25
This review contains spoilers
As Batman & Robin: Year One #12 begins, realizing that Batman has survived his fall, Two-Face and Clayface high-tail it out of Grimaldi’s office, complete with bank records and everything digitally profitable to make a clean getaway. Meanwhile, as Robin helps Batman manage his injury, Alfred informs the Dynamic Duo of a break-in at the Gotham City Reservoir.
Batman and Robin confront the Faces before they can spread the Clayface formula into the city waters, saving millions of people from a clay-infected death. While Batman battles Hagen, Robin confronts Two-Face – smashing his CD-ROM of stocks and financial records and knocking him out before he can flip his coin in an attempt to shoot the Boy Wonder.
Batman and Robin return to Dick’s foster home, where Batman resigns that Dick doesn’t belong with him legally, but that he’s still willing to fight to resume his warship over Dick Grayson. Three weeks later, the judge grants a twelve month trial period to Bruce Wayne for guardianship of Dick Grayson, based on Ms. Lyn’s sterling recommendation.
The next night, Commissioner Gordon announces that Harvey Dent and Matt Hagen will be sentenced later that week. Additionally, while displaying the new Bat-Signal, presents Batman and Robin as Gotham’s official protectors against super criminals. The Gotham City public sees the Caped Crusaders in full view, just before the Dynamic Duo jump into the Bat-Plane and fly off into the sunset.
Analysis
Mark Waid and Chris Samnee end this 12-issue miniseries on solid footing with Batman & Robin: Year One #12, with their four issue streak kept intact and giving the Dynamic Duo a solid origin point for this freshly reestablished DC History. It’s that latter point, with this book coinciding with the conclusion of Waid’s New History of the DC Universe, that has me view Batman and Robin Year One in the best possible mind, both with the fact that it’s finished and that we are in a new start for DC continuity. While the miniseries wasn’t perfect to my eyes, it was still good enough to serve as a new look on how Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson came to become the best crime-fighting duo in all of DC Comics.
Let’s go over some minor details in the beginning. With this series, as well as Torunn Gronbekk’s current Catwoman run, the events of Batman: The Long Halloween are now fully out of continuity. I say that because Carmine Falcone is alive and well in both this story and Catwoman’s title. With Falcone alive, Two-Face’s origin has been altered. This also, more obviously, negates Robin Year One. Dick’s first encounter with Two-Face leading to the death of a judge and his near-dismissal from the role as Robin is now a thing of the past. Two-Face’s team up with Clayface in this series represents the turn of Gotham’s criminal set from the gangster to the supervillain, and Robin is needed to aid in combating them.
Finally, we’re told that Dick Grayson is ten years old in Batman & Robin: Year One #12. Whether that means he was nine in issue one, or about to turn eleven after this story, it’s a decided de-aging after the decades of the Pose-Crisis Dick Grayson being twelve years old when he first became Robin. So if Dick’s ten, the question naturally arises how old is he when he becomes Nightwing? Is he still college aged or just after, or is he a teenager (Originally Dick Grayson was 20 when he became Nightwing in the pages of The New Teen Titans)?
For the most part, these new changes don’t bother me like they might have in the beginning of this series. Because we hadn’t been given a clear roadmap on how to view the continuity a year ago, I was left adrift with many questions trying to cohere this series with ones that have come before. But if you’re a DC fan and you haven’t read The New History of the DC Universe, I highly recommend it. Everything that’s happened is intact as happened, just that history keeps getting altered ever since Barry Allen messed with the timeline and created the new 52. Dick Grayson was originally 8 or 10 or 12 and is just now 10 again when becoming Robin. It doesn’t really matter in the long run, as the ages have generally been in flux. As long as he’s still a kid and adopted by Bruce Wayne, the important details are kept intact.
Batman & Robin: Year One #12 is a very straightforward finale, and probably the easiest for Waid to script. Batman and Robin chase Two-Face and Clayface to the Gotham City Reservoir, and stop them in the nick of time. Throughout the issue, Waid demonstrates to longtime fans key easter eggs signaling the dawning of a new era, with the majority of those easter eggs referencing the Adam West 1966 Batman series. From Batman and Robin scaling the side of the building, to Robin punching his fist, Robin saying “Same time, same channel?” and Batman saying “To the Batmobile!” I liked all of these, especially by the end as the two have grown more comfortable with each other. Batman particularly is in a great mood in this issue, and it’s nice to see. This era of the Batman franchise is often looked back on as sunny days, metatextually recalling the brighter, post-Frederick Wertham Comics Code period of the Silver Age when the adventures were wackier and less gritty and serious. Of course, that’s not strictly the case, but the reason for optimism is still there. As such, I enjoyed Chris Samnee’s detailing of finally giving Robin the white eyes, and Matheus Lopes putting blue on Batman’s costume – something that’s now happened once again in Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiminez’s Batman run as of this writing. It’s the jumping off point from the gritty Golden Age/Batman Year One era into something more colorful and definitive.
Batman & Robin: Year One #12 was good, and overall the series was good. Mark Waid can pen a superhero comic with ease, and Chris Samnee – a Batman fan who every October illustrates terrific pictures for “Batober” – made this the book of his dreams. While the continuity took some getting used to (from Dick being only three weeks into the job, to the various points of careers for the villains), the one thing I continually took issue with was Dick Grayson’s depiction. Had I known he was only ten at the start, I think I’d adjust to it better. Even still, I honestly prefer Robin to be a little older than that (unless it’s Damian), as ten years old is tough to grok for a crime fighting kid jumping into a hail of bullets every night. Still, Waid justified Dick’s commitment to the cause well enough – even though I wish there was more pushback from Bruce during that Batcave argument – and he presented Batman and Robin together in a respectable enough way that it well informs their relationship not only in the modern day as adults but also a few years down the road in the pages of World’s Finest, where Dick is a teenager. I much more enjoy Waid’s writing of the character there, as it’s easier to write a more capable teenager than it is a smart mouthed kid. Nevertheless, there was a time I was really souring on this series around the middle four issues. The creative team turned it around for me, enjoying each month by the end and interested to see how they might tackle other key moments going forward. Waid’s done Teen Titans Year One with the World’s Finest Teen Titans miniseries a couple of years back. What about Batgirl? Bat-Hound? Bat-Mite?
Ultimately, this series more than any other of Mark Waid’s grand return to the DC Universe solidified a return of warm emotion between the characters. I am old enough to remember how things were before the new 52 and after, where everyone interacted with each other with such disdain and contempt for the sake of dramatic storytelling. A series like this would’ve been given constant perfect scores back in 2012. Now that the DCU has in my opinion enacted a total course correction, this is simply another solid export of that turnaround.
Is it as good as what’s come before in my estimation? I think it’s a lighter read than Robin Year One, which over time has grown darker and more violent in retrospect than maybe it needed to be. I like Chuck Dixon’s take on young Robin both there and in his one-shot Issue #0 than Waid’s laughing daredevil in this book, but I never hated Waid’s young Robin. I’m just used to a touch more dimension, even if there can only be so much from ten year olds. I also, admittedly, was never crazy about Long Halloween being in continuity, as virtually the entire Batman rogues gallery was well established before Robin first appeared. Never liked that.
As things stands, this is a good ending and helps make this a good series to read for fans of Batman, Robin, or Batman and Robin. Bravo gentlemen.
