In this review of Batman and Robin #19, Batman and Robin labor over continued misunderstandings as Batman senses danger closing in. Oracle warns Batman but he presses on and in the process loses Robin to Memento’s grip.
Batman and Robin #19 main cover by Javier Fernández (DC Comics)
Batman and Robin #19
“Memento, Part Six”
Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Art and Main Cover: Javi Fernández
Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo
Variant Covers: Juan Ferreyra, Miguel Mendonça, John McCrea
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: March 12, 2025
This review contains spoilers
Batman and Robin #19 begins as a figure is sitting alone in a cell. Outside the cell, Memento sharpens a sickle blade on a whetstone. Days later, the Dynamic Duo is soaring across the rooftops towards reported shooters. Batman is still experiencing hallucinatory effects of Gravedigger’s Poppy. Robin is narrating the known facts of the Memento case. The pair quickly dispose of the shooters and Robin identifies the Vauxhall Opera House as Memento’s next target.
Oracle comms in, and Batman tells Robin to return to the Batcave after extracting a promise that Robin will not confront Memento alone. Robin agrees and departs. Oracle informs Batman that Dr. Bashar received funding from a shell company associated with the League of Assassins. Elsewhere, Robin calls Detective Lautrec and asks for help in finding a treatment for Batman’s worsening symptoms. She agrees. Lautrec is accompanying Jim Gordon on a visit to Scarecrow. Scarecrow is unrestrained, unmasked, and unwell. He rambles but returns to lucidity long enough to inform Lautrec that her old professor is waiting for her. Lautrec calls a colleague in Scotland Yard and asks them to exhume Atticus Blye’s body and confirm its status.
At home, Batman invites Robin out to dinner, to try and experience a “normal” life. With Lucy the macaque draped around his shoulders, Robin demurs. Batman tries again, acknowledging that he should not have instructed Robin to stay away from the chessboard, and offering to reset the pieces and play a game later. Robin smiles and says that he’d love to play after his shift at Sacred Heart. During the sequence, Batman has planted a bug on Robin’s shoes, and Oracle is none too pleased.
They continue to argue about it as Batman listens from the rooftops of Gotham. At Sacred Heart, Dr. Bashar invites Damian to visit hospice patients. They enter the elevator and Damian steps in a coffee spill. As he bends down he identifies the bug and tosses it on the floor in disgust. The lights suddenly go out. They come back down but the elevator is headed to the basement rather than the second floor as Dr. Bashar intended. The door opens and Memento is waiting.
He slashes Dr. Bashar with the sickle blade as he intones his fearful rhymes. Batman races to the scene in the Batmobile, imploring Robin not to engage. He initiates Valkyrie sequence and ejects to the passing Batplane. Batman arrives less than 30 seconds later only to find a dead Dr. Bashar, with his face removed. There is no sign of Robin. Dr. Bashar’s revenant appears and informs Batman that Memento has both the face of Nicodemus Crowe and Batman’s son.
Analysis
Batman and Robin #19, part six of the Memento arc, continues to turn the emotional screws. The tension between Batman and Robin reaches a nearly unbearable pitch, only to have writer Phillip Kenney Johnson ratchet the pressure even further through Memento’s capture of Robin.
In part five, the emotional distance between Batman and Robin increases partly as a result of a misunderstanding. Batman fears for Robin and wants him to have as normal a life as possible, which he doubts is available to anyone working as Boy Wonder. Yet Robin hears only Batman’s doubt, stripped of context, which deepens the mistrust and resentment he feels towards his father.
Whereas previous writer Joshua Williamson countered the tendency to focus on the problems and conflicts between father and son through optimism, warmth, and connection, Johnson returns to the more familiar themes in this book. I have no problem with this, as long as the writer characterizes the relationship between two multi-dimensional, bright, and complex beings. Johnson accomplishes this. Although I am certainly not defending clandestine surveillance of a child, most parents can likely understand the protective impulse that led Batman to bug Robin. That Batman’s instincts regarding the danger Robin is in prove right is the coldest of comforts.
The action kicks back up again in the book, as apart from the interlude at Wayne Manor, Batman and Robin are on the move for the entire book. Few other characters occupy much time and space in the book, although the reduction of Scarecrow is startling and gives readers a sense of the scope of Memento’s power. Readers are left to worry about the extent of the similarity between the darkness at the heart of the Memento narrative and the shadow cast over Batman and Robin’s relationship.
Johnson’s writing of the characters and their relationship is deep, dark, and complex, like our heroes themselves. Artist Javi Fernández does his best to keep up, but the anime influences in his linework seem off-tone, at a minimum. I would almost prefer to see Mikel Janín, currently illustrating Detective Comics, to have a go at Batman and Robin, as his horrorcore suits the same elements in Johnson’s writing.
Final Thoughts
I continue to appreciate Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s approach to The Dynamic Duo. The depth and darkness of Batman and Robin’s relationship mirrors the narrative itself. Memento himself is disturbing and both of the superheroes’ vulnerability is on full display as the arc races towards its climax.
