As the Dynamic Duo take to the streets night after night, Two-Face enacts his own plans against General Grimaldi! Check out our review of Batman and Robin: Year One #7.
Batman and Robin: Year One #7 main cover by Chris Samnee (DC Comics)
BATMAN & ROBIN: YEAR ONE #7
Written by MARK WAID and CHRIS SAMNEE
Art and Main Cover by CHRIS SAMNEE
Variant Covers: DECLAN SHALVEY, JAVIER RODRÍGUEZ, ETHAN YOUNG
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: 5/21/25
This review contains spoilers
General Grimaldi is less than pleased at Clayface, a.k.a. one Matt Hagen. The accounts he was after during the Koski caper were frozen by the cops, and Batman is still investigating his operation. Hagen responds by apologizing with Grimaldi’s face, which enrages the crime boss further. Unbeknownst to him, while Grimaldi gripes to his invalid father, the old man’s wheelchair has been bugged by Two-Face, listening in.
Batman and Robin have been cleaning house every night for over a week, battling two-bit hoods and costumed villains alike. While on the way to their next patrolling spot, Batman informs Robin that the spillover in crime is a fallout of Clayface playing Grimaldi’s rival gangs against each other. They stop by a favorite restaurant spot of the Bertinelli crime family, who are about to be attacked by the Maroni crime family. Batman saves their lives in return for demanding a truce between the gangs.
The next day, Dick enjoys showing off for the kids at school during recess. A bigger kid begins to taunt him, tempting Dick to deliver a Robin-styled punch, just before CPS arrives to check in on him. Spotting s bruise on his wrist, Dick quickly assuages their concerns by prodding the older kid into punching him out in front of the adults, saving his identity. At the manor, Bruce compliments his quick thinking, and informs his that he’s realized they’re being spied upon by Grimaldi’s men.
Two-Face meets Hagen at his hideout, informing him that the cure Grimaldi has promised him for his condition isn’t curative. Later that night, two armed men break into a home and gun down a man and young boy at their dinner table, crossing off a list of suspects stolen from GCPD of potential secret identities of Batman and Robin.
Analysis
It’s been some weeks since the last issue, which has made my heart grow fonder in the book’s absence. While Mark Waid still depicts Dick with more of a frivolous juvenile quality than I enjoy, I overall enjoyed this issue. It carried just the right noirish mood of classic Batman, between the scenes of the mobsters on their own (including Two-Face and Clayface), and the supreme domination of the Caped Crusaders battling across Gotham.
This was also a perfectly paced story, hearkening back to the old days (pre-2000s) where comics had a lot more meat on their bones in a single issue. Typically these days, most issues seem to include only two or three locations at a time, or far too many to sit in for a single scene. I AM Batman suffered that problem, with scenes lasting for practically a single page with little impact left by its end. But in this issue I was surprised how full it felt without feeling like two much. We get more follow-ups with the GCPD suspects list subplot, Grimaldi and his father, Bruce and Dick and Alfred in the Batcave, Dick at school, B&R hitting the streets. None of it felt rushed or flabby, it’s a perfect distillation of plotting, helped marvelously by Chris Samnee’s utter flair for sequential storytelling.
As much as I don’t care for Waid’s characterization of Dick, I need to acknowledge that it’s still correct where it counts. Dick’s youthful, energetic and upbeat, but he’s not a stupid kid. He takes out Maroni’s men off-screen while Batman was talking with Bertinelli inside, and him remembering to keep his identity in check at school was a great bit of quick thinking. I always enjoy details like that, where the secret identity regarding the teen heroes gets real world child services involved, like in Robin III where Tim Drake was suspected of being Bruce’s abuse victim due to his bruises. Now Mark Waid’s coming out with a new History of the DC Universe this summer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he puts Dick’s age at eleven or even ten judging by how he’s being written. That’s still too young for my tastes, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’s been that young in the comics (Marv Wolfman regularly had Dick say in New Teen Titans that he was first Robin when he was eight years old 0_0). I’m hoping for twelve, which has been the norm Post-Crisis. Chris Samnee draws him pretty small and young, but I’ll keep an eye out when that book drops.
I’m also expecting some retcons with Matt Hagen, who in this book is pretty much the DCAU/B:TAS version, being a former actor who can shapeshift. So, did Basil Karlo never happen? Regardless, seeing Two-Face play both sides has been a fun way to have the super-criminals foil this supposed criminal genius, demonstrating that Gotham City isn’t like any other city in the world, and he’s way out of his depth.
This was perfectly solid, thoroughly enjoyable and a good portent for issues to come, with ever-reliably great artwork from the maestro Chris Samnee.
