I made the mistake of going into Robin Rises Omega #1 after having not read Batman and Robin pretty much since the Nightwing issue, making it almost a year since I read an issue of the series. The mistake here was assuming that this new story arc would be friendly to readers who had dropped off of the book after it took a dip in quality. Unfortunately, I was wrong. And even though the first seven pages are devoted to catching readers up; none of it deals with how Batman, Ra’s, Frankenstein, and the League of Assassins came to be facing off with Glorious Godfrey and an army of parademons. That’s the type of catching up that I needed, not the re-explaining of Son of the Demon, Morrison’s Batman run, and Death of the Family. Batman’s inner monologue in these pages is definitely impactful, it’s just unnecessary.
After this point, there’s really not much to say about this particular issue, because there’s very little depth to any of it. Essentially, it becomes a 30 page long, battle sequence between the League of Assassins and the armies of Apokolips. Even the Justice League shows up in the latter half of the issue. It’s very much style over substance; bringing in massive star power for a story about Batman attempting to resurrect Damian. It all feels very unnecessary, and, frankly, out of place. And while Batman’s beat down of Shazam and Lex are both great scenes, these are characters that had no business being involved here. Characters like Wonder Woman? Sure. Superman would have made sense as well. But that’s because those are characters with deep emotional ties to Batman – hell, even Barry Allen or Hal Jordan would have felt more at place than the characters who do show up.
The coolest part of the issue is easily the connection between this and the opening story arc in Batman/Superman. It seems that Batman actually remembers what happens now, which definitely has some interesting ramifications for the DC universe. My only problem with these scene is that I honestly do not understand why it happened. Sure, it may be unfair to critique this issue because I chose not to read the last year of the book. However, for a story line of this importance, I find it essential to effectively explain what’s going on to new readers.
So I guess that’s Robin Rises – Omega #1. This is probably the shortest review I have ever written, and for that, I apologize. But really, there’s only so much to say about an issue that lacks any sort of substance. It isn’t a bad issue, there just isn’t much to say about it. Two factions have a massive battle for 30 pages. Great. Cool. But at the end of the day, it just isn’t all that interesting to read.
