A battle of the Dynamic Duo's has broken out in Gotham in Batman and Robin 5. It's Scarlet and the Red Hood versus Batman and Robin over who will defend Gotham and how it will be defended. It's Batman and Robin's biggest challenge to come and things are only about to get worse.
The issues starts with Batman and Robin battling it out with Red Hood and Scarlet to keep them away from the Penguin. The Red Hood and Scarlet's brand of justice of letting the punishment fit the crime is the central issue that pits them against not just Batman and Robin, but against a whole new breed of criminal.
The writer for this issue is Grant Morrison continuing his Batman epic. In this issue Morrison fleshes out the Scarlet character by letting her handle the narration of the issue. She becomes much more complex and begins to have reasons for her actions. The same is said for Jason Todd aka the Red Hood as he is given time to explain himself to a point. He is almost like a child that's rebelling from his father and whining the whole time. Because of this its hard to relate with him fully and I found myself wishing that there was a lot less of Jason Todd and more of anybody else. Other than that the issue is well written with solid dialogue an interesting look at the inner working of the characters and plenty of what is sure to foreshadowing that will later come to bear fruit.
The art for this issue is by Philip Tan. I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of his art in this series. His panels seem jumbled or cluttered and often times it hard to see whats going on in the panel. Also he uses light flares quite a bit in the panels which I at least found to be very distracting. His method of drawing facial features is also off putting. It's like he has 50 ways of drawing their faces grimacing. His art does detract quite a bit from the story, but not enough to make the issue a disaster. It's still a fun read, but I felt the art detracted a lot from the issue.
Overall I enjoyed this issue quite a bit and would highly recommend it to those who are already following this series. if you're not then I would catch up on earlier issues before reading this one. |
