Batman and Robin #21
A new villain called the White Knight is loose in Gotham and it’s up to Dick and Damien to stop him. Post Morrison it’s good to see that the new Batman and Robin team has DC’s backing and the lighter Batman and serious and overly confident Robin makes for a much more engaging dynamic than the know-it-all Bruce and equally predictable Tim as Robin. That’s not to say Bruce and Tim made for a bad team but there’s only so far you can go with the same cast members before there’s really nothing more you can say about them. While killing Bruce, or blasting him through time (let’s face it, it was completely inconsistent with Seven Soldiers anyway and made no sense) was extreme, replacing the characters completely gave the concept a new lease of life. And it seems to have given the writers a shot in the arm too. The White Knight is essentially a glowing serial killer who creates martyrs out of the family members of Arkham inmates to redeem their souls. To do this he drugs them, dresses them up like angels and gets them to kill themselves. When this is young kids jumping off of buildings, it’s pretty grim stuff. But thankfully it sticks to the right side of the line and is more interesting and exciting than horrific. Yet again Dick has a solid new villain. It’s not the strongest arc but every page feels fresh and unpredictable. If DC has any sense this golden age will continue for a long time. 4/5
Justice League Generation Lost #21
If anyone knows failure it’s Booster Gold. The guy just can’t catch a break and any success he has you know it’s not long before it turns to crap. Right now he’s not having the greatest time, and for Booster Gold that’s really saying something. He and the former Justice League have been doing what they can to stop the newly resurrected Maxwell Lord and it’s gone from bad to worse. Magog’s death at Max’s hands lead to the death of hundred of people in Chicago, and now the teenage Blue Beetle has fallen. This issue has the team members licking their wounds and dealing with the emotional fallout. It’s slow but the characters come across well, particularly Rocket Red who refuses to give into grief, and Captain Atom gets a nice standout scene with Ice when he faces the fact that he’ll outlast everyone he loves. It’s a huge surprise that this is coming from Judd Winnick, a writer who was hit and miss at the best of times and had long since past his expiry date after a seemingly unending capacity to inflict disaster on whatever character he was taking over. At worst his shock tactics and blunderbuss PC infomercials threatened to derail series entirely. Has he learned from the homophobic assault on Terry in GL, or making Speedy HIV Positive in Green Arrow? On the strength of the characterisation shown here, things are promising. Generation Lost, even in Winnick’s hands, is one to watch. 3/5
Adventures in Comics 