• Story: Mark Waid
• Art: Chris Samnee
• Colour: Giovanna Niro

I’ve been a monster fan of Waid, Samnee and their collaborations for a very long time now, but the whole of their work together hasn’t always been as good as the sum of the parts (Black Widow looked good but didn’t really amount to much). This however is quite different – it’s modern, traditional, cartoony yet pitch black when called for. Waid is investigating what made the Batman/Robin partnership work from its earliest days, and whilst much of it has been offered before, it’s rarely been as well characterised or as beautifully drawn as this. Chris Samnee’s Bruce is peak Bruce Timm, his Dick Grayson draws very much on Alan Davis’ Jason Todd immediately post-Crisis on Infinite Earth, and the love both creators have for both father and adoptive son is evident in every single panel. If they could take over the main Batman book after Loeb & Lee depart I’d be the happiest reader alive.

What works conceptually here is Waid’s focus on the tension between the dangerous real world absurdity of taking in an orphan and then redirecting him to fight your war (which may or may not be his) and the whimsical space that the comic book medium can allow to investigate this. I almost wish that the Child Protective Services people were genuinely sceptical about Dick’s safety with Bruce, rather than Batman, but I suppose that would take moving this to Vertigo for a smaller audience. And the star anyway is very much Dick the performer – very much the character Tom Taylor has spent a few years championing in the present day in Nightwing and the care that both writers have been taking with him recently is a delight. The Two Face subplot may be moving a little gently forwards, but with character work this good I’ve nothing to really complain about.