Review by Frank Plowright

The Teen Wonder is a variety box collection of stories about the assorted people who’ve been Batman’s masked assistant to 2009. Unusually for career spanning collections the choice is restricted to material from the previous 21 years rather than heading all the way back to the 1940s. However, the start and finish provide the highlights, perhaps apt in a collection focussing on beginnings and endings.

Denny O’Neil and Dave Taylor’s opener is an expanded re-telling of how the young Dick Grayson lost his parents and was adopted by Bruce Wayne. O’Neil turns it into a crime story while Taylor’s pencils are coloured for a pulp atmosphere. Batman’s presence is minimal, and Robin is only present in spirit as a very young Grayson plays a large part in dealing with the killers of his parents.

‘Only Robins Have Wings’ is primarily a straightforward tale about dealing with Clayface, but the recurring undercurrent from co-writers Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon recasts the Batman and Robin relationship as controlling and borderline abusive. It’s an unpleasant and unconvincing idea that brutalising a young child will mould them into a capable warrior, while Scott McDaniel’s art is stylised and ugly.

It’s probably inevitable that any collection of Robin’s fundamental moments includes Jim Starlin and Jim Aparo’s distasteful story of the Joker murdering Jason Todd. It was gratuitously unpleasant in 1988 and hasn’t aged well. To add to the distressing circumstances it’s preceded by James Robinson and Lee Weeks looking back at the day Jason first wore the Robin costume, which is maudlin and sentimental.

Replacement Robin Tim Drake’s introduction loses much of the emotional context supplied by co-plotters Marv Wolfman and George Pérez in A Lonely Place of Dying for only featuring the closing chapter when Tim finally wears the costume. However, it does have him decisive in defeating Two-Face, a realistic grumpy Batman and a genial tone.

Stephanie Brown once fought crime as Spoiler, her motivation being to compensate for her father’s criminal career, and when Tim temporarily retired, she took his place as Robin. Bill Willngham’s script is joyful in parts and threatening in others, good at bringing home teenage anxiety, and while Damion Scott’s art is every bit as stylised as McDaniel’s, it’s also more coherent with some great designs. The inclusion of a brief coda supplying another ending and a rebirth fits the collection’s theme, but also unnecessarily ends it on a downer.

This is by no means a great collection, further impaired by so few inclusions being complete in themselves, but frustratingly it’s the only collection presenting the two best stories.