Review by Ian Keogh

The volume title of Father and Son stamps Joshua Williamson’s direction with this series. Bruce Wayne has become accustomed to town life in his city centre brownstone, and now Damian is to live there with him. While Batman and Robin are their primary identities, they must masquerade as what they actually are.

Williamson’s version of Gotham’s protectors nails an awkward relationship between father and son while providing enough mystery and action to sustain six chapters. However, there’s also the whiff of improbability hanging over some circumstances. It’s highlighted on the sample art, where the dialogue could be Adam West and Bruce Ward explaining to a 1960s TV audience. It turns out that’s deliberate, with Williamson’s bombastic chapter ending teasers also echoing that show. That and other references are an indulgence, not a fully conceived direction, but sit uncomfortably among other events, and the idea is eventually dropped.

A characteristic of Simone Di Meo’s art is showing the scars Batman has accumulated over the years, which contrasts his method of glamorising everyone. Damien’s high school has an amazing selection of gorgeous teachers, and there’s not an ugly person to be seen in Gotham. The action scenes are suitably dynamic, but come at the cost of sacrificing clarity. All too often a striking single image distracts from the surroundings, and how someone moves from one position to another is occasionally impossible. Nikola Čižmešija illustrates two chapters, and his thick outlines and generally exaggerated style has something of Jamie Hewlett about it. He’s notable for managing the notoriously difficult task of bringing a football game to life.

Williamson restricts his attentions to Batman’s second string villains, reconfiguring some to boost them into viable threats for the current day Caped Crusader, and using them well, but he also supplies his own creation. They see the volume out to return in Growing Pains.

There’s a minor cliffhanger ending to the main events before ‘The Most Dangerous Road Trip’, an extended father and son bonding trip. The awkwardness between father and son has been well written throughout, but here the emphasis is on adaptability, capability and teamwork as the pair are trapped in a hunting ground with only their camping gear as tools. Howard Porter draws this in a loose experimental style that works for the prevailing conditions, unrecognisable as his usual art, while Williamson’s plot provides the collection’s highlight.

Father and Son is a promising start setting several puzzles in motion, delivering the cast well and looking good, so solid entertainment.