Review by Frank Plowright
New writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson introduces the continuity implant of Memento, a serial killer Bruce Wayne encountered when a young man still undergoing training in London. Now someone claiming to be Memento is in Gotham, although Batman is convinced it’s a copycat killer.
Although this follows Growing Pains, there’s no connection beyond Batman and Robin featuring. Johnson investigates Batman’s past, devises a series of gruesome killings in places that have already experienced tragedy and investigates the public enthusiasm for serial killers. Both title characters are given their own demons to carry. Robin is upset at his mean treatment of a girl who then almost died, while Batman refuses to believe in the supernatural, an attitude that would be a whole lot more convincing if he weren’t the same Batman who’s encountered all sorts of evidence of it in the past. Also poor is the use of hallucinogenic gas on the part of Memento when that’s pretty well the entire career of the Scarecrow, shown here as a victim.
Why it’s beyond a mainstream superhero publisher to arrange matters so that all chapters of a six part story are drawn by the same artist is inexplicable, and the only reason seems to be a greater concern for money than for readers. Javi Fernández draws most of the story, with interludes in the young Bruce’s past specifically allocated to Carmine Di Giandomenico. Both deliver startling action art and their styles mesh smoothly, which isn’t the case for Miguel Mendonça, whose art also hits all targets, but is very different. Neither is there any certainty among the artists how old Robin is supposed to be. When seen over the opening pages lounging around his room he could be sixteen, yet in a tux you can knock off five years, while his appearances in costume are also inconsistent.
Memento is a villain always slightly obscured and given to arch utterances in rhyme. It takes detection to figure out his movements and meaning, but that’s not until the final chapter. By then Johnson has overlaid a crisis of conscience on Robin leading to a surprising declaration. The regrets Robin has have been planted, but at no time does his subsequent behaviour seem consistent with the character over the years, who’d be more likely to suppress feelings and take things out on Gotham’s thugs. He’d not come to the conclusion Batman is responsible for Gotham’s problems.
Then we have Batman casually admitting he’d let someone he believed innocent be convicted and jailed because he couldn’t compromise the alias he was using. This is not the Batman we know.
Every crisis seems to be building toward a climax, but then we discover it doesn’t. The story continues in The Gotham Cycle. Perhaps greater meaning and relevance will evolve there, but on its own Memento suffers from too much that’s plot-convenient.
