Review by Ian Keogh
Robin wasn’t seen during The Big Burn, and barely seen in Requeim for Damian before that. Don’t hold out hopes for much Damian Wayne in The Hunt for Robin either. However, he’s very much present in spirit as Batman searches for Damian’s body, abducted by Ra’s Al Ghul, his grandfather.
Ra’s is an eco-terrorist with a long history of hypocrisy in achieving his aims, continued here with some shocking experimentation on whales. He also has a series of resurrection pits located around the world, and intends to return Damian to life, but in a manner more pliable to his influence. Needless to say, it’s not an agenda Batman agrees with.
With Robin still absent, Peter J. Tomasi treats the series as the 21st century equivalent of Batman’s old team-up title The Brave and the Bold. He works alongside Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Frankenstein as he tracks Ra’s, and then against them as he has a disagreement with the Justice League.
A greater and greater stylisation now characterises Patrick Gleason’s art. He’s edging toward an angular form for faces and it doesn’t always work. It’s fine for a square-jawed Aquaman on the sample art, but results in some unintentionally ugly facial features on others as the story progresses. Compensating a great deal are the assured page layouts and panel viewpoints, sometimes startlingly effective causing the eye to linger rather than follow the story. Neither Doug Mahnke nor Andy Kubert had anything left to prove when they produced their fill-in art, and while their approach differs from Gleason, it’s not significantly enough to become a distraction.
Tomasi fudges a little when it comes to Ra’s Al Ghul’s intended methods, but as long as he’s around there’s some momentum to The Hunt for Robin, but that energy is lost over the final three chapters, which are more set up than progress. Certainly the involvement of forces from Apokalips is surprising, and superlatively drawn by Kubert, but the feeling is of a twist too many to prolong the tension artificially. If Batman on Apokalips during Robin Rises turns out to the best of the series, that view may be reconsidered.
The entire run is also available in a single oversized hardback Omnibus.
