Damon's Comic Book of the Week - 8/13/08

Batman #679
Easy pick. This was an amazing issue (the variant cover is absolutely beautiful!), that's all I can say really. The art is top notch and the story is just getting better and better. I'm starting to realize that R.I.P. is going to continue to tease us down to the last issue. There's a lot of fun in this issue, but I don't want to say anything for fear of spoiling it, so go read it and tell me what you think! Zur-en-arrh!

Runner-up: Action Comics #868

Damon's Comic Book of the Week - 8/6/08

Robin #176
Easily the most exciting comic book I read this week. You get to see a glimpse of Robin growing up and becoming more like his influences. Will he grow up to be more like Batman (you could see some of the attitude in this issue), Nightwing (Robin's look?)... or Red Robin (what the heck!)? I don't think I have been this thrilled with a Robin issue for a long time.

Battle for the Cowl

Teaser image shown at Comic-Con

Batman R.I.P. Tie-ins (Part 2)

When Detective Comic's version of a Batman R.I.P. Tie-in came out I posted my issues with it. Now that Robin has come out with it's version of a R.I.P. Tie-in, I decided it was only fair to take a look at how it was handled.

Given that Morrison stated that he had no idea what they were doing with the R.I.P. Tie-ins and wasn't involved with them at all, Robin did a surprisingly good job. This is coming from a pretty biased source too, because I was ready to tear this tie-in apart for multiple reasons. The first being that Chuck Dixon wasn't writing it (this still depresses me), the next reason being that the first R.I.P. Tie-in was awful, and given that Chuck Dixon was listed as being the writer for the longest time (and still is), I knew it was going to be rushed.

All that being said, I was wonderfully surprised. It was really good. I like the idea of Robin being more independent and having to think of what he would have to do without Batman, or worse, if he needed to take Batman down. Of course, if you were looking for it to fill in any of the pieces of R.I.P. storyline (which I wasn't), you probably wouldn't be too impressed. It added nothing to the story at all, but at least Batman wasn't in it (Stupid Detective Comics....) and at least it dealt with the R.I.P. storyline. All in all, it was a strong Robin issue and a solid R.I.P. Tie-in. Color me impressed.

Batman R.I.P. Tie-ins

I have been a huge fan of the Batman RIP series and cannot wait to see what happens in the remaining issues. So, naturally, I was pretty excited for Detective Comics to come out this week since it was a tie-in to Batman RIP. Unfortunetly, I was terribly disappointed. Not by the issue itself, I am a huge Hush fan, but by the fact that DC claimed that this was a tie-in. Just because you add a couple of lines into the script that pay homage to Batman RIP... that doesn't make it a tie-in and it defiantly doesn't deserve the title at the top of the issue.

Seriously... the Hush storyline is it's own beast, why do they think they have to force it to tie-in with RIP? It took me out of my comic book reading experience and made me roll my eyes. What ever happened to the type of tie-ins that they did during Knightfall? Those are tie-ins... Ones where you actually need to read all of the issues to get the whole story. Nobody needs to read Detective Comics 846 to understand RIP at all. It tells you nothing new.

How frustrating... I guess I have to wait another month for my RIP fix.