We Are Robin #1 Review

writer: Lee Bermejo / artists: Jorge Corona, Rob Haynes, Khary Randolph / DC Comics I’ve been waiting for this title to drop, and now that it is here I gotta tell you… I fucks with it. I fucks with it heavy. We got Lee Bermejo taking the reigns on this book with Duke Thomas as the lead. When we last saw the kid he was helping Batman back in Zero Year, and a bit older once that Endgame dropped. Now Duke is dealing with the fall out of Endgame with his parents missing and him having to move through foster homes. We got a lot of people watching Duke from the shadows — we already know they’re a part of something, what we don’t know is how or why. The focus on Duke and his current situation is a smart move on Bermejo’s part to get readers connected with the kid we’ve all been wanting to see more of.

You know he’s bound to be a Robin of some sort (as we saw in Future’s End and the current title) so you instantly start comparing him to those before him: does he move like Grayson, or have an attitude like Todd? A will like Stephanie or logical like Drake? The answer is none of the above (thank god). Duke is truly a unique character in that he clearly isn’t emulating anyone, and his predicament is forcing him to be the kind of person he is now; one that hasn’t been seen before in a Batman book, either. We see a lot of his backstory with how his parents raised him, especially his mother. That offers a very unique telling of a kid (maybe lower-middle or middle class) having a tight…