Comic Review: Batman and Robin #15

In this review of Batman and Robin #15, Bruce must find his way out of a burning boiler room while Damian finds himself in a heated situation as well.

Batman and Robin #15
Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Artist: Javi Fernández and Carmine Di Giandomenico
Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo
Cover Artist: Javi Fernández
Variant Covers: Simone Di Meo, Aaron Bartling, Guillem March, Ashley Wood
Release Date: November 13, 2024

This review contain spoilers

Batman and Robin #15 begins in a burning boiler room, as Bruce is in trouble. Upstairs at the reception, as an incendiary device explodes, Damian is in similar extremis. Both are forced to improvise. Bruce bandages his hands and grabs a rusted, burning-hot chain. Damian dons night-vision lenses and manages to trigger the sprinkler system. Bruce manages to swing himself to safety as the room explodes behind him. Damian rushes through the room, rescuing endangered guests. Eventually the fire goes out, the power snaps back on, and Damian is pleased with himself – until he notices the young girl who had been pestering him earlier in the evening. She is gravely wounded. Dr. Bashar steps in to provide medical care and tries to distract Damian by telling him about when he first met Bruce.

Driving home, Bruce and Damian discuss the evening’s events. Damian describes the figure he saw barring the doors, who wore a mask of stone or some other earthen material. Bruce thinks for a moment and then describes a series of murders that occurred while he was studying the art of detection under a man named Atticus Blye. A villain named “Memento” committed these crimes, and he wore a Victorian riding cloak with an antique plaster death mask. Bruce rejects the idea that Memento has returned.

Later, Bruce and Damian are training, but Damian is distracted. He explains that when Batman began, he always had purpose but needed tools. Damian states that he has tools but no purpose; Gotham is not his city and the wounded girl shows that his tools are not enough; failure is inevitable. Bruce shows Damian something quite precious: Thomas’s journals that include original sketches. Bruce reminds Damian that his heritage includes builders and healers.

Flash back to Bruce’s time in London, when Blye is trying to teach young Bruce about detection through the Memento Murders. The murder scene seems to be a recreation of an earlier murder. The instruction emphasizes the need to understand the perpetrator’s motivations as a cipher for the perpetrator’s identity. Flash forward to the present at Sacred Heart Medical Center, and Batman explains to Robin that the perpetrator of the events there performed a similar recreation of the 1892 fire. Batman detects white phosphorous, which is difficult to acquire. Robin asks if Memento might be a demon as rumored; Batman scoffs.

At the Gotham Docks, Tiger Shark and two henchmen await a shipment of guns they plan to use in their war with Penguin. The boat radios their approach, but it is too late. Memento is on the boat and he disposes of its occupants. He drives the boat directly into the Docks.

Analysis:

Part two of the “Memento” arc deepens the historical underpinnings of current events. For those, like me, reading and enjoying writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s current run on Hulk, there are many similarities. The influence of past monsters on present horrors, the Victorian, almost Lovecraftian narrative, and the deep darkness inside the protagonists resonates in both books. (Ok, deep darkness of the protagonists is part of every superhero story but still – one would be hard-pressed to deny similarities between the terrifying villain Nepthele in Hulk and Memento, especially given the hints that the latter may in fact be demonic in nature).

It’s also interesting to see some of the similarities between Ram V’s “Nocturne” arc and the present Memento arc, but the latter is blessedly compact and well-formed. Johnson is really picking up where previous writer Joshua Williamson left off; the story is engaging but relatively simple and straight-forward, and the stars of the show are The Dynamic Duo.

Johnson extends another of Williamson’s themes in emphasizing a closeness between Bruce and Damian that is not always present. In the latter, father and son get along almost as well as I have ever seen represented. Even with a younger, less mature Damian, there is still warmth and support between the two. Damian is willing to make himself vulnerable in confessing his confusion and lack of purpose, and Bruce shares something precious and private in Thomas’s journals and sketches. This is a nice moment, written skillfully and rendered in warm colors, suffused with light.

Final Thoughts:

I enjoy the pacing that Johnson brings to the book. He is layering the story and introducing some of the horror-style elements used so effectively in Hulk. It’s a very different book thus far than what previous writer Joshua Williamson wrote, but so far it’s engaging and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Daniel Goldberg

I’ve loved Batman for my entire life, but really only started collecting comics in 2015. "Batman: The Animated Series" is probably the biggest influence on my conception of the character. I’m a university professor in my day-to-day life, and I am particularly interested in the ways that fear and trauma drive Batman and the behavior of so many of his rogues.