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What can I say? ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER is a bigger over-hyped bomb than Batman: Hush, and Jim Lee’s art was better. Honestly, I don’t think that many people expected this title to be great, but buying it has to be a necessity to so many super hero comic buyers precisely because of the reason for the hype – Frank Miller and Jim Lee.
The problem is Frank Miller. He stated in one the of interviews he gave concerning ASBARTBW that this title was taking place in the Batman “universe” he created for The Dark Knight Returns. However, this title lacks the explosive, in-your-face drama of DKR or the wacky, cartoonish violence that made The Dark Knight Strikes Again fun to read. This Batman doesn’t seem at all like any Batman ever portrayed in a DC comic. He rambles and his violence seems joystick directed. In fact, I would say that if a Batman like this exists anywhere, it’s probably in one of those unproduced screenplays Warner Bros. has commissioned over the years while they developed various Batman feature films. Miller even makes Alfred the butler a former military special operative. Whatever.
Having a bad script could have reduced Jim Lee to being an unimaginative art robot. But all his drafting skills are on display; the man can draw to the point of impressing the viewer. Lee struggles to make good compositions out of this mess, and for the most part he succeeds. If there is any fun in this, it’s seeing this virtuoso pianist turn a lame symphony into easy listening eye candy. C+
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