Robin #174 Review

ROBIN #174
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Chris Batista and Cam Smith

This was an elegant resurrection of Stephanie Brown, aka the Spoiler, if you can call the resurrection of a blatantly on-screen death elegant.

Yes, Spoiler is, well, Spoiler. And that's me giving you a spoiler on who the Spoiler is. The short explanation is that Leslie faked Spoiler's death back during War Games. Spoiler suggests that she thought she had suffered enough for a girl her age and so they swapped her with an overdosed drug addict's body.

Batman, being the king of preptime and omniprescent in the DCU, was actual only partially aware of this. He didn't know if she was alive or not, but had his suspicion and, as such, opted not to put a trophy case up until he was sure she was really dead.

Tim took this rather well and immediately grabbed Stephanie and gave her a big bear hug and kiss, lifting her clear off the ground. A bit inconsistent with the "love of his life", Wonder Girl, over in Teen Titans, but no one likes her anyways.

If you haven't read the issue, I'm sure this sounds like a mess of a resurrection on paper, but, trust me, it's actually worked really well and I honestly believe it's one of the better handled resurrections when all's said and done.

Of course, I'm a big Spoiler fan, so I'm looking at this through some rose coloured glasses and just happy she's back, so take this with a grain of salt, as well. But I am trying to be impartial, so I don't think I'm being too generous when I say these things.

On the non-Spoiler side of things, there was one scene that really made me laugh out loud, which is rare for a comic to do. They had a rather generic fight at the beginning of the issue that carried over from last month and, as they ended the fight rather quickly with a bunch of explosions and cars and what have you, it cut to the Penquin turning his TV off and proclaiming it was the "typical Hollywood Tripe. Lots of explosions and an unsatisfying conclusion." It caught me off guard and I was roaring at it since it was a pretty damn accurate description of the opening fight scene. It was made all the funnier as this was the only appearance of the Penquin in the issue, making it stand out even more in my mind.

Verdict - Must Read (Check It if you don't care about Spoiler)

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