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All-Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder Volume 1 - *.5 (out of *****)
DC Comics

A nice presentation can’t save this train wreck of a story.

When it was announced that Jim Lee and Frank Miller would be doing a Batman book together (never mind the fact that the announcement also suggested the book would publish regularly), I don’t know a fan who wasn’t excited about it.  That excitement didn’t take long to fade, though, as the reality of All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder took hold.  The characterization was all over the place–not only was it inconsistent with Miller’s previous interpretations of Batman, but he seemed to be manic, schizophrenic and wildly inconsistent from issue to issue.  That impression is only slightly less jarring in the hardcover; when you read the whole thing together, the wild swings in personality seem less wild…but they’re also in closer proximity to each other and therefore more obvious.

While initially the idea that the origin of the Dynamic Duo would be updated by the superstar creators was appealing (such is the appeal of the Ultimate and All-Star lines), even outside of the monthly context that made it infamous, the sheer amount of time spent in the car in this volume makes a reader wonder if he’s reading a Batman story or some bizarre, superhero adaption of National Lampoon’s Vacation.

As the series progressed, deadlines fell away and fan reaction was coming in in a torrent, it’s obvious that Frank Miller was starting to have some fun with the character, and so the latter part of this book (and presumably the entire next volume to come) is self-indulgent but madly fun and comical.While the first, infamous reference to “the Goddamn Batman” may hang rather rank in the air in this collection, hopefully the next volume, where this bane of the Internet is brought front-and-center, will fare a little better.  Here, though, in spite of a stellar-looking collection on Lee’s part and a nice package put together by the folks at DC, it becomes evident that there are some turds you just can’t polish with a hard cover and an introduction.

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