Fighting The Friends We Made Along The Way: Reviewing ‘Robin’ #7

The time for fun and games and camaraderie are over, as the final four become the final two in a fast-paced, revealing, and brutal seventh issue of Robin.

Joshua Williamson doesn’t hesitate one bit with this issue, as this issue plunges in right from where the last one left off and gives some teases to Respawn’s whole deal and gives a brief not very informative look under the mask. This is followed up by the reveal of who Mother Soul truly is, what her plan is, and how it affects this tournament and every fighter on the island. It’s a reveal worth reading on one’s own, but it adds a whole new dimension to the already complicated history of those related to one Damian Wayne.

All of this is great and adds so much to this already packed series, but what really catches the attention and the heartstrings (see what I did there?) is the rematch fight between Robin and Flatline. While neither will admit it at this point, the friendship and potentially more sort of things that were growing between them make this one of the saddest fights in the tournament. There was only one way that this was going to end was one of them losing one of their three lives and being knocked out of contention to take it all.

While the end comes as expected, it’s hard for both characters and really gives some great insight to both of them and their reasons for being here, as well as opens them more emotionally. Truly Flatline is a character that feels like she has a lot of life ahead of her in the books and hopefully, we see a ton more of her even after this storyline finishes. She seems like a character that can take off big time much as Damian himself did so many years ago now.

Regular series artist Gleb Melnikov is joined this issue by Max Dunbar and they go all out with some really amazing fight scenes, going hard on the closeup shots and variety of paneling that adds so much energy and feeling to the fights. Their art styles are very similar which makes it seamless reading the issue, not able to pick up where the slight differences are in the art until one goes back and just really looks through the pages.

Even with the heaviness that this issue comes with, they make sure to still add some lightness and keep the mood somewhat in that fun video game vibe. This is helped by the very bright but deep colors of Luis Guerrero. With so many closeups and landscape shots, these colors bring even more life to the characters and the world. There is a great use of shadows as well to help add texture and dimension to everything on the page. A book with so many colorful personalities bouncing off one another needs colors that bring everything right off the page and in your face, and Guerrero does that easily.

Bright colors and close-ups bring depth and fun and great action, as does fantastic lettering. Troy Peteri continues to bring that with each issue, adding so many interesting colorful flares and styles to the speech bubbles through the issues as well as the plethora of SFX that you can ‘hear’ and ‘feel’ every single time. I love the use of colors around some bubbles and the random times that someone’s name is dropped into a bubble in big logo style.

With this being a fighting tournament there is a ton of energetic action within every issue, especially this one in particular, and the creative team makes that work. That being said the emotional and heart aspect of the book is just as much right there on each page and provides the spark needed to keep things going. Even the characters that are hardly known feel fleshed out and you can somewhat feel for them as they meet their ends or find themselves on the losing end against other characters.

Robin #7 is now on sale in print and digitally from DC Comics.