Batman: The Adventures Continue #10 - DC Comics

BATMAN: THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE No. 10, August 2020

As retcons or rather reimaginings go, Alan Burnett and Paul Dini’s second instalment to their “Red Son Rising” storyline probably landed reasonably well with their audience in August 2020, considering that the digital first comic contains more than its fair share of frantic fisticuffs and Bat family tension. But whilst their “secret history of Batman's second Robin” initially follows the somewhat familiar path of Jason Todd taking “an alarming amount of zeal in doling out punishment to [his] more formidable adversaries”, its sudden and shocking portrayal of Dick Grayson’s successor actually attacking the Dark Knight in the Bat Cave so as to escape with the adolescent’s colourful costume and motorcycle arguably makes the sidekick even more unlikeable than when he was revamped by Max Allan Collins in the late Eighties.

Indeed, Issue Ten of “Batman: The Adventures Continue” makes it disconcertingly very clear that Todd was criminally flawed from the very start and that his dark descent into violent wrongdoing as an anti-hero was always destined to happen. Unfortunately, such a ‘fait accompli’ also means that the Dark Knight was wholly wrong when he originally saw the potential in his protégé to become the new Boy Wonder, and so bleak an assertion arguably undermines one of Jason’s most intriguing aspects in that the hooded vigilante could still become one of the Caped Crusader’s greatest assets if only he’d keep his juvenile temper in check; “The thing about you, Bruce, is you believe so much in the people you care about that you blind yourself to the obvious.”

Quibbles aside however, this particular publication still provides plenty of entertainment, especially once the Scarecrow decides to commandeer “the airwaves to plunge Gotham into an epidemic of fear” during Halloween, and ‘causes’ Robin to finally cross the line. Dynamically drawn by Ty Templeton, Todd’s ego is plainly on show for all to see as the cock-sure kid ignores the silent attack plan of his costumed peers “to minimize danger to the hostages” and instead decides to go toe-to-toe with Jonathan Crane’s twisted alter-ego. Brutal, vicious and undoubtedly fatal if not for Batman’s intervention, the sense-shattering scene epitomises just how low the unhinged youngster will stoop to ensure the “other creeps will realize we mean business.”

Writers: Alan Burnett & Paul Dini, Artist: Ty Templeton, and Colorist: Monica Kubina