The award-winning creative team of writer Mark Waid and artist Chris Samnee are back to take on another famous pairing. DC has announced Batman and Robin: Year One, a new twelve-issue series from Waid, Samnee, colorist Matheus Lopes, and letterer Clayton Cowles that will tell the definitive story of the Dynamic Duo’s early days together.
Here’s how DC describes the new series:
While Bruce Wayne adjusts to the realities of adopting orphan Dick Grayson, a mysterious new crime boss called the General has come to Gotham to claim the city by disrupting and destroying its other mobs. But what is his connection to Two-Face? Batman and his new sidekick, Robin, are out for answers, but it’ll take everything they have to navigate both sides of their relationship as father and son and dynamic duo, with Dick Grayson’s present and future hanging in the balance!
Batman and Robin: Year One is the latest teaming for Waid and Samnee, who have previously worked together on critically-acclaimed runs on Daredevil, Black Widow, and Captain America for Marvel. While Samnee’s most recent interior work has been on Skybound’s Fire Power with writer Robert Kirkman, much of Samnee’s recent cover work has been on Waid-written DC titles like Shazam! and World’s Finest: Teen Titans.
Fans of Samnee’s have been clamoring for the artist to work on a Batman title ever since the artist began dedicating each year’s ‘Inktober’ to black-and-white illustrations of the caped crusader and his family, a month-long endeavor Samnee dubbed ‘Batober‘. Good things come to those who wait, it seems.
In a statement announcing the series, Waid and Samnee described the themes of the series, and where the dynamic duo are in their relationship as the book opens:
“While Batman and Robin are the stars of this tale and get most of the panel time, at its heart, this isn’t a Batman/Robin story, it’s a Bruce/Dick story,” said Mark Waid. “It takes place only a month or two after Bruce adopted Dick, and it’s sinking in for Bruce that he has no idea how to be a father to a kid that age. He has no role model—his own father was long dead by the time he was Dick’s age. Nothing he’s ever done has prepared him for this, and Alfred—wise as he is—doesn’t have much experience here either.”
“Dick is everything Bruce is not—impetuous, flamboyant, reckless,” said Chris Samnee. “But he’s also precise; he can stick a landing. He’ll take orders when they make sense to him, but he’s keen to improvise, testing his role within the Dynamic Duo. The first pages you’ll see will showcase how they’ll be acting, and reacting, as they adventure out into Gotham City on patrol together. We’re so excited for this story to finally be told.”
Along with a main cover by Samnee and Lopes, Batman and Robin: Year One #1 will sport variant covers by Mikel Janín (open-to-order), Matteo Scalera (open-to-order), Karl Kerschl (1:25), and Lee Weeks (1:50). Check out the covers by Janín, Scalera, and Kerschl below, and look for the first issue of the twelve-issue series to arrive in stores and digitally on Wednesday, October 16th.
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