I thought Joshua Williamson’s Batman and Robin Vol. 1: Father and Son was fine right up until it wasn’t.

In my day (I write, grumpily), the Batman and Robin title was just called Batman, and you didn’t need a special, separate title just to see Batman and Robin interact! Heck, what we had was a Robin title because Batman and Robin were hanging out so much in the Batman title that Robin was the only place a Boy Wonder could find some peace!

All right, so maybe that’s overstating it just a little. And I also have to keep reminding myself this is nothing new; it’s been a while, but Peter Tomasi wrote 40+ issues of a Batman and Robin series not wholly different than this. For going on 15 years, Batman and Robin has been the site of adventure and superheroics but also very much pondering about Bruce and Damian Wayne’s relationship.

Not that comics shouldn’t have overarching themes, but Batman and Robin wears its theme on the label, and it gets a bit predictable especially in Father and Son’s weaker issues, like the bit about how a junior villain, surprise, also has issues with his father. Also, I do appreciate that Williamson has at least tried to advance Damian — this is clearly a more mature Damian than in Tomasi’s era — but every step forward is also a step back, I think, for the Damian Wayne character in general. Though Damian is clearly not Tim Drake, as we get into high school and hobbies, his own car, and a floppy hairdo — as Damian generally comes to terms with his Dark Knight father — there’s less and less that distinguishes Damian from the Robins before him.

[Review contains spoilers]

Given the popularity of books like Batman: Wayne Family Adventures and the upcoming Bat-Family cartoon, I continue to recognize there’s an appetite out there for “cozy” stories of Bruce Wayne and his sidekicks. But I felt the story got treacly in what was likely supposed to be Father and Son’s climactic moment, when Bruce finally sits down with Damian and Damian shows Bruce his artwork. I have liked Nikola Cizmesija’s art on Dan Watter’s Batman: Urban Legends Azrael stories, going from “manga-style minimalism … to detailed gore” with aplomb, but here his Damian is beaming weirdly, an overwrought expression that oversells the moment.

Equally, cool that Damian likes comics, but that what Damian draws are fictionalized versions of his own exploits is … weird, maybe? The art is supposed to represent Damian gaining interests outside the assassin/vigilante life he was born into, but then the subject matter is equally about his crimefighting. I could say charitably that this demonstrates how far Damian can and can’t go — he’s able to begin expressing himself through art, but that expression is limited to the interests ingrained in him. But Williamson is not enough on the page about that for me to suggest this definitively, and more it seems like Batman and Robin (and Williamson’s Robin before it) steering Damian toward the most self-referential thing simply because it’s easy.

Those two issues with more animated art by Cizmesija are also the ones, if Father and Son weren’t screaming its interests loud enough, where one of Damian’s high school classmates believes himself to be the son of Zsasz and tries to free the villain accordingly. Williamson writes Zsasz in the cackling fashion that I acknowledge matches his recent portrayals, though I still think Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle had it better when Zsasz was less sunny, more terrifying. There’s a panel where Batman punches Zsasz in the cheek, drawn by Cizmesija with Zsasz’s whole face deforming like something out of an absurdist R-rated superhero movie, and in all this is way more over the top than I want Batman and Robin to be.

The earlier chapters with art by Simone Di Meo suited me better, Di Meo bringing both a darker color palette and a strong mix of exuberance and seriousness to Batman and Robin leaping from the rooftops (even if detail in some panels is too fine to discern). Williamson’s story is perfectly workable, neither exceptional nor problematic, bolstered not for the first time by Williamson’s strong use of continuity and DC knowledge. White Rabbit is here (though maybe not quite the depiction Bruce Wayne almost dated), plus Orca and, in the annual collected at the end, Double Dare, offering small ties to Gotham War, Gotham City Monsters, Nightwing, and more. I had liked the quirky Man-Bat from Justice League Dark but I don’t mind him reborn as a villain here; Man-Bat seeking to replace Batman as Gotham’s savior is silly but the right kind of silly for the characters involved.

Damian flashes back to his training by the so-called Mistress Harsh in the League of Assassins, punished by Damian and Talia after she struck him. In the present, Damian is convinced Harsh is both the mystery villain Shush, working for Man-Bat, and the demanding principal of Damian’s high school. Neither has been confirmed, but I wouldn’t mind if Williamson did the unexpected and made Damian wrong on both counts. Here, I presume we could equally look at how Damian’s past traumas lead him to see ghosts of his past everywhere, though it could just as easily turn out Damian is right. (Given “Hush 2” on the rise, between here and Catwoman, DC sure is using Hush-related characters more than I would have expected.)

The back cover of Joshua Williamson’s Batman and Robin Vol. 1: Father and Son bills it as a “brand-new fun and exciting adventure,” and I agree it fits the bill. There is a fun “not taking itself too seriously” aesthetic to this book, and also, insofar as “and Robin” implies a lot of time spent with a juvenile protagonist, “fun” may also be a codeword to suggest “all-ages.” (I take DC releasing this only in paperback as significant, too.) Which is fine, I guess — who wouldn’t want to think about Batman being their dad on adventures with “fist bump!” sound effects — though ultimately I’m probably happier in a different part of Gotham.

[Includes original and variant covers]