BIZARRO BREAK #2 – Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder

BIZARRO BREAK #2 (Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder)
“Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder”
Writer – Chip Kidd
Art & Letters – Tony Millionaire
Colors & Seps – Jim Campbell
Edits – Joey Cavalieri


Back in the Bizarro World!


Today we’re going to have ourselves a good old-fashioned adventure with the Dynamic Duo of Gotham City.  No Bizarros to be found… though, when you see the way some of the faces in this story look, you might not be so sure about that!


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We open during tea time at Wayne Manor.  The man of the house and his ward are just sitting down for a cup, when… over the radio The Monk delivers a threatening address!  Ya see, when the clock strikes midnight tonight… Robin will die.  Hmm, I always thought he’d die a dawn or something.  This, as you might imagine, gets under Dick’s skin something fierce… and I just now realized how unpleasant that last sentence might read.  Anyhoo, that night… just as the twelfth gong hits… something very strange happens to the Boy Wonder.

Robin’s face turns to a scowl… and from inside Batman’s own Utility Belt, he can hear his old partner’s voice crying out for help.  To make the scene even weirder, Robin socks Batman in the gut!

He, Robin that is, then proceeds to wreck havoc mischief all over Gotham City!  Just making a real nuisance of himself.  He even punts a puppy!

Batman follows his sidekick… and arrives at The Monk’s mansion just a few steps behind.  It’s here that he realizes that Robin’s voice is emanating from a tiny cage dangling above The Monk’s… uh, throne?

After winging a ‘rang, Batman is able to deduce that his old chum’s “essence” has been plopped into an actual robin… like, the bird.

He frees it… and it dive-bombs into one of the eyeholes in The Monk’s hood… revealing The Monk himself as being… well, just a worm.

The story wraps up with Batman consoling his now-complete partner… as The Monk worm slithers away.

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Well… hrmm.


Can’t say I much cared for this.  While it’s not like an outright “bad” story… I really just couldn’t get past the art.  Tony Millionaire might be a bit of an acquired taste, especially when it comes to (relatively) straightforward superheroics… and while I enjoy and appreciate him on, say, Sock Monkey or Maakies… I find that he draws particularly ugly Batman and Robin.  There’s no denying the fella is insanely talented… and can tell a story… it’s just, those faces… woof.


Chip Kidd isn’t a dude I have all that much experience with as a writer… in fact, the only thing that comes to mind when his name pops up were those horrid variant covers DC shoveled out during Convergence.  Like I said already, this wasn’t a bad story, in fact it was pretty clever.  I mean, it was short… because it’s a short.  I guess Tony and Chip provided another Batman (or Bat hyphen Man) story in that other Bizarro collection.  Maybe we’ll get to it sometime down the line.