Batman and Robin #8

Homicidal assassins are so cute when they're sleeping.

Robin has killed in front of Batman. He's probably killed before. It probably started off finding small dead animals on the streets of Gotham while jogging early in the morning. He'd bring these home and hide them under the porch in front of Wayne Manor. Normally this would escalate to watching other joggers and fantasizing about killing one of them. But being a super hero, he had unlimited access to killing bad guys in the dead of the night and getting away clean! He's probably snuck out the Batwindow many nights to go out on the streets to kill thugs and miscreants and possibly the occasional innocent drunk that was seen jaywalking.

Batman removes Robin from the sinking boat and they take the misshapen Batcar-rocket-jet-plane thing back to the Batcave.

I've never seen this Batthing in my life!

Batman rushes Robin back to Alfred so Alfred can do his medic duties on the boy. That phrase makes me giggle. After a scan, Alfred determines that Robin has no critical injuries. At least no physical ones.

Lobotomize him, Alfred! Put him down!

Batman has also suffered some pretty severe injuries. Both Batman and Robin need to take it easy for a few weeks. This should prove difficult since Batman is still busy with the whole Court of Owls mystery and he's just arrived back from Africa helping Batwing and he's busy keeping the Justice League International from getting completely wiped out and he's busy battling The Scarecrow as well. Plus Bruce Wayne has to over see his Gentrify Gotham program so that everyone in Gotham will be free to stand in line on Sundays waiting to have brunch.

While Damian is recuperating, Batman slips him the voice message he made for Damian while he was looking for him. Damian listens to it and then seeks out his father for the talk. No, not that talk! He's only ten years old, for Christ's sake! This is the talk about not murdering people! Sheesh!

Liar!

Bruce and Damian spend the rest of their Pennyworth-enforced recuperation time fishing and playing fetch with Titus, Damian's big slobbery dumb dog that needs a Batmask already. Just before their last night of rest begins, the Night of Owls cross-over begins and this issue ends.

Is there an alternate Batsignal which Batman knows not to respond to but Commissioner Gordon can throw into the clouds just to scare any criminals thinking about committing crimes that night?

Batman and Robin Issue #8 Rating: No change in the ranking. Still an extremely well-crafted comic book. I just didn't feel there was enough meat to this issue to justify another jump in the rankings. It'll probably move up soon anyway as some of the titles above it begin to disappoint me.