Robin: Son of Batman #13 Review and *SPOILERS*

All's Well That Ends Well

Written By: Ray Fawkes
Art By: Ramon Bachs, Mat Lopes, Deron Bennett
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 22, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It was a long road getting Damian through his Year of Blood........ and then an even longer road getting him through his Year of Atonement, but we've finally reached the end of our series before Damian goes off and leads the Teen Titans to greatness....... hopefully.  In the previous issue, our young hero took down Suren Darga, the heir to the Lu'un Darga legacy and the born enemy of the Al Ghuls.  Suren Darga's main goal was to bring about the end of the world and to resurrect his father, but after Damian slapped some sense into the boy by telling him that his father didn't give a shit about him because he would have to sacrifice himself in order for his father to live....... Well, Suren got himself off the apocalypse trolley and before he could be tortured by Talia Al Ghul, Damian decided that the boy deserved a second chance and took him along with Maya and himself to go wherever the road..... or Goliath took them.  Let's jump into this final issue and see where that road or bat monster went.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our final issue begins in a really nice and fun way, where our heroes are just sitting at a road side diner eating themselves some ice cream and it's really funny because Suren has no idea what dessert is and thinks less of his saviors for eating it........... you know, who has time for creamy goodness when world domination is all there is?  Well anyway, the fun times are cut short when Lu'un Darga radicals decide to break up the party because as Suren Darga tells us, they're committed to keep coming after them until they're all dead or until the end of the world happens.  Which actually may be sooner than anyone suspected since we all thought that Damian put the kibosh on that in the previous issue.  It turns out that Suren's father the Den Darga had a contingency plan in place in case his son failed or simply decided that genocide wasn't the way he wanted to spend his summer vacation and we see that during Robin, Maya and Suren's fight with the Lu'un Darga radicals, when all of the bad guys just fall down dead.  

It seems that anyone who is faithful to the Lu'un Darga was somehow mystically connected to this fail safe that Den Darga put into play and because of this, once it was activated the souls of the faithful would be sent to a mystical gem to fuel the Den until he was powerful enough to destroy the world and all that.  Thanks to Maya's techno helmet, she was able to track the spirit energy to where the Den was hiding and the fight for the Earth begins again........ but then is quickly handled when somehow this mystical gem acts like a car battery or some such nonsense and Damian uses himself to ground it out....... which sadly, causes our hero to die in the process.

In the end, Maya pulls a Zelda Rubenstein from Poltergeist and tells Damian not to go into the light, but as our hero tries to make his way back to his body, the Den's spirit decides if he's going to go down, he won't be doing it alone and tries to stop our hero.  This is where Suren Darga really steps up and uses his family's mystical powers to stop his father and save Damian's life.   With Damian successfully resurrected...........again, our trio get on top of Goliath and continue to go out and see where the road....... or giant bat monster lead them......... and even though I wasn't the biggest fan of this series, it really does end on a really nice note.

That's it for this final issue of Robin: Son of Batman and like I just said, even though I wasn't a real fan of this series, the ending was nice and I still feel that there's enough going on in this comic to keep fans of the series happy.......... even though it plays kind of weird with continuing the Year of Atonement arc after things seemed to be wrapped up pretty nicely in the previous issue.  Yeah, it feels like the writers were done with this story, but still had to turn out something for a thirteenth issue, but the sweet interactions between our heroes and the fun fight scenes make up for that and really allows the villain of this story, Suren Darga to have a proper redemption.  Like the main plot of this book, I can't say that I'm a real fan of the art style either, but I have to admit that its been growing on me a bit and really adds to the fact that we're dealing with children in this story and it works really well in the scenes where they're just getting to be kids and beginning to make their own way in the world by the end of the book.  

Bits and Pieces:

While I was never a real big fan of this series, I do have to admit that this finale worked really well in making our heroes come off as kids when they weren't busy saving the world and I really enjoyed that aspect.  Even though this issue doesn't really feel needed in the scheme of things, it does work to allow character development and also allows us to have a really nice send off to these characters.

6.8/10