Play By The Rules
Damian Wayne is on his own, the Bat-Family is in his rear-view and he's on the path to not only find out the secrets of the League of Lazarus but the path to t personal discovery as he tries to move past the death of Alfred Pennyworth, who was killed in front of him by Bane. In our first issue, we saw Damian catch the eye of the League of Lazarus by competing in a tournament against King Snake and now he's been invited to their island to compete in a bigger tournament where life and death mean everything..... It's just too bad that at the end of the last issue it looked like Damian ran his mouth too much and got his heart ripped out. Let's jump into this issue and see how our youngest Robin can move on in this series and maybe find out what his true intentions are in taking up this challenge. Let's check it out.
For this issue, we get the straight dope on Lazarus Island and how Damian Wayne could apparently be killed in the first issue and we still have a Robin series that progresses past that point. Is the explanation what I personally wanted? No, but at least it wasn't simply dropping someone in a Lazarus Pit, making them even less than what they've already become over the years, so at least there's that. Ultimately though, after getting over the shock of Damian's resurrection, we're given the information about how this tournament will work going forward and what the ultimate prize will be.
That being said, on top of the rules will also get a brief walking tour of the other competitors and why Ravager is taking part in the tournament as well but ultimately these aspects of the story kind of fall short because you're not given enough to actually care about and while I still look forward to this series, this felt like a bit of a slow issue that beyond the basic rules of the island and the tournament, you didn't get much.
All in all, the art remains strong but the story feels like it might not really pick up steam until after the tournament is in full steam, which could be the next issue, it could be three issues from now because while we were given the basic rules of how the tournament works, you know, with how people die and come back, we don't know how things are going to play out with Conner Hawke and his backstory or even what Damian's true intentions are..... because they have to be deeper than just solving the mystery of the League of Lazarus. This is a fun enough issue that lets us see Damian cut loose but ultimately it doesn't do much to move us forward, but hopefully, with how this issue ended there may be more to this than meets the eye and we may have a series that wants to move the story forward less and maybe lets us see Damian move forward as a whole.
Bits and Pieces:
While I still had fun with this issue we didn't do much here besides have the basic rules laid out and while the tournament might be fun when it finally gets going, it's the small moments where Ravager sees the pain inside of Damian and moves him towards a place where he might eventually grow as a character that his book really stands out and hopefully we get more moments like that as the series progresses and relies less on Damian going ham on people and being a little jerk.
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