Robin Annual #7

First off, I don't have the Batman family titles (Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Detective Comics, et al.) on my pull list. My brother was always the big Batman fan in the family and since we haven't lived togethery for 15+ years, I haven't been keeping up with all things Batman. I've always liked Robin's character as seen in "Teen Titans". Once again, seeing the Batman family characters intearct with the rest of the DCU is interesting to me. I picked up "Robin Annual" because my son wanted to see what was up with "The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul" storyline and this had a "sneak peak" feature for that story.

Writer Keith Champagne quickly runs Robin through a paint-by-numbers murder mystery with Detective Harvey Bullock in tow. I felt that artist Derec Donovan was at his best when displaying scenes in the dark and shadows. During scenes in the light of day, his art wasn't really that impressive. How Robin solves the mystery is beyond me as it seemed to involve someone he's known before. Here is where I would appreciate the old school "editor's note" telling me where/when/what issue this happened.

I'm not sure what Champagne was going for in the backup story but all I got was that Damian is a smart-ass kid with lots of issues and a healthy disrespect for adults. This short story was supposed to be the "sneak peak" part of the annual. That little tidbit occurs in the last few panels where, I guess, Ra's Al Ghul, shows up.

If you are looking at jumping onto Robin or if you looking for Ra's Al Ghul information , this annual is not a good starting point.