

Juni BaThe Boy Wonder (Dc Boy Wonder)
M**A
Beautiful art with an equally beautiful story.
Purchased this book after reading the Robin Lives comic. That book wrecked me and I seriously needed a win after reading it. A friend suggested Boy Wonder and I'm so glad they did. The artwork in this book is beautiful and the writing is spot on for each respective Robin. The family dynamic is perfect and something you don't normally get to see in most of the comic runs. The book's main character is Damian, but you get equally amounts of spotlight from Nightwing, Red Robin, and my beloved Red Hood. If you're a Batman and Robin fan, you'll love this book. It's a nice edition to add to your collection and an all around great read. I've gone back and read it twice now, which isn't something I normally do. I can't recommend this book enough.
V**A
Amazing book
Love the book and really reflects Damian’s character in a good light
R**H
Buy it
One of the best Robin centered stories ever. The art is stylized but amazing.
A**R
Beautiful art
Great story and art.
C**W
A sometimes wonderful book
It isn't a perfect comic. Sometimes things are just too pat. Like so many, the dialogue can be too direct, characters exchanging this literal, didactic expressions of feeling. There are times when it almost descends into after school special territory. There's a tonal clash between the hamfisted attempts to preach self-esteem and the more morbid moments. I also personally feel that Juni Ba's art looks better in black & white than color.As for the Robins... It's Damian's book and most of the time he's written very well. Dick and Tim are too idealized and ever-lovin' perfect. The story is set approximately just after the Morrison run (I suppose?) so Damian is very young, this youthful perspective determining how he sees others... but I'm not convinced that this is how he would see these two at any point in time.But the second issue covering Damian's interaction with Jason Todd is in a separate class. It's a heartrending portrait of Jason as a young man disordered and possibly broken by violence, trauma, and isolation. The coloring in this issue actually contributes to conveying the horror in its various sickly shades. The dynamic between Damian and Jason is unsettling. They bring out each other's worse sides, but also show more potential for bringing out each other's best sides by forcing one another to confront themselves. This issue also isn't perfect, but at its best moments it's incredible.It's when the comic pursues these darker aspects of Damian and Jason that in my opinion it's at its unquestionable best. Batman comics tend to try too hard to flatten out characters and make them fit into tidy patterns of emotional wellness and goodness. Damian and Jason, the problem Robins, suffer constantly from being forced into line. Juni Ba does better. The second issue alone is worth the price of admission.
A**R
Beautiful art and story
Amazing art and story telling. I did feel the final battle could have been done better but this was a great version of the Wayne family and its dynamics
M**.
It's a wonder
Somehow a part of DC's Black Label imprint, this is the mini-series that made me care for the youngest of the Robins, Damian Wayne. Issue by issue, a bank robber's captive tells the thief Damian's story as if it were a fairytale. There are heroes and monsters and demons, each drawn and colored captivatingly, but the core of the tale is how Damian interacts with the other Robins as he learns how to be a better person. There's a relatively bloodless beheading early on that triggers some wonderful life lessons for anyone from the age of 10 to 90.For a $29.99 price tag, I'd hoped the collection would be bigger than comic book size (it's not), with more extras (Ba shows more on Instagram, but the publisher didn't use them), but this is still a 5-star review because this story deserves to be collected as a hardcover. And Juni Ba deserves to be a star.
D**D
Juni Ba gets what it takes to be a Robin.
This book gets it. It's wonderful to see a comic that appreciates all the Robins. It's not the best book about Damian or any of the other Robins, but it seems to be the most respectful, presenting each Robin as a piece of--not a puzzle--but a family. Like Lemire's ROBIN & BATMAN, it gives a nice perspective on Batman via his sidekicks. It's a beautiful comic series, that I wished continued to delve into every character in the Bat Family (Barbara is there but glazed over) if only because each character is represented how I feel they are. It's hard to complain when so much has been done to alter characters as of late.It's not perfect, but it's a gem. It deserves a better edition--the paper is lackluster, and the art deserves a larger format than the single issues provided. I'd cross my fingers for an Absolute Edition, but we're probably not likely to get one any time soon. This has made me a fan of Juni Ba and I intend to delve into more, and hope they get to delve into more DC characters, because we're clearly on the same page of at least who each Robin is.
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