COMIC REVIEW: ROBIN #157
Author: Ryan Hoss
Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Y’know, I usually don’t like it when you’re in the middle of a comic run, and then some “guest-star” and/or a tie-in to some other maxi-series or something interrupts the normal flow of things.

Well, ROBIN #157 seems to be one of these issues. It features Klarion, The Witch Boy from the Grant Morrison’s recent “Seven Soldiers of Victory” miniseries.

Well, kinda. The front page says “Guest-Starring: Klarion!” in big letters, but maybe it should have said “Kinda maybe, but not really even starring Klarion!”

Anyway, enough about that. The basic plot of the story is pretty different than the recent issues of Robin. Instead of disarming Joker’s traps or battling kidnappers, he saves a cat out of a tree. Yes, he saves a cat. And he carries it around with him for the entire issue.

In between the ‘cat-transporting’ type scenes, there are some nice events that take place. Tim finally apologizes to Zoanne (a recurring character from the past couple of issues) and asks her out on a date. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I suppose this storyline of Robin finding this cat had to happen so the story can get where it’s going, but it just seems like it could have been handled better.

So did I like the issue? Kinda. I thought it was decent, but definitely not my favorite of the run. However, it is worth mentioning that Frazer Irving, the main artist on the Klarion portions of “Seven Soldiers” and its subsequent Klarion series, is doing the art for this issue and the next. I’m not terribly fond of it, but I think the art suits this kind of fantastical tale nicely. The next issue seems to get to the actual plot of this story, so hopefully it will deliver.