DC readies Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos

Return to the Bat-family’s early days once again, with Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos later this summer.

The Dynamic Duos

With a run that just concluded last year, DC Comics Batman & Robin: Year One told an early tale of the Dynamic Duo on the streets of Gotham. That series was written by comics mainstay Mark Waid, with Chris Samnee providing the artwork. And if you liked what you saw in its pages, get ready, because there’s more to come.

Just revealed by the publisher, Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos is coming soon, and set to run a full 12 issues. The same team of Waid and Samnee is back in action for this spinoff/sequel, which looks to be a multi-leveled tale.

There’s the main theme that it’s set to spin out of course, which sounds like it’ll still be included. That would be that the pair of heroes are still learning how to work together, plus navigate a newly formed father/adopted son dynamic. But there’s much more to Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos.

For one thing, there’s a group of youths who are out to cause chaos in the city. And just who’s coordinating them is something that Batman and Robin will have to discover. Past that though, there’s also Catwoman’s appearance, and that plays into the name of the series.

Remember, it’s “Dynamic Duos”, with an ‘s’. From the looks of that, that translates to the femme fatale having her own protege. Well, that and the fact that she’ll be driving a bit of a wedge between the title team. So it’s kind of a trio of duos for this one, with a bit of overlap included.

Batman and Robin are back in action! The Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder have been hard at work cleaning up the streets of Gotham City, and their partnership has only gotten tighter. But when a gang of street kids starts causing chaos, Batman and Robin will need to get to the bottom of where these kids came from and who is in charge! Who is the hidden hand guiding these young mischief-makers?

DC press release

Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos #1 (of 12) is inbound to comics shops, set to debut this August.

The past, but with nods to the present

For Waid and Samnee, Batman & Robin: Year One – Dynamic Duos presents another chance to explore an era that they’re both ready and willing to dig into. After all, the chance to play in the classic Bat-world doesn’t come around all that often.

And to not only further explore Batman and Robin’s early days, but one of the first meetings between Batman and Catwoman? That’s almost as big of a deal, given the relationship that the pair have even in the current DCU.

From the sound of it, both members of the creative team are pumped to return to this Gotham City of the past.

“One of the great things about talking story with Chris is that we generally end up with way more than we can actually fit in the books—that’s how excited both of us get when we explore Batman and Robin’s early days,” said Mark Waid. “This is Chris’s dream job, and I could write younger Bruce and Dick forever. Hence Dynamic Duos—Bruce and Dick and Catwoman and a brand-new character who may or may not choose to be Selina Kyle’s sidekick.”

“Mark is 100 percent right,” added Chris Samnee. “Our first 12 issues of Year One felt like the exact book I’d been wanting to make since I was a kid. And to be able to make it with this amazing team really is like catching lightning in a bottle. Bouncing stuff around with Mark is always so much fun, and the voices for these characters are always so on point. Mat goes above and beyond with every single page of colors—always making my stuff look better than it deserves—and Clayton has done such a great job of integrating the lettering into the design of each panel and page—and has been so generous with letting me take all the fun SFX out of his hands. So instead of making plans for the next project or book (which is usually what I start trying to plan about halfway through a project), we just kept up the momentum and started getting the pitch together for what’s become Dynamic Duos and rolled right into this, straight after we wrapped Year One.”

“Whereas Year One was about Bruce and Dick learning to live together and work as a team, Dynamic Duos is about how Catwoman divides them,” continued Waid. “Dick’s still too young to understand why Batman doesn’t treat her like every other Gotham criminal, while Catwoman sees this little Robin punk as an obstacle to overcome if she wants to land her next big score…which might involve getting close to Batman! And chaos ensues.”

DC press release