I'm heading into my third week of the new school year. In celebration or maybe a moment of blessed relief, I dug through my long boxes to give this back to school special a read.
Detention Comics is comprised of 3 stories starring the Tim Drake Robin, the Connor Kent Superboy and Guy Gardner during his stint as Warrior. For a 1996 one-shot, it's not quite your typical DC stuff. All three stories are more morality plays than gritty action adventures that have been dosed with too much testosterone. In fact, in the Superboy story, not a single punch, kick or threat is heaved in the entire thing! But let's start with Robin, since his was the opening story.
A schoolmate of Tim Drake's is being bullied- by his overbearing mother! Constantly cut from team after team, the teen finally snaps and decides to get payback against the family of the high school's head coach.
With Superboy, he's on the beaches of Hawaii trying to impress some coeds when truant officer Mack Harlin arrives to spoil the fun. It appears to be a battle of brains versus brawn. But then all bets are off when Harlin wins over the babes with his recitation of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Lastly, former teacher, Guy Gardner has been called into his former high school stomping grounds to evaluate whether the troubled institute should remain open or be turned into a mini mall. In a remake of The Substitute, which was also from '96, Guy plays the role of Tom Berenger when a trio of metahuman teens seeks revenge on a brilliant student while setting the school ablaze!
Okay, that last story sounds a little like a typical 1990s DC Comics story. But it was so full of cliches and really preachy. It read like some of the Teen Titans stuff from the 1960s and 70s in terms that whomever wrote it (Ruben Diaz, Martian Manhunter: American Secrets) didn't know how to relate to teenagers. Plus, as a teacher myself, I don't appreciate stories that paint schools as dead end hell holes. True, there's a couple of schools in the area that I don't think you could pay me enough money to teach at. But I don't think of them as helpless cases either.
The Robin story was the best of the bunch. It's interesting, and maybe even a little odd, to read a tale from Drake's early days in which he's so unprepared. I've always thought of Tim Drake as the ultimate Robin. Yet, here, he's a floundering duckling without Batman or Alfred to back him up.
As for the Superboy story... Geez, was he really that corny back then? I'm used to a less assured Connor Kent who seems to feel out of place being a clone and also a half-Luthor clone at that.
Oh, and having Guy Gardner turned into some sort of mutating alien arsenal. That's pretty odd. I'm glad that plot idea was retconned. Please, somebody tell that was retconned?!
For a themed one-shot, I was entertained. However, the book wasn't written for youths. And if it was, the writers, with the exception of Denny O'Neill (Detective Comics) don't seem able to write for younger audiences. I loved the logo of this one-shot. The homage to the classic Detective Comics logo done as a chalkboard was eye-catching. It obviously did it's job as it was a big part of what enticed me to buy this book.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
