It's Such a Shame Cornell and McDaniel Are Only Here For One Arc
The Good: I LOVE Guillem March's cover. It's so damn trippy, which seems to suit the theme.mood of Batman and Robin.
Absence's backstory is really interesting, and it's amazing how clearly you can see her slow descent into madness as her story continues. Sure the reason for it is kind of a huge load of BS, but at the same time, the writing is so strong you can easily overlook it.
I'm a huge fan of McDaniel's artwork, despite the hate he seems to get sometimes. He has such a great 90's quality to it and he's amazing at really emphasizing insanity. Especially here. He does an absolutely phenomenal job with Absences eppressions complimenting Cornell's amazing writing in her downward spiral into insanity.
Cornell/McDaniel do a great job of keeping up the entire theme of Batman and Robin to keep it as a separate ongoing with it's own identity rather than just being a title Grant Morrison created to be the 'main' Batman title and left to do whatever with. The themes of 3-issue arc with absolute strangeness introducing new villains and an overall mood of extra insanity is kept in spirit.
The Bad: The realization that Cornell and McDaniel are only on this comic for one arc.
It's a backstory issue and a middle issue. It doesn't have the amazing planning of the first issue or what'll likely be the epic conclusion of the third issue, and there wasn't much action.
In Conclusion: 4.5/5
This issue is amazing. Yeah, it's the middle issue, which is why, alone, it's not perfect, but alongside the other 2, I'm sure this story arc will still blow me away. It's fantastic, and I'm glad that Batman and Robin can continue to be what it was intended to be after Morrison leaves.