By Noel Thorne

It always happens: a popular storyline comes along, and the publisher decides to exploit it by tying in a bunch of pointless comics that devoted fans will buy, naively thinking they’re important to the storyline, which they never are, nor are they ever any good.

So it goes with the cumbersomely-titled Batman #1: Prelude to the Wedding #1, Part One - Robin Vs. Ra’s Al Ghul #1 (I may have exaggerated the numbering but come on, how redundant is that #1 - as if there’s going to be a #2!), an utterly worthless add-on to Batman and Catwoman’s wedding storyline in Tom King’s superb Batman run.

Damian Wayne fights his mental grandfather Ra’s Al Ghul (he of the occasionally hyphenated surname) for no bloody reason. Ra’s isn’t best pleased that Bruce has tossed his daughter to the side and is marrying some petty thief so he decides to fight his grandson. Of course. Makes so much sense. There are some writers’ names that may as well be a skull and crossbones warning on the cover and Tim Seeley’s is one of them.

There’s a truncated Damian bio for anyone who needed catching up and references to the much better comic, Batman #666, where a grown-up baldy Damian fights as Batman against an apocalyptic Gotham setting. But all the reminders of Grant Morrison’s sublime Batman run just show up how pitiful and lacking in substance this comic is.

Brad Walker’s artwork is as forgettable as the story and the Batman/Catwoman hybrid character design was simply laughable. The epilogue tells you Joker’s gonna crash the wedding but if you already read Tom King’s short Joker story in DC Nation #0 - which I highly recommend doing not least because it’s free on Comixology but because it’s also terrific - then you already knew that. This comic is. Point. Less.

Batman #1: Prelude #1 to the Wedding #1, Part One #1 - Robin Vs. Ra’s Al Ghul #1 #1 is a steaming pile of number two - don’t bother. Stick to reading just Tom King’s Batman run instead.

Score: 1/5

Batman: Prelude to the Wedding - Robin Vs. Ra’s Al Ghul #1
DC Comics