I think that this series is in a league of its own and through its haphazard execution, it killed an entire line of comic books. The writing is as laughably bad as the worst of the early Image books. The art is the perfect fusion of Michael Golden and Art Adams with 50% less noodling. That makes All Star Batman & Robin the perfect comic book for illiterates.
This comic book makes me feel lousy as a reader/ fan because I paid cash money for this.
But as an artist and writer, it makes me feel good about myself.
All Star Batman & Robin (or AssBar as the folks at my comic shop call it) is a demonstration of the Star System at DC. Comic Book Rock Stars that can move the units have the power to write ludicrous fanfic with no apparent check on the insanity even within the rambling story. (Is it my imagination or is Black Canary suddenly Irish?) Seriously, under the credits, this title should be edited by Alan Smithee or Lester Dent to spare the embarrassment to the good people who have to witness the shotgun marriage of brilliant art to a mouth-breathing script.
This book proves that popularity is no guarantee of quality.
The meanest thing that you could do to illustrate the problems with this book is to put together a PowerPoint presentation with actors reading the dialog as it appears on the page. Christ, by the middle of this issue, cute little Dick Grayson is thinking about himself in the third person. Ask yourself, would you want to live in a world where everyone sounded like Bob Dole.
Still, I cannot turn away from this third generation Raymond Chandler trainwreck. I find myself buying the next one just to see how bad it can get.