DC has announced a follow-up to the highly acclaimed (and pretty awesome) 2024 maxi-series Batman & Robin: Year One by writer Mark Waid and artist Chris Samnee. Batman & Robin: Year One — Dynamic Duos, another new 12-issue series set in the early days of the duo, will kick off in August.
The original series earned Eisner Award nominations for Samnee, colorist Mat Lopes and letterer Clayton Cowles, all of whom are returning for the new series. The series will feature Catwoman and a new character who may become her sidekick.
“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,” Waid said. “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.”
Here’s DC’s description of the title:
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?
“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,” Waid said. “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.”
Samnee added that the new series grew organically out of the first run. “Our first 12 issues of Year One felt like the exact book I’d been wanting to make since I was a kid,” he said. :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.”
Here’s a look inside:
Check out the variant covers for the first issue by Marc Silvestri, Dustin Nguyen and Hayden Sherman:
There will also be an as-yet-unrevealed Dark Knight Returns 40th anniversary variant by Greg Capullo. Batman & Robin: Year One — Dynamic Duos #1 arrives Aug. 12.