Sometimes when I take a deep dive into the dollar bin, I’ll find newer releases, most likely because the store ordered way more copies of a comic than they could sell. I like to rescue these comics just to see why they ended up in this graveyard. Tonight, we look at Batman and Robin Annual #3.

Batman and Robin Annual #3

Written by Peter J Tomasi

Art by Juan Jose Ryp

Batman is on monitor duty at the Justice League satellite. Damien tinkers with an old Justice League teleportation device and successfully gets it working. Damien suits up in his costume and he brings along his dog Titus to visit dear old dad. All is quiet on the satellite until Damien sees the Moon on one of the monitors. He tells Batman that one of the lunar modules is operating at full capacity, when it should be dormant. Batman and Robin and Titus take the Bat-Shuttle to the Moon to investigate.

I always enjoy when Batman is out of his natural element on the mean streets of Gotham and thrown into a situation that is out of his world. The 1950s Batman stories that featured the Dynamic Duo in outer space are some of my favorites and this annual is a nice callback to the stories of yesteryear. How exactly does a human being with no super powers overcome an alien threat with just his intelligence and fighting spirit? You’ll find out in this annual.

For those of you that love NASA and the Sciences, you learn a lot about man’s journey from the Earth to the Moon in this issue. Batman teaches Robin about most of the Apollo missions while driving around the moon in their rover.

My favorite part of comic book annuals is that they are usually a story that’s done in one issue and free from continuity of a current story arc.

However, I can see why some comic book readers avoid annuals. A comic book priced at $4.99 is pretty steep especially when the issue is released during a skip week (a fifth Wednesday in a month when no new monthly comic books are released).

Batman and Robin fighting aliens, the sharp and crisp art of Juan Jose Ryp, and some fun facts about space history and our own Planet Earth provided by Tomasi are well worth 100 cents if you can find it in the dollar bin of your local comic shop.