Detective Comics #17 – Review

By: John Layman (story), Jason Fabok (art), Jeromy Cox (colors)

The Story: Despite the merrymaking and clowns, this is truly a downer of a party.

The Review: Between the movies and writers like Frank Miller who spend a lot of time showing what an unbeatable badass Batman is, you’d think the Dark Knight was little more than a fantastically equipped master martial artist.  But among other things, Batman is also known as the “world’s greatest detective,” one of DC’s biggest geniuses.*  Unfortunately, Batman stories have grown less inclined to show off the more cerebral aspects of his character.

So I really appreciate Layman’s more technical, investigative approach to Batman.  Instead of spending all his time whipping out implausible kung-fu moves, Batman spends a large chunk of the issue actually thinking things through.  We all know that his prep-time skills are second to none, but now you can see him going through that prep, putting the clues together to figure out exactly what he needs to do at any given moment.