If you are picking up this issue of Detective Comics because you heard it deals with the recent events over in Grant Morrison’s Batman Inc, you may be a tad disappointed.

If you are picking up this issue of Detective Comics because you bought the last 17 and are following the story about the take over of The Penguin’s empire, then you are in luck!

Writer John Layman pauses only briefly (one and a half pages) to address the loss of Damian in last weeks excellent issue of Batman Inc. The interlude here in Detective feels completely tacked on and “last minute” – disrupting the flow of the story and completely disingenuous. Which sucks because Bruce’s son is dead and we are all waiting to see how he handles this devastating loss. I don’t know about you, but if my 10 year old kid was shot with a bunch of arrows and impaled on a sword I would be doing more then just shedding a single tear and correlating the death of my son with that of villain Zsasz’s victims while standing over his freshly dug grave.

To Layman’s credit I’m sure the edict came from on high at DC Offices to throw in a few pages dealing with the Robin situation, and there was a last minute scramble to get these pages written and drawn in time. He and artist Jason Fabok did the best given the circumstances.

Once past these “Requiem” pages though, the story is enjoyable and Layman is setting things up nicely for Emperor Penguin to become a major player in Batman’s Rouges Gallery, and Fabok is making the whole thing a pleasure to look at.