That’s more like it!

Clearly John Layman needs to have a better balance of humor and action with his scripts. The last issue suffered from needless exposition and it didn’t feel entertaining to read. This time we get some nice, kick ass moment of Batman with small doses of humor to balance it off. This is how Detective Comics should be! Some of the classic runs, such as Paul Dini’s or Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle’s, are memorable for being more lighthearted (in tone anyways) then super serious. I’m not saying this is anywhere near those classic runs yet but Layman can write his way to that pantheon but doing more scripts like this.

(The Back-Up kinda proves my point. There should be more ‘one and done’ type of stories here then an overall story arc with Penguin. It doesn’t hurt to have Andy Clarke draw these things either.)

The art is still growing on me but Jason Fabok is definitely improving. Last issue felt really stiff but here there was much more fluidity with the layouts. That isn’t to say there aren’t any wonky moments. One thing that bugged me was Joker being in the shadows yet he is clearly in view. (Also, if the Penguin’s right hand man is left alone with him how the hell did he not die?) But all if forgiven when I see such a lovely (and cheesy) new costume for Batman. It makes no god damn sense for the situation but I am a sucker for new costumes. That and this is a nice Clayface design and while it might seem easy to draw him you gotta remember he’s gotta look interesting. Having him be a simple outline would be too boring so thankfully Favok tries here.

Definitely a huge improvement over last month. This was a fun issue to read and hopefully we get more of this then boring exposition. Detective Comics should be the fun ‘action movie’ type of comic while Batman should deal with the serious story lines. That’s what I think anyways and hopefully Layman & Fabok feel the same way.