This was an awesome one-off, and I say that mainly because I wasn’t expecting much going in. Similar to Action Comics I’ve been thinking of giving Detective Comics the boot as well. Lo and behold, this one rejuvenated my desire to carry on.
#spoilers
My favorite thing about Detective is that more so than the plain Batman book, this one leans more heavily on the mystery aspect, and this one took a different approach that I really liked.
Bruce learns that a teenager from his parent’s orphanage has run away. To find the boy, Bruce turns to his own son to carry out the street level work for the simple fact that Robin might not frighten a runaway the way Batman might. Solid play.
Robin finds the kid and thus he and Batman take him to for aid at a hospital, though not without finding out that the head of Bruce’s orphanage is crooked and selling kids under the table. Unfortunately, the runaway dies while in the hospital…
So Bruce cracks down on the culprit and opens up a new wing to the orphanage in honor of the dead runaway.
It’s a relatively simple mystery story. I really liked Batman’s employment of Robin, and even how much Damian invests himself in it all by the end. As a one-off, this was a pretty good one that I’d gladly revisit.
TL;DR Score: No witty comment here. This book has soul.
TL;DR Comics 