The Ghost Dragons
This is the first issue for the new creative team on Detective Comics. It consists of John Layman (creator of Chew) as writer and Jason Fabok as artist. I was slightly upset to see Tony Daniel leave the series as he is a great artist and can write good stories, although throughout this series he has been a bit disappointing (just a shame he couldn't stay on as artist). I will however give Layman his dues as he has actually done a good job on this issue, and hopefully this is a sign of things to come. I also liked Fabok's art and it suits the Dark Knight perfectly.
This story sees Penguin doing anything he can to stop the new wing of the Neville Community Centre from getting named after Martha Wayne, including hiring a member of the Ghost Dragons to assassinate Bruce Wayne. Whilst Batman is preoccupied with this assassin, Penguin threatens the person in charge of the Neville Community Centre to change the name from Wayne to Cobblepot.
This was a good story and it is nice to see a good Detective Comics issue again. It would have been nicer if it had been a different villain than Penguin in the story, as he's already been in a previous story and not many of Batman's Rogues Gallery have made an appearance in the New 52, although for this story it makes more sense that the villain is Penguin as his and the Wayne family are two out of the four founding families of Gotham. I was in two minds about having the Ghost Dragons introduced to the series, as although they bring another threat to Batman, they just recently had assassins in the form of the Court of Owls and I think it's a bit soon too soon for another group of assassins, although I liked they were involved in the twist at the end.
Final verdict. A good issue in this series and probably one of the best yet. There is still room for improvement but this is certainly a step in the right direction. I would highly recommend it and am looking forward to seeing exactly what Layman will have in store for the Caped Crusader next issue.
Rating: 4/5
