Two Days 'Till Retirement

Written by: James Tynion IV
Art by: Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Adriano Lucas, and Marilyn Patrizio
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: August 24, 2016

Detective Comics has been one of my favorite books and it's funny because it is the one that I was
wrong about going onto this Rebirth thing.  I thought it was going to be non-stop action and hilarity as Clayface and the gang hit the town...with a few days to kill.  In reality, James Tynion has been giving readers a pretty great character study focusing on Batwoman and her relationship with her father.  Pretty good stuff, right there and it looks to continue this week as Colony ups their deadly game and the team tries to stop them in their tracks.  Who will win and will it make for exciting reading?  Let's find out...


The issue begins with a look back at a very familiar scene...the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne.  Actually, this is the not so familiar look at the immediate aftermath of the funeral and it shows the reactions of three important characters to this book...Jacob, Kate and Bruce.  There are no real twists here (Jacob is pissed, Bruce is devastated and Kate is awesome), but it was nice to see the establishment of the Bruce/Kate relationship during such a trying time.

We jump to "now" and the Bat crew has taken back the Belfry and Tim Drake gets to show off his big brain once again.  The kid has more gadgets and props than Carrot Top and I'm really starting to fall in love with him.  I've explained this before and I will again...when I start falling in love with a character, that is bad news for said character!

It doesn't take long for Tim to tell Steph that he has decided to go to college and leave all this superhero work behind.  Of course, he's going to wait to tell Batman until after this whole Colony thing is taken care of and I immediatley thought that this will be leading to a "two days 'till retirement" type of situation sometime soon.



Meanwhile, Kate is pretty pissed at Batman and calls him out on it.  She realizes that Batman knew that her father was involved the whole time and makes him promise never to keep the truth from her again.  Maybe if he would have been more open with her, she wouldn't have invited her dad into their secret superhero base!  Just saying.  With everyone back on the same page, Batman calls up the President of the United States and snitches on Jacob and the Colony.  Watch out Batman, we all know what snitches get!

Things pick up when Tim discovers that Ulysses' drones are on their way to Gotham and a whole lot of innocent people are going to die.  The team heads out and after a funny Clayface moment, we again see that Tim has a big brain and it just might be the death of him.  He hacks into Ulysses' computer and changes the targets to just a singular target and wait to you see who it is.

The issue ends with Batman rushing to help take down the drones as Kate goes off to have a little talk with her father.  It really feels like something big is about to happen which makes the wait until next issue that much harder to take.



It also makes this issue feel more like setup than just about any issues of this book since Rebirth.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the stuff with Tim this issue, but it came at the expense of getting much else from the team and Tynion has shown he can incorporate the whole team in his best issues.  This issue does set up some cool things, we just have to wait for the payoff of every one of them.

I really liked Eddy Barrow's earlier art on this book, but this issue felt off.  Certain characters (Tim and Ulysses mainly) just didn't look good at all and even a Dark knight Returns homage didn't wow me.  I'm sure he will step things up, but this was a down issue art wise.

Bits and Pieces:

This was a down issue of Detective Comics.  It is full out setup and while it sets up some pretty good stuff, we are forced to wait until at least next issue for any sort of payoff.  Throw in some of the worst art this series has seen so far and this is the first issue of Rebirth Detective Comics that I can't outright recommend.