After a year under writer-artist Tony Daniel, DC's flagship title is heading for a creative shake-up in October. As announced over at the DC Comics blog today, Detective Comics #13 will mark the first issue of new writer John Layman and artist Jason Fabok, kicking off a story that looks at "the symbiotic relationship a master criminal must have with Gotham in order to survive, to the lowly, often faceless criminal underling hoping to rise up the ranks."Layman is probably best known in comics as the writer of Chew for image (as well as the first three issues of the highly underrated Army of Darkness/Xena: Warrior Princess: Why Not? crossover mini-series for Dynamite), but Detective Comics will be his first work within the DC Universe. Even though Layman's not exactly a rookie, it's a little surprising that DC would push him right to the title they named the entire company after. The same goes for Fabok, a relatively new artist, although his experience on Batman: The Dark Knight and this year's Batman Annual #1 have certainly given him a little experience with the character.

But at the same time, Layman's more than capable of doing great comics, and from the sound of things, he has a solid handle on where he's taking the book. The traditional split between the two major Batman titles has always been -- in theory at least -- that Batman focused on the more super-heroic aspects of the character, while Detective was rooted in being a crime story. It's something Batman writer Scott Snyder has certainly embraced, moving from the grim, moody murder mysteries of his run on Detective to a story in Batman full of evil twins and a robotic t-rex stomping on a gang of assassins with healing factors in the Batcave.

Putting the focus onto how Gotham City's inexhaustible supply of thugs, goons and other assorted crooks work seems like it'll make for an interesting story, especially given Layman's knack for well written crime stories that still focus on the bizarre. There's a lot to do there, especially since we haven't really seen much of how those characters work in the New DC Universe.

Detective Comics #13 hits shelves on October 3.

[Via The Source]

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