Detective Comics #1094 Review

• Written by: Tom Taylor

• Art by: Mikel Janín

• Colors by: Mikel Janín

• Letters by: Wes Abbott

• Cover art by: Mikel Janín (cover A)

• Cover price: $4.99

• Release date: February 26, 2025

Detective Comics #1094, by DC Comics on 2/26/25, sends Robin undercover in a Juvenile Detention Center to find a connection between the murdered teens.

Is Detective Comics #1094 Good?

Recap

When we last left the Dark Knight in Detective Comics #1093, Batman and the Bat family rounded up a group of teens released from detention who were likely targets of an assassin. The killer, named Asema, drained the teens of their precious blood for some unknown reason. Answering a call for help from one of the teens, Batman came face-to-face with the masked killer, but the one-on-one fight was more than Batman could handle. The issue ended with another teen dead (maybe) and Batman incapacitated from a poison injection.

Plot Synopsis

Detective Comics #1094 picks up where issue #1093 left off. Batman uses remote voice commands to summon the Batmobile while he uses a gadget in his belt to inject himself with a counter agent to Asema's poison. The teen, Spencer, is alive but dying. Batman gets Spencer to a hospital to save his life, leaving the boy under constant guard by Harvey Bullock and the GCPD.

Later, Batman and Damian decide the only trail left to follow leads to the Juvenile Detention Center where the teens are housed, so Damian agrees to go undercover as a new inmate. Wearing a very durable disguise, Damian enters the Juvenile Detention Center where he meets Warden Slattery - an abusive man whose primary focus is the prison's profitability. As the issue progresses, Damian, Batman, Oracle, and even Bullock take note of the futility of prisons as a mechanism for reform.

Damian is given explicit instructions to obey authority. Damian manages to obey that order for less than a day when he intervenes in a fellow inmate's beating by a guard, which leads to a full prisoner revolt. Damian receives a message from Batman to end the revolt, so Damian surrenders himself to the Warden, who subjects Damian to a unique punishment involving the extraction of Damian's blood.

The issue ends with Bruce Wayne paying the Warden a visit with an offer to invest in the prison as an excuse to get access to the Warden's office and Batman paying the Detention Center a late-night visit to give Damian an early parole.

First Impressions

According to typical architectural standards, a soapbox is about six feet high. In his zeal to commandeer yet another DC property for his own agenda, Tom Taylor uses Detective Comics #1094 to construct a soapbox that's at least triple the normal height to tell everyone reading that prisons are bad. If you thought dismantling the prison and setting the prisoners free was heavy-handed in Taylor's Nightwing-related titles, you ain't seen anything yet.

How’s the Art?

All praise, no complaints. Mikel Janín's artwork looks fantastic, which is why he's regarded as one of the best DC artists around. The shadowy noir aesthetic permeates every page in a book that looks and feels like a detective story, so if nothing else, Mikel Janín elevates Taylor's story.

What’s great about Detective Comics #1094?

Despite the obligatory criticisms that you can expect in the next section, the heart of Tom Taylor's story is a reasonably well-constructed mystery. Asema is probably Scarlett Scott, but there's room for swerves and red herrings, which are paramount to making a mystery fun.

What’s not great about Detective Comics #1094?

Oof! The soapbox pontifications about the evils of the prison system are not only overdone, they don't make sense in every scene. Since when does Harvey Bullock, a morally grey cop on the best of days, get introspective about recidivism rates and the negative effects of prison? Taylor already made his speech(es) about the ills of prison in prior runs starring Nightwing. We get it. Message received. Move on.

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About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

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Final Thoughts

Detective Comics #1094 has the makings of a rock-solid detective story when Damian goes undercover to find a connection between the murdered teens. However, Tom Taylor's nasty habit of overdoing his stances on social ills, such as the prison system, weighs the plot down and takes you out of the story more than once.

5.8/10

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