From DC COMICS: "DETECTIVE COMICS ships twice in March to present "The Siege," a nail-biting 2-part suspense story written by Stuart Moore and Andy Clarke! A costumed terrorist called VOX plans to blow up Wayne Tower — and he's trapped Bruce Wayne in a top-floor conference room. Aided only by his mentor's radioed instructions, Robin must face the bomber alone!"

Paul Dini and Don Kramer take a break and Stuart Moore and Andy Clarke come on board DETECTIVE for the 2-part story titled “The Siege.”

The story is rather cut and dry: a terrorist who calls himself “Vox” has entered Wayne Tower and is threatening to blow the whole damn thing up. It just so happens that both Bruce Wayne and Tim Drake/Wayne (is he simply “Tim Wayne” now?) in the building. Bruce is hosting some sort of international conference among countries attempting to hammer out deals and make peace between conflicting countries. Tim is in there at Bruce’s request to be present at the big dinner that is about to take place with all the attending nations.

Just before the dinner, Vox’s first explosion rocks Wayne Tower, killing many people and doing quite a bit of damage to the building. So here’s the setup: Bruce is stuck in a conference room atop WT, while Tim/Robin -- who had headed off to the banquet room just prior to the explosion -- is free to hunt down the terrorist.

“The Siege” comes off like a story that would be found in BATMAN, rather than in DETECTIVE -- at least it does in my opinion. And that’s fine, just be aware that the story has a different tone and atmosphere compared to the Dini/Kramer stories. It’s also a 2-parter, as opposed to the 1-shots we’ve been used to.

I thought the Moore’s story had an interesting and "realistic" concept -- a terrorist attack on the big Wayne building with Bruce unable to become Batman as he’s stuck with all of his guests. He dictates instructions to Robin via radio until he’s able to slip away. Can Robin handle this Vox character on his own? From the look of things at the end, it doesn’t seem like it.

I’m not particularly a big fan of Robin’s inclusion in Batman stories, but he’s fine here. I don’t know how he’s being written in ROBIN (I don’t read that title), but the times he’s been in BATMAN and this title, he’s been more than satisfactory. Perhaps DC has made a conscious effort to “mature” Tim Drake a bit. If so, it’s working.

The artwork leaves a bit to be desired to be honest. Clarke’s OK (he worked on the “Face The Face” storyline), but his depiction of Bruce looked a bit funny to me -- he looks too young. On the other hand, the two people “in costume” in this issue -- Robin and Vox -- looked fine. Obviously, Bruce will suit up in Part 2, so we’ll see next month what Clarke does with Batman. Nothing here art-wise that flat-out wows you.

DETECTIVE #829 was alright. It interested me enough to be somewhat looking forward to the next issue to see how things pan out.