Batman: Killing Time (2022-) #1

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It’s been the biggest weakness of this book throughout, having Batman as less a character and more a figure just chasing everyone. Over a decade and a half later, I'm still inspired by Batman, and especially the Bat-Family (Stephanie Brown! Unlike his eighty-five issues of Batman, which very much feels like a deep mining of Batman’s history, with barely any new characters created or used by King (in contrast with the extremely prolific inventor James Tynion, who invented at least one new character per issue in the run immediately following King! No one character really holds the spotlight for long, they’ve just got enough time on the page to keep the plot moving forward. In Year Two, facing the new threat of Batman, the group of Catwoman, Riddler, Clock King, and Penguin conspire to steal the Eye of God from Bruce Wayne and sell it to the government, interfacing with ludicrously foul-mouthed agent Nuri Espinoza.

He tells Batman that Ra’s showed him the box seventy-five years prior, bragging that by owning it, he’d conquered the world. April 17: Batman fights Ra’s, seeking the Help, who vanished, and explains why he kept the Eye Ra’s gave him, tormented by it.W) Tom King (A) David Marquez Catwoman, the Riddler and the Penguin join forces to pull off the greatest robbery in the history of Gotham City. And the way he highlights Batman moving on the battlefield, saving the few he can, shows that King’s Batman is, above all, someone who became a hero to save people. Needless to say, the MacGuffin never matters, though King spends several baffling pages in ancient Greece, somehow in relation to the MacGuffin. The blockbuster team of Tom King and David Marquez brings an epic, white-knuckled, action-packed tale of a young Batman desperate to recover his most prized possession from a host of violent rogues before the clock strikes the Killing Time… Batman: Killing Time collects the entire 6-issue limited series! Marquez’s art here is fairly simple, following the eye as it’s rolling down a hill in the midst of this battle that’s been going on.

Interestingly, King is no stranger to tie-ins as The Vision series that catapulted him into critical acclaim was released in late 2015 as a tie-in to the character appearing in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). He does this using Clock King’s own POV and narration to wrap up final story threads, and check in on each major character we met along the way. In short, Tom King’s Batman was about being thrown into the depths of despair and seeing what it takes to emerge a hero.It could be that the story is about the transient nature of power, how the item passes from one to another, each briefly empowered before losing it to another, and so on. Having made Kite Man interesting, Tom King tries to burnish the reputation of another of Batman's lesser rogues but with much less success since he goes for grimness instead of humor. However, here they are accompanied by time-stamps via narration that allows the book to create concrete expectations and payoffs for each time-line.

Two of the new, colourful rogues, Riddler and Catwoman, have just pulled off the heist of the century, robbing Wayne-Gotham Securities, getting away with 1. He seems to have hoped, just as anyone else did, that it might bring him special power or good fortune. The blockbuster team of Tom King and David Marquez brings an epic, white-knuckled, action-packed tale of a young Batman desperate to recover his most prized possession from a host of violent rogues before the clock strikes the Killing Time. The slow build up of these characters, events, and the general chronicled history of the eye has started to make these segments feel worthwhile instead of time fillers.We don’t find out the significance of this until the end not only for its connection to the mystery item but also in understanding the point of the story.

With a unique McGuffin being introduced, King can focus on Batman's detective skills and solve the case. Despite the beautiful, incredibly sexy, and energetic art by veteran superstar artist David Marquez (a new collaborator with King), the message of this miniseries is much, much more nihilistic than the messages of both his main Batman run and his Batman/Catwoman run, both of which try to show the meaning and help that love and family can bring to a life of trauma (A small link between Catwoman and the Joker early in the chronology of the run provides an Easter egg for fans of King’s Batman/Catwoman series, which shows that relationship developing throughout their lifetimes.Both Batman/Catwoman and Killing Time are non-linear, and Marquez’s art utilizes a similar technique to Clay Mann where characters often transcend panels. While you do get some pretty big reveals to demystify the mystery, the reveals are most surprising for just how unsurprising they really are. Focusing on Catwoman and Riddler was really exciting, but I’m super intrigued by The Help and I’d love to see more from him (especially his time with Ra’s Al Ghul and Penguin). He even introduces what I think might be a new villain into the mix—a new one to me, at least—that I hope to see more of.