With the ridiculous oversaturation of Bat books on the shelves right now I skipped out on this initially. I think he’s the best new addition to Batman’s rogues gallery we’ve had in a while and hope to see him in more stuff in the future.

That feels like a sweet spot for King to effectively tell his story without stretching it out andwasting time. Having made a name for himself at DC as one of the best Batman artists, David Marquez’s work is top-notch here, presenting hyper-realistic, hugely detailed art. None of these explanations though are especially satisfying for me and that’s partly why I found the final act disappointing. Unlike his Batman run and Batman/Catwoman, King didn’t focus on the romance between Batman and Catwoman at all. Still, Catwoman and Riddler's back and forth is fun, the Help -- a new villain with deep retcon roots -- is cool, and the art of David Marquez is magnificent.It definitely doesn’t follow King’s Batman run as the Batman/Catwoman relationship is completely non-existent here. I'm a massive Batman and Tom King fan, which makes judging a book featuring the first and written by the second a guaranteed win in my book. Editor’s Note: This collected edition includes all six issues of the miniseries Batman: Killing Time, which had its first issue released in March 2022 and the final issue released in August 2022. Maybe it’s a commentary on the nature of superhero comics, that are all middle story and no real conclusion, that gets repeated over and over again ad infinitum.

There’s something about the way Cowles lays out the sounds of gunfire and battle that make the atmospheric moment of this prize casually rolling through the grass really work. 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! While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the story works well enough as it is, I do think that Batman doesn’t get enough moments to shine.Five issues in and I know Killing Time is going to be a book I’ll genuinely enjoy re-reading once it’s complete. The reveals might not be as earth-shattering as you think, but they serve the story and are satisfyingly unsatisfying in a way that feels appropriate.

In a new mini-series, by Tom King, David Marquez, Alejandro Sánchez, and Clayton Cowles, the Dark Knight is put into a classic hollywood heist, facing down Riddler, Catwoman and Penguin during his early years operating in Gotham City. I like the twist as well, although it doesn’t surprise me at all, so it doesn’t feel like that much of a plot twist to me. After checking out what else Ponsor was the colorist on, I didn't even realize that he had been the colorist on most of Peter's and Miles' Ultimate Spidey run. There’s a subplot running in parallel to the modern-day one, set in Ancient Greece and revolving around Euripides’ play The Bacchae. That’s not a problem, because by this point we know their motivations well enough to accept each character’s actions for what they are.

What's the point of the ponderously tedious narration to get readers into the mind-space of the Clock King's perspective when it does nothing to enhance the story or even present an air of novelty. This is a miniseries worth reading and re-reading just to catch everything you missed the first time around.