Batman: Killing Time

Product Information

That night, Penguin tells a huge crowd of Gotham gangsters about the meet at the Iceberg Lounge. One of Batman’s informers texts him but is murdered as a result.

Batman: Killing Time Takes Its Title and Makes It Meta - CBR Batman: Killing Time Takes Its Title and Makes It Meta - CBR

Tom King and David Marquez’s Killing Time is a decent done-in-one Batman book that’s always unpredictable and never boring, with fantastic art throughout, though ultimately the story is a forgettable one with a very underwhelming finale.

In Batman’s second year of his crusade against crime, while he is still changing and perfecting his craft and the art of the vigilante, the cowardly lot of criminals in the city are changing as well—giving rise to darker, specialized rogues. There’s a new villain introduced called The Help, who’s like a slightly zombified mash-up of Alfred and Batman. He’s terrifying - some of the scenes put me in mind of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men - and I liked how his past ties into Batman’s. He’s a very capable match for Bruce too. 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. Killer Croc kills the guard. Batman arrives and engages, but Riddler has already gotten what he wanted across the city, using Croc and Catwoman as his distractions and leverage. Riddler and Catwoman drive off with a tiny box.

Batman: Killing Time The Penguin Tries to Kill [SPOILER] in Batman: Killing Time

BC, April 21: Euripides’ play The Bacchae premiers, about Penthus and his mother. Agave’s father tells her Dionysus drove her and her sisters mad because they denied his deity. The hardcover release of Batman: Killing Time uses David Marquez’s main cover for the first issue, a standard but still quite a fun composition featuring Batman looming over Riddler, a slinky Catwoman, Killer Croc, Penguin, a racing car, and an open bank vault. The Direct Market (local comic shops) hardcover has an exclusive variant cover by Marquez, showing Batman surrounded by the breaking glass of a watch face, Riddler, Catwoman, Croc, Penguin, and the Help reflected in flying shards. The plot is fairly simple: Catwoman gets a tip from the Joker about the MacGuffin. She recruits the Riddler to set up a buy for the MacGuffin. Batman catches wind of the heist and is especially upset the MacGuffin has been stolen. Penguin, who has been double-crossed in the midst of all this, calls in reinforcements in the form of The Help, who also becomes interested in the MacGuffin. These narratives converge in a big kerfuffle. January 18: Catwoman and Riddler, robbing a jewelry store, talk about their frustration with Batman’s constant capturing of them.The Help does basically feel like the supervillain version of Tom King – obsessed with history, knowing all of Batman’s teachers and allies, but also willing to do serious damage to all of them in pursuit of his mission (I say this as a big fan of a lot of what King does. But even his biggest fans must admit that King’s stories do tend to be very destructive). Nuri Espinoza, not surprisingly, shows off another side of King’s life – the potty-mouthed (in Nuri’s case, ludicrously, even hilariously so) government agent who is passionately committed to solving the world’s problems with the Very Big Hammer she’s been handed by the US government. It seems to be set in the early days of Batman’s career for no real reason. It definitely doesn’t follow King’s Batman run as the Batman/Catwoman relationship is completely non-existent here. In fact Catwoman is written very differently from the Cat in King’s run - here she’s very vicious and quite mad. The Help gives Vera (Croc’s flame) the money for being Penguin’s patsy, telling her not to spend it.

Batman: Killing Time by Tom King: 9781779516985 Batman: Killing Time by Tom King: 9781779516985

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. Or perhaps the stupidity of superstition. Or perhaps it’s simply a story meant to kill time, as the title suggests, and that it’s not really about anything more than what we see on the surface. 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. As Riddler intones at the end, “What did we… solve? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.” Maybe it’s a superhero retelling of The Bacchae. Batman : Killing Time is a story from the Dark Knight's earlier years, written by Tom King with art from David Marquez. The story jumps around moments in time and coincidentally focuses on the same characters who appeared in The Batman (save for Killer Croc), starring actor Robert Pattinson and directed by Matt Reeves. Unlike like King's main Batman run or his limited Batman/Catwoman series, the title is set to be a miniseries that only lasts six issues. April 8: In Morocco, Batman captures Riddler and Catwoman, having been led there by an angry Riddler. Despite Batman being the titular character, in which he has been the Caped Crusader for a couple of years, he isn’t really the main character, continuing a recent streak of King not that interested in Batman as a character. King is clearly more interested in the villains who are always double-crossing one another and no doubt there is some fun with the banter between them, but because the comic is so fixated on being non-linear, it’s ultimately hard to care. There’s a subplot running in parallel to the modern-day one, set in Ancient Greece and revolving around Euripides’ play The Bacchae. 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. The play’s end also mirrors the end of the main storyline.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. This review focuses on the story as a whole rather than the individual issues that made up the limited series. Oh, and David” Let Him Draw Everything” Marquez and Alejandro “Let Him Color Everything” Sánchez are involved too? Yeah, I’m in even more.

Batman: Killing Time on the way from King and Marquez Batman: Killing Time on the way from King and Marquez

May 5: In St. Catherine’s Church in Gdansk, Poland, Jon Protva steals the so-called “Eye of Christ” to try to heal his sister. She dies. June 18: A monk from Gdansk, Poland, buys the Eye of Christ, sold by the line of nobles who were deposed three years before.Penguin screams at all those who betrayed him. Later, he hires Two-Face’s gang, as well as many others, to avenge himself. For 3000 years, the Eye of God traveled from Ancient Greece to Gotham, surrounded by the legend that if you held it, you controlled the world. But in reality, it held the power to unleash the bloodiest, most depraved frenzy on those around it. Catwoman, the Riddler, and the Penguin join forces to pull off the greatest robbery in the history of Gotham City. And their prize? A mysterious and priceless artifact in the secret possession of Bruce Wayne! But, as the events unfold, what fun is a heist without a bloody double cross or two?