April 8: In Morocco, Batman captures Riddler and Catwoman, having been led there by an angry Riddler. Probably commissioned as part of the promotion of The Batman film released in March 2022, King focuses heavily on Batman as a solo crimefighter, Catwoman and Riddler as the main visible antagonists with a strong Penguin presence, all elements directly mirroring the film. That Batman catching up to him is inevitable, and that even if he can hold the eye in his hand for a moment it's impossible to hold onto. If you like the obsessively cursing government agent Espinoza, she curses and curses and curses some more.

There’s a subplot running in parallel to the modern-day one, set in Ancient Greece and revolving around Euripides’ play The Bacchae. 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.All throughout, captions and narration make meticulous note of the time, as the story flashes back and forth between the heist's planning, execution and fallout. One very interesting discussion point on the series centers around how King creates two unique villainous/antagonist characters in this miniseries.

His actions might seem inscrutable, but he openly confesses why to Batman: "It's hard having conversations when everything is so predictable.I can see how it could be frustrating for people expecting or hoping for something more straightforward. Bruce Wayne/Batman has been all over the world and has learned from many masters and picked up a few treasures along the way.

King has this thing where he creates a fascinating hook, but then by the end of his stories, the moral is always, “The status quo is good, so don’t rock the boat. But if DC has a signature strength, it's their ability to release a constant stream of universally approachable books, and in a perfect world screenings of The Batman would come with a copy of Killing Time. Unlike his Batman run and Batman/Catwoman, King didn’t focus on the romance between Batman and Catwoman at all. Tom King · David Marquez Batman: Killing Time (Volume 1) was a limited series, published by DC Comics.I really liked this, but there were many times where the script seems to have been added to the panels as narration and that bugged the hell out of me.

This was, at times, a dull read, despite all the calamity and the ludicrous agent who curses to such an extent that she elicits naught but eye rolls. Should we be surprised that this comes from a guy who *volunteered to join the CIA* and serve in Iraq? There are myriad storylines intersecting throughout and jumping back and forth in time, a bit like Pulp Fiction, but the overall narration has this pattern of noting very specific times, which feels tedious to read after a spell, not least because who’s really taking in specific dates in relation to the story? David Marquez's artwork is fantastic and King's storytelling chops are sufficient to keep you engaged, even as you begin to realize that none of Killing Time will really matter in the long run.

This series is, without a doubt, some of the best work King has ever done on Batman, the best art Marquez has produced for DC thus far and takes full advantage of the consist partnership between Cowles and King with journal-esque lettering that fragments and spreads across a page to keep pace with King’s cadence. The book opens on pages that show us a portion of this meeting gone very very wrong by detailing out a number of deaths that happen all over a very short period of time. Batman and the mysterious Help join forces in what will go down as one of the more memorable team-ups!