Batman: Killing Time (2022-) #1

Product Information

The action may be thrilling, but it reads with all the dull tedium of a detailed coroner's report that goes on for five pages straight. 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. That pure idealism shines even in darker stories like Batman: Killing Time and One Bad Day: Riddler (where Batman spends a crucial, beautiful page comforting the widow of a man slaughtered for no reason by the Riddler). 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. Needless to say, the MacGuffin never matters, though King spends several baffling pages in ancient Greece, somehow in relation to the MacGuffin.

King juggles the cast of characters well, keeping everyone true to their motivations, and readers entertained throughout. There are even times that I forget Batman entirely because I’m so tuned into the other parts of this story. Mostly, this is a heist story with Riddler and Catwoman stealing a MacGuffin from Batman and going on the run as they try to sell it to the mysterious mastermind behind the whole affair.

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. 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. It's change that I think will garner a lot of new fans, how had previously felt waylaid by his Batman run and the aforementioned Heroes and Bat Cat books. Batman arrives and engages, but Riddler has already gotten what he wanted across the city, using Croc and Catwoman as his distractions and leverage. 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.

However, it does have some really entertaining scenes, an interesting non-linear form of storytelling and a great ending, that I found quite meaningful.The big focus of this issue is getting everyone together in one of the most chaotic, heart pounding, and brutal face offs I’ve read in a while. With the art balanced by Marquez's fantastic work, we can only expect more of Batman's Rogue Gallery to make an appearance. They even flash back to thousands of years in the past, attempting to explain the backstory of the item every character is vying for -- the eye of Athena. And as they move about the city they’re hunted by an inexperienced Batman who knows two things: One, he’ll need to be better than he’s ever been to catch these two psychopaths; two, Penguin survived and if he gets to them first, it’ll be a bloodbath like Gotham’s never seen.