A new Gotham-centric series was announced today at San Diego Comic-Con, and it goes back before the Dark Knight debuted called Gotham City: Year One. Announced at the Tom Taylor & Tom King panel, Tom King will write the series with art by Phil Hester. Their goal? To show how Gotham became the cesspool of violence and corruption today and how it harbored and then unleashed the sin that led to the rise of the Dark Knight.
“Night falls quickly in Gotham City,” said Hester. “The shadows cut across guilty and innocent alike. I feel lucky to be the artist to show you just how this city got so dark in the first place.”
So what’s Gotham City: Year One about?
Taking place two generations before Batman, private investigator Slam Bradley gets tangled in the headline-grabbing “kidnapping of the century” as the infant Wayne heir Helen disappears in the night…and so begins a brutal, hard-boiled, epic tale of a man living on the edge and a city about to burn.
The creators are joined by creators Eric Gapstur, Jordie Bellaire and Clayton Cowles.
“Having written a ton of Batman comics,” said King, “I can say it’s incredibly rare to write book like this, where you can add something large and essential to the mythos of the Dark Knight, as Scott did with Court of Owls or Grant did with the introduction of Damian or Frank did with, well, everything he touched. In Gotham City Year One, Phil and I will take you to a noir-drenched past, where the secrets that made Gotham become Gotham, the sins that made Batman become Batman are finally and violently revealed.”
Check out a preview below.
Gotham City: Year One will feature variant covers by Ryan Sook and a 1:25 variant cover by David Marquez. The six-issue run will publish between October 2022 and March 2023.
For more on this news, read the official press release below.
There once was a shining city on the water, a home for families, hope, and prosperity. It was Gotham and it was glorious. The story of its fall from grace, the legend that would birth the Bat, has remained untold for 80 years. That’s about to change.
Eisner Award-winning writer Tom King and legendary storyteller Phil Hester team up for the first time to craft the definitive origin of Gotham City: how it became the cesspool of violence and corruption it is today, and how it harbored and then unleashed the sin that led to the rise of the Dark Knight.
“Night falls quickly in Gotham City,” said Hester. “The shadows cut across guilty and innocent alike. I feel lucky to be the artist to show you just how this city got so dark in the first place.”
King and Hester, along with Eric Gapstur, Jordie Bellaire and Clayton Cowles, launch Gotham City: Year One on October 4. Taking place two generations before Batman, private investigator Slam Bradley gets tangled in the headline-grabbing “kidnapping of the century” as the infant Wayne heir Helen disappears in the night…and so begins a brutal, hard-boiled, epic tale of a man living on the edge and a city about to burn.
“Having written a ton of Batman comics,” said King, “I can say it’s incredibly rare to write book like this, where you can add something large and essential to the mythos of the Dark Knight, as Scott did with Court of Owls or Grant did with the introduction of Damian or Frank did with, well, everything he touched. In Gotham City Year One, Phil and I will take you to a noir drenched past, where the secrets that made Gotham become Gotham, the sins that made Batman become Batman are finally and violently revealed.”
“Tom has crafted a story that will echo across Batman lore past and present,” continued Hester, “and I hope the storytelling techniques Eric, Jordie, Clayton and I are bringing to bear will augment his razor-keen approach. I’m honored to play a small part in bringing Siegel and Shuster’s landmark creation to a new audience, and in giving one of DC’s oldest legends the white-hot spotlight he deserves.”
Gotham City: Year One by Tom King, Phil Hester, Eric Gapstur, Jordie Bellaire and Clayton Cowles will debut with a variant cover by Ryan Sook and a 1:25 variant cover by David Marquez. The six-issue run will publish between October 2022 and March 2023.
Stay tuned for more news about the Gotham City: Year One in the coming months! For more information about DC, Batman, Gotham City, Slam Bradley, and the World’s Greatest Super Heroes, please visit the DC website at www.dccomics.com and follow @DCComics and @thedcnation on social media.
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