This is not the first time we’ve talked about The Batman’s Grave, the new 12-issue maxiseries from comics legends Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. It won’t be the last time, either. It was almost certainly going to get a tryout, just on the strength of the creators – you get The Authority creative team back together and there’s no way I was going to let it sneak by. But now, based on the strength of these preview pages, I’m pretty locked in for the full run.

The last preview we got was limited to black and white pencils and inks from Hitch and longtime collaborator Kevin Nowlan. They were good, but the new color pages tell so much more of the story. Rather than jump around, we’ll post all the preview pages at the end, but I really want to focus on the final three images. A police officer and his husband leave a movie theater onto a crowded Gotham street with their daughter in tow. They duck into an alley and get nearly killed, but before that can happen, Batman swings through, kicks the would-be killers’ teeth in, and swings away.

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Now look at how much of the story is told simply from the neon colors of the street scene.