There once was a shining city on the water, a home for families, hope, and prosperity. It was Gotham and it was glorious. 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. Superstar creators Tom King and Phil Hester team up for the first time to tell 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. Two generations before Batman, private investigator Slam Bradley gets entangled in the kidnapping of the century as the infant Wayne heir 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. Collecting Gotham City: Year One #1-6.

Tom King is a comic book writer and novelist, best known for his work at DC Comics including Batman, Mister Miracle and The Omega Men. He won Eisner awards for best writer for his work on Mister Miracle and Marvel's Vision. He often relies on his experience as an ex-CIA agent and experiences during the recent conflicts in the Middle East in his writing. King joined the CIA counterterrorism unit after September 11 where he stayed for seven years before writing his first novel, A Once Crowded Sky.