My Rating
“Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”
Trapped in a realm where time has no meaning, Robin finds himself staring down the barrels of several M-16 rifles. A squad of American Green Berets has surrounded the young vigilante and wants answers. The problem is that Robin has a few questions of his own.
Moments earlier, he had been following an elderly man through the fog-covered streets of Gotham City. One step into the mist and suddenly the Boy Wonder finds himself behind enemy lines in 1960s Vietnam. How can this possibly be real? The soldiers’ uniforms appear authentic. Their weapons match the period. Everything around Robin tells him that he has somehow traveled decades into the past.
Elsewhere—or perhaps elsewhen—the Challengers of the Unknown and Batman conduct investigations of their own. Mr. Sands, the Challengers’ mysterious financial backer, has deliberately led the group into this temporal vortex. Before anyone can question Sands about what is happening, the Dark Knight makes his priorities perfectly clear.
Where is Robin?!
The strange realm appears to exist outside the normal flow of time. Past and present overlap as people separated by years, and even decades, find themselves occupying the same space. The Challengers must determine what created this phenomenon while Batman searches desperately for his missing partner.
Then the mystery becomes even stranger.
Is the brilliant light Mr. Sands witnessed during World War II connected to the same phenomenon encountered by a squad of Green Berets in 1968? Can a place truly exist outside the timestream while simultaneously containing moments from across history? What happens when memories of the past become physical realities? And will Batman receive something he never thought possible—a second chance to save his mother and father? Collect the series to find out!
Review
This is a really cool science-fiction concept story. Steven Grant takes the mysterious fog and ghostly soldiers introduced in the previous issue and turns them into something much bigger. Instead of dealing with traditional ghosts, the Challengers may be encountering people and events displaced from different moments in history. Is it time travel? Another dimension? Some strange pocket of reality where all moments exist simultaneously? Whatever it is, I’m hooked.
I especially like how the story uses Robin to demonstrate the concept. One minute he’s walking through modern Gotham City, and the next he’s surrounded by American soldiers in Vietnam. Everything appears real because, in some strange way, perhaps it is real. Grant doesn’t stop the story for several pages of exposition explaining exactly how everything works. He drops Robin—and the reader—into the middle of the situation and lets the mystery unfold from there.
Batman also raises the emotional stakes considerably. A place where different moments in time can become accessible presents Bruce Wayne with an opportunity far more important than solving another scientific mystery. What happens if Batman can return to the night his parents were murdered? Would he try to change history? Could he stand aside knowing what was about to happen? Bringing Thomas and Martha Wayne into the equation turns an already interesting science-fiction concept into something deeply personal for the Dark Knight.
My only frustration involves those mysterious bright lights. Steven Grant continues dangling them in front of us without providing a solid explanation. Mr. Sands witnessed a strange light during World War II, while the Green Berets encountered something similar in 1968. We’ve also seen unexplained lights associated with other strange events throughout this series. Come on, Steven! You can’t keep flashing mysterious lights in my face forever without eventually telling me what the hell they are!
Hopefully, Grant plans to flesh out that mystery in a future issue because it certainly feels like he is building toward something larger. Until then, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” delivers another excellent mixture of science fiction, mystery, and superhero adventure. After a few earlier issues that left me scratching my head, this series has really hit its stride. Another five out of five stars for Challengers of the Unknown.