Tom King’s love of flashbacks, non-linear storytelling, and other narrative tricks is well-documented. When he’s at his best (i.e. when he cools it with the allusions to classical literature), he’s a master visual and textual formalist, hitting soaring heights of drama and suspense by weaving timelines, points of view, and narrators either at breakneck speeds within a single issue, or to more slow-burning effect over the course of many. So when King kicked off his run on The Penguin by stating that he wanted to tell a more straightforward, street-crime-driven, “Sopranos style” story, my interest was piqued. I was, in equal measure, excited for him to tackle the crime boss with his trademark mastery of suspense and apprehensive about his promise to keep things straightforward. In my mind, King’s self-imposed challenge was either going to be the series’ downfall or its greatest strength.

With this in mind, while King hasn’t sworn off the use of a good, old-fashioned flashback, I think this month’s issue #8 marks a high point in a series that has already had a middling-to-good run. We start off with Gordon and an investigative partner surveying the bloody aftermath of an apartment homicide, only to discover that the victims are four fifths of the Force of July, whom we had previously seen being recruited by the Penguin in his quest to reclaim his criminal territory. We’ve gotten past the distracting (but not unentertaining) tangent with the Force of July and are now witnessing its fruition in the form of this welcome, pulpy payoff.

These handful of pages are narrated by Gordon, and this pattern of inner-monologue narration over thematically-relevant leads us to a rotating cast of characters giving their perspective on the swift and wrathful rise of the Penguin over the past few months leading up to this attack, be these characters major players in Gotham’s criminal underworld or hapless citizens experience the grave misfortune of crossing paths with the mad bird. Both the narrative framework of Gordon arriving on the scene of a homicide and the Penguin quickly setting down fresh roots in Gotham touch down adeptly in the closing pages as we witness a touching human moment in the ongoing subplot of Oswald Cobblepot’s fractured family and, immediately after, the true extent of the bloodshed that the Penguin is willing to dole out in order to reclaim what’s his.

Rafael De Latorre is back on art duties this month, picking up where Serbian newcomer Stevan Subic left off. Subic is a body horror specialist, a style which was creepily effective for a few issues, but would likely wear thin over the course of a whole series (see last year’s overall-good Riddler: Year One for evidence of this law of diminishing returns). De Latorre has done well, however, to pick up on some of Subic’s darker cues and impulses: they both have a penchant for sinister, empty eyes in their villains, and their bloodstains are almost gleeful in their splattering. The result here of changing artists is truly harmonious.

Tom King’s Penguin series began with a question: how on Earth does a short, stocky, seemingly pathetic little man with no powers and no madness to speak of, rise to the status of being among the Caped Crusader’s most fearsome adversaries? The answer, I think (and King has alluded to as much in interviews), has something to do with a proud tradition of American story-telling: an anti-hero is born in the gutter and rises to the top of a criminal empire by stepping on any and all who get in his way.  This issue is the most fun piece of that answer we’ve gotten so far. I eagerly await the next issue.

Recommend if...

• Non-linear storytelling that doesn’t try to bend your brain
• Mafia stories without the social commentary
• Just-sinister-enough villain-type artwork

Overall

With effective pacing and reliably sound artwork, “Penguin” is taking narrative flight at exactly the right time, and this issue is a gripping kickstart to great things to come.

Score: 8.5/10

DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purposes of this review