Meet Tim Fox. He’s your new Dark Knight.
After teasing that the upcoming Future State event would bring some bold, sweeping changes to a new generation of its legacy heroes, DC has confirmed the identity of the event’s Batman: Tim Fox, the estranged son of longtime Batman ally Lucius Fox, and brother of Batwing himself, Luke.
Tim has had a long, if relatively quiet, history out of the cowl in DC’s Batfamily books, first appearing back in 1979 during a terse dinnertable discussion between him and Lucius over his college grades in the pages of Batman #313. More recently, talk of what he’s been up to has been woven in and out of the Joker War arc in the pages of the Batman ongoing. Meanwhile, the Fox family had been brought “in-house” to help Bruce Wayne through FoxTech — with Lucius deciding that now is the time to attempt to reconnect with his distant son.
That reconnection will, it seems, introduce Tim into the Bat-world in a major way, considering when the era of Future State rolls around, he’ll have donned the mantle after Bruce as Gotham’s latest defender. So, where will you be able to ready about him? Tim’s Bat-stories will play out in the pages of John Ridley, Nick Derington, and Laura Braga’s Future State: The Next Batman, a four-issue miniseries that will see Batman battle a new ruling power in the dystopian Gotham’s future: the Magistrate, which has declared open season on the city’s vigilantes.
Each oversized issue of The Next Batman will also feature backup stories checking in on other Gotham vigilantes, including the Outsiders, the Gotham City Sirens, and more. In February 2021, Tim’s Batman will also appear in a story Ridley worked on with artist Olivier Coipel, as part of the new Batman: Black and White anthology series, which will give Tim a currently unrevealed female sidekick (who looks a lot like Tim and Luke’s youngest sister Tiffany, just saying), who you can see swinging into action alongside him in this preview of Batman: Black and White #3:
Given how DC and Warner have already made it clear they have some long-term plans for Future State characters outside of the comics, don’t be surprised if we see Tim’s Batman show up in other places once his miniseries is over.
Future State: The Next Batman kicks off its bi-weekly run on January 5, 2021.