)I know I have not been following comics closely this past decade, but how did I not hear about this until last month? I hang out with nerds. It is probably the lack of spectacle, but this is at its best when it is not dealing with superheroic comic book fare.
This is first of three hardcover volumes collecting the comic book series Gotham Central. (There is also five-colume paperback version that has a slightly different collection.) Gotham Central is a police procedural in Batman's town. The Major Crimes Unit (MCU) deals with supervillains in addition to murder, rape, and arson.
In an immediately obvious sense, this is a series about people who are good and truly screwed. Batman has one of the best rogues galleries in comics, and some of them regularly give him a run for his money. These are the poor souls who get to deal with them on the day shift, who do all the investigation that Batman taps into when he checks his contacts, who are the redshirts when the villain of the month needs to appear and show what a monster he is. And the Joker has yet to appear.
These are heroes. Gotham has the second most corrupt police force in its setting, and MCU is the home of honest cops, hand-picked by the Commissioner, who deal with the big problems. They have the real world heroics of protecting and serving amidst violent criminals. In the real world, you never know which guy on a traffic stop is going to pull a gun on you; in comic books, the guy might pull a freeze ray, turn into a monster, or decide to kill everyone you know for the lulz. Everyone in the MCU demonstrates a strength of character that superheroes frequently fail to. It is a strength of the writing that you can see them all as good people without making them copies, cliches, or boring white hats. Superheroes need flaws to overcome to keep the story interesting and dynamic; doing your best and doing a good job as a normal human in this setting is sufficiently remarkable.
The stories borrow from Batman's rogues gallery, but it does its best without them. Entire issues pass without them, and you don't miss them, although an extended focus on a personal story made me wonder where the police procedural went for that issue. The villains are there, in the background or waiting in the wings, so you have your comic book spectacle ready. Along the way, the stories can be personal in the way that tights and energy blasts often fail to be, and police work itself is an interesting story. The characters have problems in the (largely corrupt) department, conflicts with each other, a list of cases that need solving, a masked vigilante who shows them up without even trying, and a constant threat of psychopaths that make them need him.
There is honor, there is struggle, and there is loss. I am led to expect much more loss in the future as Things Get Worse. It's Gotham. The big guns have yet to arrive, and there needs to be an arc about how normal people can be just as bad as the worst comic book villain.
There are three arcs in this volume. The first, "In the Line of Duty," has an excellent introduction. The opening scene balances the halves of the story concept (police procedural meets Batman) while setting the tone for the series. While there are many continuity tie-ins, I don't know how many I'm missing, and you can follow everything completely well knowing nothing about Batman. The arc as a whole does not use the Batman elements terribly well; they seem almost grafted on, although Batman himself is used well (exceedingly sparingly). It opens strongly and works well with characters. The rest of the arc does not live up to the promise of the opening pages, but it is a fair start for the series.
The second, "Motive," is the weakest part of the volume. It follows "In the Line of Duty" nicely, and it is a good detective story, but it is nothing particularly special. On its own, it would be fine, but it is overshadowed by its companions.
"Half a Life" is one of the best comic book stories I have read. As I said, it wanders away from the police procedural to focus on a character arc, and it does it very well. The story is about Renee Montoya, framed for murder while her personal life is under attack. Things Get Worse. While playing well with murder and large-ticket villainy, it again excels by focusing on character and making it all very personal. You feel for them, and you can see them feeling for each other. It ends exceedingly strongly, in the same vein, making a powerful moment from two people talking in a car where most comic books would end on a dramatic pose and implicit swelling music in the background.
Volume two of the paperback edition is "Half a Life."
I am going to go buy that, since it is clearly a 4. The first half here is worth reading but not something you are required to own.I have been told that my enthusiasm for this story arc is too great. Oh well. I like Renee Montoya as a character, and she interacts very well with the MCU characters and in her personal life. Her partner gets to shine in her absence, and the new kid at the MCU adds light in a dark story. It drops the superhero genre a bit to cross-over with a different story type; once you have read it, you must admit, you have not seen a (spoiler avoided) story done quite that way.
Don't read the back cover of the book. Whoever wrote the inside jacket copy did it right, but the back cover spoils what I just avoided. Maybe they thought the keyword would help sell more copies.
The drawing style is not one that I usually favor, but Michael Lark has sold me. It is excellent throughout. I like clear lines of the DC Animated Universe, even at the risk of leaking into the heavily manga-influenced style popular these days. Michael Lark instead does great things with lots of short, clipped lines. I worry about the style because I am used to seeing faces just sketched in, without a lot of attention to features. Michael Lark complements the story's attention to detail brilliantly, carrying characterization weight with precise faces and expressions. You are used to actors doing that in police procedural television shows with their body language and reactions; Michael Lark is carrying that entire burden. His characters are subtle and expressive.
As an example of subtlety, note the frame where Renee Montoya realizes what is going on in "Half a Life." You probably did not notice it on the first read-through. Flip back after she announces it out of nowhere. The dialogue on an earlier page gives her the inspiration, and you can see it on her face when she gets it.
The lighting is dark. You should expect that in a Batman-related series. There are many shadows with careful framing. It is on the darker side of realistic, without garish costumes. I expect garish costumes in future volumes, when more superheroes/villains arrive, and they should stand out nicely. Juxtapose the Joker in a purple suit with an otherwise completely realistic setting; he's a loon.
The Batman art itself is rather weak. Mr. Lark was not recruited for his ability to draw the hero iconically, although perhaps that improves over time. It works well when Batman is a shadowy figure, a boot or a cape silhouetted. It works less well when Batman's shadows follow him to center stage, giving a bit of dark blobishness. Some of that might be the color work. The Mr. Freeze art, however, is excellent, combining Mr. Lark's small lines with open spaces for color. It brings in the bold, cartoonish look while keeping him concrete.
I am very much looking forward to the rest of the series, and I am sorry that it ended in less than 1000 pages.
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