Gotham Central, Case by Case: CORRIGAN II
The final entry in our Gotham Central: Case by Case series uses the last arc, Corrigan II, to explore the themes and ideas that have been present in this run from its beginning.
Read MoreGotham Central, Case by Case: DEAD ROBIN
Our Gotham Central - Case by Case series continues today with a look at the penultimate arc of the book, Dead Robins, in which a serial killer is dressing his victims up as the Boy Wonder.
Read MoreGotham Central, Case by Case: NATURE
In the Gotham Central story arc Nature, Munroe thought he had gamed the system, but was eventually eaten up by one of its ‘freaks’. That’s just the law of Nature in Gotham City.
Read MoreGotham Central, Case by Case: ON THE FREAK BEAT
Late in “On the Freak Beat”, Josie Mac shares with Detective Driver some illicit photographs of their recent murder victim, the televangelist Reverend Buford Pressman….
Read MoreGotham Central, Case by Case: LIGHTS OUT
With Gotham Central being a series that is all about the police and their relationships with Batman, “Lights Out” explicitly redirects conversations towards Batman’s status as vigilante.
Read MoreGotham Central, Case by Case: CORRIGAN
By Bruno Savill De Jong — Before now, Jim Corrigan has appeared in the background picking through crime scenes of Gotham Central, collecting evidence and providing forensic analysis as a C.S.U. of the GCPD. In “Corrigan” he comes to the foreground, with a Gotham Central storyline where numerous established themes start to coalesce. It is a half-way point that connects the previous issues to a thread crucial for the book’s ultimate ending. Here, the GCPD corruption creeping around the edges of Gotham Central shows its clearest form yet. The previous “Unresolved” arc brought a reminder of Harvey Bullock’s old-fashioned self-justified corruption. Now “Corrigan” shows this corruption as a still-present part of the system, a toxic element that hinders even the ‘righteous’ elements within the department.
Read MoreGotham Central, Case by Case: LIFE IS FULL OF DISAPPOINTMENTS
By Bruno Savill De Jong — Life is Full of Disappointments is an odd storyline. It feels almost purposefully removed from the tapestry of Gotham Central, downplaying the immersive world-building that was central to all the previous issues. Gotham Central might make minimal use of Batman, but Life is Full of Disappointments has zero Batman, nor any ‘freaks’, nor (nearly) anything connected to Gotham’s ‘culture’. Even the recognizable detectives from Gotham Central itself (Montoya, Driver, Josie Mac) are dropped to foreground the underdeveloped police from the Major Crimes Unit, the three issues rotating in a new pair of detectives to examine the case.
Read MoreGotham Central, Case by Case: SOFT TARGETS
By Bruno Savill De Jong — While Half a Life is Gotham Central’s famous storyline that examines the weight of Gotham upon a single cop, Soft Targets is another popular plotline that examines a single case’s impact upon the whole city. Over Christmas, Gotham is gripped by a supervillain’s terrorist threat. Now, that might sound like a typical superhero set-up. Indeed, Tom King did exactly this in The War of Jokes and Riddle (Batman Vol. 3, #25-32) a few years ago. But while I like that storyline, Gotham Central, well, centralizes Gotham in a way mainstream Batman titles cannot
Read More