“Fine, whatever.” — “Fine, **whatever.”**

By Bruno Savill De Jong — 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. When he asks where they are from, Josie tells Driver to not look a gift-horse in the mouth, and Driver jokingly responds if the Trojans had done so to the Wooden Horse outside their gates, they would have discovered the Greek soldiers hidden inside, “so really that saying should be, always look a gift horse in the mouth”.

It’s a quick moment of typical Gotham Central banter, and the idiom likely didn’t originate with the Trojan War, but it speaks to the suspicious information that floats around “On the Freak Beat”. How information is distrusted not just on its own, but where it comes from. As shown in “Motive”, Driver holds the world to a rational order, believing everything has a cause no matter how arbitrary or unfair. In “On the Freak Beat”, he confesses to Josie he’s an atheist. Perhaps part of why Driver resents Batman — alongside him overshadowing the GCPD — is his belief help should not come from outside the knowable universe. That you cannot trust assistance from someone you cannot even see the face of.

This puts Josie in a tough position. “On the Freak Beat” centralizes her minor psychic ability with objects that Gotham Central has previously obscured or hinted at (such as in “Daydreams and Believers”), but never explicitly acknowledged until now. Readers unfamiliar with Josie could have easily missed her superpowers. Within Gotham Central, Josie has been passing them off as ‘hunches’ or a ‘feeling’, hand-waving away any explanation. In “Unresolved” Josie had dismissed Harvey Bullock’s infamous ‘gut-instinct’, and was validated when it led him astray, but now wryly asks whether her ‘gut-feeling’ is “just reserved for the old-school cops”.

But Driver’s grounded mindset is becoming suspicious, and Josie is increasingly torn up inside about this. Josie is worried her secret ability will separate her from her newfound colleagues, lumping her in with “the other freaks of Gotham”. The GCPD might be outmatched by the vigilantes and supervillains fighting above them, but at least they have solidarity in their ordinariness. As a cop with special abilities, Josie feels undercover in her own department. It becomes particularly bad at this crime-scene, where Pressman bears the claw-marks and exposed jewelry of being a victim of Catwoman. But Josie’s powers tell her how the jewelry was planted and Catwoman was framed. Worse, Catwoman learns of Josie’s secret and uses it to blackmail Josie into clearing her name, pulling Josie further into a double-life she’s been dreading.

Catwoman is an interesting character for Gotham Central, as although a criminal ‘freak’, she is more an anti-hero and ally (or even love-interest) of Batman. So while she’s a recognisable suspect, she is unlikely to be caught (Driver’s reaction is telling Josie she will never close this case), or even have Batman assist them. Catwoman’s sensationalist angle is exactly why the real culprit hopes to draw attention away from them. In “Half a Life”, a corrupt GCPD cop loosely ties Catwoman to a burglary case to dump it on the M.C.U. The real killer does the same here, even if the details don’t add up. Since when does Catwoman kill? Why would she leave the emerald necklace she apparently killed the Reverend to get? Like the Mayor’s concern over Batman’s tourism in “Lights Out”, Gotham’s ‘freaks’ often overshadow real systemic investigations into the city, as it makes a good headline for the Gotham Gazette. The detectives question how reporter Simon Lippman learned of Catwoman’s involvement, but Simon refuses to give up his source, another example of protecting secrets. Josie and Driver look past Catwoman’s involvement (only partially due to the blackmail) and find the real killer, but Driver remarks that, after seeing signs of Catwoman, “most cops wouldn’t’ve looked any harder from that point”.

Hidden truths occur throughout “On the Freak Beat”. Simon’s source, Catwoman’s innocence, Josie’s power, even the prosthetic hand of Nora Fields (it having been shot by the Joker in “Soft Targets”) we see during her, Driver and Romy Chandler’s weekly dinner together. Most prominent is Reverend Pressman, whose long-term marriage is only for public appearances, and presents a pious Evangelist image despite a hardcore bondage fetish. Photos of this were on a hard-drive in his safe, which Catwoman was hoping to use against a property development of Pressman’s. Josie is given them by Catwoman’s intermediary, Slam Bradley, a classic private investigator whom Brubaker had featured with Darwyn Cooke in “Trial of the Catwoman” (Detective Comics, #759-762). Religious leaders being secretly kinky is a common trope (Driver even remarks “why is it always the zealots who’re hiding the real pervy $#%?”), but it functions as a parallel for Josie’s own secret. ‘Perverts’ and ‘Freaks’ can sometimes be considered synonyms, after all, and Catwoman often carries comparisons to a dominatrix. Frank Miller did so literally in Batman: Year One, while in “On the Freak Beat” she appears in a Bondage Club to get Reverend Pressman’s assistant, Graham McMillan, to confess to his murder. Graham tells Josie and Driver how he killed Pressman in self-defense, who was flipping out over Catwoman discovering those images. He says how Pressman “was already on the edge”, that keeping that secret life was tearing him apart.

“On the Freak Beat” is Brubaker’s storyline, as is evident from the cast of Romy, Driver and Josie. But in a way it’s his own version of Rucka’s “Half a Life”, where a female police-officer struggles with a secret. Montoya’s closeted lesbianism in “Half a Life” is more relatable than Josie’s super-powers, and also has the tragedy of her choice to reveal the secrets being taken away. Likewise, while Jason Alexander is a serviceable replacement for Michael Lark, his strained and flimsy pencilling doesn’t carry the same gritty emotional resonance as Lark’s compressed ones. But Brubaker gives Josie a chance to come clean with her partner on her own terms. Catwoman tells Josie how “when you keep [secrets] from the people you trust, the only one who suffers is you”. It’s a double-life that is ripping Josie apart from the inside. Josie’s resolution to tell Driver at the end of “On the Freak Beat” is a conclusion of acceptance, and of clarity. It is an openness that will make Gotham make a little more sense, provide a little more causation (if superpowers can be ‘logical causes’). Commissioner Akins felt in “Lights Out” the GCPD and Batman can never be on “the same side” because Batman’s motivations could never be trusted, his identity always concealed. Josie is attempting to ensure she and Driver are on the same foundation by telling him the truth, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Gotham Central: On The Freak Beat (#26 - #27)

Gotham Central: On The Freak Beat
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Jason Alexander
Colorist: Lee Loughride
Letterer: Clem Robins
Editors: Matt Idelson and Nachie Castro
Josie Mac and Driver investigate the murder of a famous televangelist, and clues on the scene point to a certain fast-fingered feline. Josie must uncover the truth behind the murder while keeping her powers a secret in "On the Freak Beat" Part 1!
Buy It Digitally: Gotham Central #26; Gotham Central #27; or Gotham Central - Book Three

Read more installments of Gotham Central, Case by Case!

Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.