It’s 2009. The swine flu pandemic occurs, Michael Jackson dies, and Kanye West interrupts Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMAs. People are listening to “I Gotta Feelin’,” watching Avatar and reading Daredevil.
Read MoreIt’s 2008. A global financial crisis takes hold, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider goes live, and Barack Obama becomes the first Black President. People are listening to “Poker Face,” watching The Dark Knight and reading Daredevil.
Read MoreIt’s 2007. The iPhone arrives, the final Harry Potter book breaks sales records, and the collapse of the housing market sparks a financial crisis. People are listening to “Umbrella,” watching No Country for Old Men and reading Daredevil.
Read MoreIt’s 2006. Saddam Hussein is executed for crimes against humanity, Nintendo releases the Wii, Twitter is created, and Pluto is declassified as a planet. People are listening to “SexyBack,” watching Borat and reading Daredevil.
Read MoreOur 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 MoreLate 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 MoreBy Bruno Savill De Jong — Sometimes the past can trap us. Traumatic events can be a vortex, one that warps our perception of the world, and makes us unable to escape that moment. This theme underlies “Unresolved”, the latest case in Gotham Central, featuring various instances of past events destabilizing people, and creating a delusional world-view. Detective Driver sees it first-hand when his brother’s childhood best friend, Kenny Booker, takes a fast-food joint hostage to demand and talk with Driver. Eight years ago, Kenny was one of the few survivors of the Gotham Hawks Baseball team locker-room bombing, that case that still remains unresolved.
Read MoreBy 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 MoreBy 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 MoreBy Bruno Savill De Jong — Following the long dramatic storyline of “Half a Life”, it seems the single-issue “Daydreams and Believers” will be a relaxing break. Brian Hurtt temporarily replaces Michael Lark with a softer and rounder art-style, and Lark himself gives an Alex Toth/John Romita Sr/Romance Comics tribute cover between Batman and Stacy, a fantasy which loosely frames the story. Stacy, the GCPD’s secretary, narrates “Daydreams and Believers” (a focused focalization rare to Gotham Central), which operates like a backdoor-introduction to the GCPD staff seen from her perspective.
Read MoreBy Bruno Savill De Jong — “The problem with motiveless crime is that there’s always a motive”, Detective Marcus Driver tells his temporarily assigned partner Romy Chandler, “we just can’t see it. ‘Cause no one kills someone with no reason”.
Read MoreBy d. emerson eddy — I'm continuing my trip through some of my favorite westerns and western-tinged tales across the years in honor of the release of Pulp, this week spotlighting another book from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (with colors by Elizabeth Breitweiser), Fatale. This series is one of the ones that felt like Brubaker and Phillips were specifically writing it for me, delving into a world of Lovecraftian horror and crime noir that seemed note perfect, resulting in a tone that seemed right out of a Dennis Wheatley novel. Fatale #13 came smack dab in the middle of a loosely connected arc where we were witnessing the lives of a number of “femme fatales” across history, including our protagonist, Josephine's, early history.
Read MoreBy Bruno Savill De Jong — “Could we leave the Bat out of this for now?” Detective Marcus Driver mutters these words to Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen as the three discuss the death of his partner, Charlie Fields, at the hands of Mr. Freeze. It’s a phrase which hangs over all of Gotham Central, like the Bat-Signal perched atop the police headquarters, or the squadroom’s clearance-board which Fields wrote “the Bat” onto, wishing to incentivize the department into action.
Read MoreBy Taylor Pechter — Ed Brubaker is one of the most acclaimed writers of crime comics in the entire industry, with a long line of lucrative and award-winning books to his name. But today, I want to look back at one of his earlier works — Scene of the Crime, which saw Brubaker collaborating with artist Michael Lark, inker Sean Phillips (who would go on to become Brubaker’s most-frequent collaborator), colorist James Sinclair, and letterer John Costanza. Scene of the Crime — publisher by Vertigo back in the summer of 1999 — is the story of Maggie Jordan and the private investigator examining the circumstances of her mysterious death, Jack Herriman.
Read More