welty-nine

This fourth and final hard cover volume collects issues #32–40 of Gotham Central, DC's eminent comic about the Gotham City Police Department's Major Crime Unit (mostly dealing with the kinds of crime that inevitably tends to involve "the Bat"). This volume, like the last one, is dominated by Greg Rucka's writing, and it still certainly delivers (even though I would not have minded more Ed Brubaker material). It opens with a single-issue story, "Nature," written by Rucka and drawn by Steve Lieber. In some way, this may be the oddest GC story out of the forty issues, simply because its narrator (while a cop) is in no way connected to the MCU. Instead we get some insight into the other side of the coin, one of Gotham's finest examples of corruption, with some twists and turn to match. This is followed by the excellent four-parter "Dead Robin," written by Rucka and Brubaker, and drawn by Kano & Stefano Gaudiano. Here the MCU discovers the body of what appears to be Robin, i.e. Batman's sidekick. The heavily media covered investigation becomes a desperate race against the clock and it is all about establishing the facts: is it Robin? What does it mean if it is? What does it mean if it isn't? The collection's weakest part (and possibly the weakest part of the whole series) is the single-issue story "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by Rucka and Lieber. It is a tie-in to one of DC's mega events, Infinite Crisis, and while not a bad story, its attempt to match the perspective of people on the street with the über-cosmic stuff does not really work that well within the frame of the series itself. It simply becomes too over the top, and next to series successfully dealing with this (like Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' Marvels or Busiek and Brent Anderson's Astro City) it just feels as if it misses the mark somewhat. Infinite Crisis The volume (and the series) ends with the three-parter "Corrigan II" by Rucka, Kano and Gaudiano. This picks up the story about corrupt crime scene investigator Jim Corrigan that started in the previous volume (in the two-parter "Corrigan"). While "Dead Robin" is easily the main event of this volume, this is a very good finale to the series. All in all, I would have to say that the entire series – all four hard cover volumes – have been a delight to read, and I cannot recommend them enough.

2022-12-11 10:08