I wasn't sure what I would think about this as I'm ridiculously in love with Batman and he plays an extremely minor role in this.



And honestly? I loved it. These are the everyday people, not the superheroes and I loved finally getting to see their stories.

Book One covers three main storylines:


In the Line of Duty (Ed Brukbaker and Greg Rucka)
This was the weakest of the three stories to me but still pretty damn good. Detective Marcus Driver and his partner Charlie Fields accidentallly stumble upon Mister Freeze and things go seriously south. The GCPD, having lost one of their own, goes on a determined manhunt for Freeze but are on a timer as once nighttime rolls around, they'll have the interfering Bat who will likely take over.

This was pretty damn exciting and fun to see the inner workings of the GCPD without Commissioner Gordon (who has retired) or Batman playing a big role. The end felt a bit anticlimactic but I did love how Detective Driver handled himself with Batman.


Motive by Ed Brubaker
I am very quickly falling in love with Brubaker as a crime writer because he is so damn good at making the stories feel intense, suspenseful and real. Or as real as Gotham gets anyway. Following directly from In the Line of Duty storyline, Motive follows Detective Marcus Driver as he teams up with Detective Romy Chandler to solve the missing person crime that he'd been working on with his former partner, Charlie Fields, before they ran into Mister Freeze. The missing person turns out to be a teenager with some pretty crazy connections. I loved the relationship between Marcus and Romy and it felt like a good old-fashioned cop drama. The ending was a wee bit predictable but I still loved it.


Half a Life by Greg Rucka
This story follows Detective Renee Montoya (former partner of Harvey Bullock who resigned in disgrace) as her personal life comes into pretty serious contact with her professional life. Turns out that a scumbag named Marty Lipari who stabbed Montoya when she prevented him from raping another woman is determined to sue her and so determined to undermine her that he sends a private investigator to snoop into her life. I was already familiar with Montoya's sexual preferences from past stories so when she was outed as a lesbian it was really interesting to see how it affected her relationship with her fellow cops and the ways in which Gotham is still a much darker city than Metropolis. And I really liked the relationship between Montoya and her partner Crispus Allen and how it differed from her relationship with Harvey Bullock. On a character level, this was definitely the strongest of the three stories. I admittedly may be biased in this viewpoint as I have loved Montoya since the animated series and very much enjoyed getting to see a story focused on her.

The weakpoint in this series is definitely the artwork. The writing, as should generally be assumed with Brubaker and Rucka at the helm, is fantastic but the artwork isn't the prettiest. It's not what I'd call ugly per se, but it's pretty bland.

That said, Gotham Central is easily one of the best Batman stories out there for me, especially because it focuses on the regular people in the GCPD. People with families and foibles all their own and completely separate from the Batfamily. If you like cop dramas or crime stories in general, it's definitely one I'd recommend!