Despite living in an age where information is instantly accessible at any time, any place and on pretty much any device, I have an amazing ability for getting into things long after they have finished. I didn't bother watching Babylon 5 until years after it had ended, I still haven't watched all of Firefly and I'm only half way through the first season of Supernatural. It's the same with comics, probably because I don't follow weekly comics, preferring to just pick up a graphic novel and read a story in its entirety. I went into Gotham Central pretty much blind and found it was a hell of a good read. Then I checked Wikipedia to see how much more of it there was, I was disappointed to find there's only another three more books. Yeah, it ended years ago. I'm late to the party again but I suppose it's better than not showing up at all.
Gotham Central is a Batman comic that doesn't really feature Batman at all. I could probably count up all of his panels in this book and it would still be a single digit. The basic idea is this: how does the Gotham City Police Department deal with loonies like Mr Freeze and Two-Face? Normally in a Batman comic, we only see the police occasionally, as Batman has a chat with Commissioner Gordon. Usually, Batman will leave as soon as he has what he needs from the conversation, leaping out the window or off the roof. We, the readers, follow him away from the police station, but in Gotham Central we stay with the police and watch them deal with the situation.
It's a far more realistic approach to this kind of a world. Batman has, for the most part, always been the good guy. He may be darker than Superman, but we, the reader, know what drives him, and know that there is a line he would never cross. But how do the police feel about him? The first story in Book One, In The Line Of Duty, seems on the surface to be a typical Batman story: super villain is in town, threatening to do something bad, there's a count down to said something bad and the clues have to be pieced together to figure out where the super villain will strike. Instead of using the bat-computer and lurking in shadows, we're in an office with normal people, in normal cloths trying to solve the problem in normal ways.
In the end, though, it's not enough. They put all the pieces of the puzzle together, they know where the bad guy – Mr Freeze – is going to attack, but it's just not enough. They have to turn the Bat-Signal on, they have to call him in. Then they have to watch, after all their hard work, as a guy in spandex and a bat mask swoops in, beats the crap out of Freeze, they leaves again. They genuinely resent having to call him in because they've lost one of their own. The opening of the story sees one of the main characters, Driver, loose his partner at the hands of Freeze. They wanted justice, or revenge, however you see it, and they wanted to do it themselves. I've never really seen Batman stop to think about the nameless cops that die at the hands of super-villains, but the characters in this book can't swoop away from the problem on a bat-line. They have to stay behind and pick up the pieces.
The second story, Motive, is pretty much a far more normal police detective story. Sure it still has the comic book super-villain element to it, otherwise there would be no point in setting the story in Gotham, but it's just a small part of the story. It's really about finding the killer of a dead teenage girl and all the emotional baggage that involves, both in terms of the victim and the detective who is still trying to come to terms with the death of his partner.
The final story in Book One, Half A Life, focuses on Detective Montoya, the only face I recognise in this group as a pre-established character. What starts of as a story about her being sued by a rapist who got away on a technicality, soon grows into something far more complicated. First, she is outed as a lesbian and has to deal with all the emotional problems that creates with work mates and family. Then she's framed for murder and has to deal with all the problems the possibly of spending the rest of her life behind bars can cause. Then it turns out Two-Face was behind all of this, which leaves her trapped at the mercy of a dangerous and seriously unstable bad guy.
Of course, Batman swoops in, punches Two-Face in the gut and swoops out again, but not before the police have found themselves hating Batman a little bit more. By this point they really are starting to wish he would just piss off and let them do their job.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first book of Gotham Central and am already working my way through the rest. It's exactly what I look for in a story: something that isn't so much about the literal problem at hand, but about the people dealing with the problem. Gotham Central is a character driven piece, always staying focused on the people, their dilemmas, their struggles and triumphs. It gives a human face to a genre that is usually about guys running around in silly costumes. It's a genre that I've been moving away from more recently, but it was nice to dip my toes in without having to venture too far into the realm of spandex and super-powers.
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