The Daily Comic Book Coffee, number eight: Gotham Central #6 by Michael Lark, from DC Comics, cover-dated June 2003.
Gotham Central, which was co-written by Ed Brubaker & Greg Rucka, successfully walked the line of being a serious police procedural in the vein of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels and the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street while being set in a city where a vigilante who dresses as a bat regularly fights a rogues gallery of insane costumed criminals. I admired Brubaker & Rucka for successfully straddling genres during Gotham Central’s 40 issue run as it chronicled the saga of the Major Crimes Unit’s detectives having to deal with Gotham City’s myriad super-villains, the police department’s own rampant corruption, and the interpersonal problems that resulted from having such a stressful, dangerous job.
Issue #6 is the first chapter of the five part “Half A Life” arc written by Rucka and drawn by Lark, which sees Detective Renee Montoya’s life severely upended by the duality-obsessed villain Two-Face. On this page we see Montoya, as well as Captain Maggie Sawyer, Detective Crispus Allen and Detective Marcus Driver. That’s Maggie Sawyer with the coffee pot in hand, with Driver also having a cup of java. After all, if you’re putting your life on the line in a crime-infested hellhole like Gotham, of course you’re going to rely on caffeine to get you through the day. This is a nice page by Lark, with solid storytelling. And the dialogue by Rucka is really sharp.
About Author
