Gotham Central remains the best reason to visit Gotham City at all these days for the older comic-book reader, whether you're a fan of superhero vigilantes or not. Brubaker and Rucka have built the series around a sort of gritty realism that is unwelcome in most of my superhero books, but which really works here, and instead of going for the shock value that all too many "mature" comics in the superhero genre go for, they bring an intelligence and complex, adult sensibilities instead. Which isn't to say that this book lacks in shocks, whether it's the suspenseful and even violent prison break at the end of the issue or the shocking realizations about who is really behind the murder of a high school baseball team (or more correctly, who isn't behind it), just that this book doesn't rely on the shocks to keep its readers. Instead, it relies on solid characterization, the best damn mysteries in comics period and some of the most gorgeous and yet realistic artwork to be found in comics pages as well.
It's funny, this week I take Identity Crisis to task for making villains more effective, more dangerous and more vicious, and now I'm about shower love on Gotham Central for doing much the same thing with Mad Hatter. Difference is, Brubaker has made the Mad Hatter dangerous not by having him act in lurid acts of violence, but making him smarter, by putting him into the midst of a murder-mystery that has gone unsolved. Jervis Tetch, third-rate Batman villain with a freakin' Alice in Wonderland fetish, comes across here as being as dangerous and smart as Hannibal Lecter, and all without throwing in a gigantic bodycount or egregious crimes that make the cops look ineffective.
Because if there's one thing the cops in Gotham Central aren't, it's ineffective. Brubaker has brought Bullock, the bull in a china shop version of a renegade cop, back to this story, and he doesn't just spice things up, he adds an interesting contrast to the more thoughtful, procedure-driven main detectives on the case. I'm a big fan of Bullock, have always liked his sort of cartoonish unreal cop persona, and I hope that Brubaker finds some way to keep him around, but what's really interesting is that even when I find myself loving his "ends justify the means" methods, I can see how dangerous and unpredictable he is to the other cops. There are some fantastic Bullock moments in this issue, notably the one where he rants on his way out of the station house. However, the focus is very much on Detectives Driver and Mac, and watching them put the puzzle together really shows off how they bring smarts, training and instincts to their job.
Beyond having a fascinating mystery plot and solid characters, though, Gotham Central #21 also has that all-important sense of atmosphere that has been a selling point of the book from the start. Lark and Gaudiano draw Gotham in such a realistic, detailed fashion that it feels like you could step into the pages and visit its Brownstone-laden neighborhoods, pop into "The Wake Up Call coffee shop" for a cup or walk into the somewhat rundown and yet terrifying claustrophobic Arkham Asylum. The people look and act like real people, from the silent but emotional sequence between Detective Romy Chandler and author Angie Molina to the tense, stilted behavior of guard Merv that gives away his secret long before Lark tips his hand to readers who haven't already figured it out. And Brubaker contributes to this too, with a funny sequence between Detectives Driver and Mac and some potential leads in their case, throwing out a couple colorful personalities where a lesser writer might have just stuck an infodump related to the case.
Gotham Central simultaneously makes the Gotham beat something dark enough that you wouldn't really want to visit it and believable enough that you think you could. The big ensemble cast has on occasion been unwieldy, but for whatever reason this arc seems to have a tighter rein on the dramatis personae, and the result is one of the most focused and gripping issues of Gotham Central yet, in the midst of one of the best arcs they've done. Now where the hell is my second trade paperback? Because this series sure as hell deserves one, and soon.
