Greg Rucka

After some of the lackluster stories of the previous volumes, Gotham Central goes out on the top of its game. Unfortunately, writer Ed Brubaker leaves early in the volume, and longtime artist Michael Lark isn't here at all, but that doesn't dampen these excellent stories. The first is one of those Batman's-relationship-with-the-police tales I love so much, "Dead Robin." The G.C.P.D. finds a corpse wearing a Robin outfit-- but he couldn't be the Robin, could he? They're forced to confront show more just how little they know about the Batman and his "family," and their already sour relationship is further tested when Romy Chandler shoots the Batman, still on edge after the death of her partner in the previous volume. There's even an appearance by the Teen Titans, which is fun if a bit dissonant, and Robin himself puts in his only appearances in the series, with some nice scenes between him and Stacy, the Major Crime Unit's temp. And the climax of the mystery was just great; Kano and Gaudiano draw an amazingly frightening Batman.

The story I wasn't expecting to like here was "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which tells what effect the Infinite Crisis had on Gotham. Though I know that things like that have to affect the city, it just seemed like the multiverse being remade would be so tonally inconsistent with this series. To my surprise, it wasn't-- the whole story is told first-person from the perspective of Crispus Allen, and he doesn't understand what's going on one tiny bit, but he still knows he has to do his duty getting Montoya to safety and finding his family, even if he did just run into Captain Marvel and the Spectre. It's the story of Allen's faith, as he begins by ruminating on how he doesn't believe in God anymore... and ends by praying with his family. I don't think the story of the Infinite Crisis could have been told in Gotham better than this.

The last story is "Corrigan 2," and it follows up on the events of the Corrigan story of the previous volume. The focus of the story is again on Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen, as Allen tries to stem Montoya's descent into anger and violence, with disastrous consequences for them both. This is completely a traditional cop story, with no Batman elements at all, but it really works here, with many of the character elements seeded throughout the series coming into play. The story is riveting and moving, a fantastic end to what had been a strong concept.

My only complaint is that there are some character threads from earlier volumes we'll never get to see now, not unless Sarge gets a larger part in your average Batman comic than I suspect he actually does. It's a real shame this series came to an end. But this was a great way to go out-- though I preferred "Soft Targets" in Jokers and Madmen, this is the most consistently strong of all the installments.

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One of the neat things about the setup of Gotham Central is that the cast is divided up into a day shift and a night shift. Greg Rucka writes the stories about the day shift, and Ed Brubkaer writes the ones about the night folks. They cowrite the stories that are so big both shifts get involved. In the first two GC collections I read, nine of the twelve stories were Rucka day-shift ones, whereas just five were Brubaker night-shift ones, so it was nice to get Jokers and Madmen, where show more Brubaker's characters seem to dominate. Mind you, the writing the two do is so well-integrated that if it wasn't for the character thing, I wouldn't've known who was writing at any given point.

The first story, Brubaker's "Daydreams and Believers," is a one-off about Stacy, the temp who operates the Bat-Signal. She's a bit of an outside in the G.C.P.D for obvious reasons, and the story nicely capitalizes on that to show her perspective on the various other people who work in the Major Crimes Unit-- not to mention the Batman himself. There's a hilarious two-page sequence featuring Batman here that I didn't see coming. Brian Hurtt's detailed art doesn't really fit the Gotham Central style, but it works for this one tale.

The next story, "Soft Targets," is co-written by Brubaker and Rucka, and it seems to have been the basis for the recent Batman film The Dark Knight, as it sees the Joker terrorizing Gotham City solely as a way to get at Batman. (Okay, this probably happens a lot, but the political assassinations and the scene with the Joker in the interrogation room really made it seem Dark Knight-esque to me.) This is the single most successful story in all of Gotham Central, I think, seeing the cops scrambling to stop the Joker when really the Joker just sees them as ways to aggravate the Batman. All of the characters here are just caught in the struggle between these two figures, and the story is all the more intense for it. From the second page, I was gripped, and like "In the Line of Duty" in the first volume, it really manages to merge the considerations of a police story with a Batman one, as the characters have to negotiate city politics and the media as they try to do their jobs and take down the Joker before he blows the city to kingdom come. The story's set at Christmas, which helps too, as the art (which sees Stefano Gaudiano taking over for Michael Lark and doing just as good a job) can be all snowy and moody. This story actually has the cops figuring it out before Batman, which is nice. But in the end, as far as they can tell, they're just pawns in his insane game with the Joker.

After this is "Life is Full of Disappointments," a story which has an interesting form, as it take the form of a case that keeps on getting bumped from detective to detective, meaning each of its three different parts focuses on a different pair. This lets the series focus on some people who haven't had much page time thus far, like Sarge Davies, who is one of my favorites. Some of the tales are kinda trite, though, like the one about the mother whose son plays in the Orchestra. Greg Scott's frankly weird art, which struggles to ape Lark's style unsuccessfully, doesn't help, either. I did like the one about the cop who knew the Huntress, though. The mystery here is so-so, but it's of minimal importance in a decent character exercise.

The last story in the book is Brubaker's "Unresolved," which has Driver and Josie Mac investigating a long-closed case that Harvey Bullock-- longtime member of the G.C.P.D. forced into retirement after killing a suspect-- was never able to figure out. The best part of this story is again the character work, especially Bullock's. A cop's cop, he can't deal with being off the force, and it's killing him. The scene between him and his old partner Montoya is particularly good. It's not really a Batman story, nor even a peripheral-to-Batman story, but it works all the same on the strength of the characters. Lark and Gaudiano work together on the art for this one, and it looks great, too.

Overall, the stories I find most fascinating in the series are the ones that really feel like peripheral Batman stories; the ones like that could be told in any cop story live and die on the characters, and though most of these characters are fine, there's too many of them to be effective, and not all of them are Renee Montoyas, Crispus Allens, or Marcus Drivers. Or even Josie Macs. Of those, some work, and some are kinda dull. It doesn't help that I can't always tell the characters apart, even with the handy (if inaccurate) guide in the front of the book. The book also has an overreliance on cop-killing to make things dramatic. It might be accurate to the way these things are shown in a Batman book, but here it sometimes feels like a gimmick to prove the situation is serious-- this department has a ridiculous rate of attrition. But this volume is definitely the series' finest hour, really showing what it's like to be an ordinary person caught in the middle of a Batman story.

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One of a trio of middle grade books released as part of Force Friday and the Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens publishing initiative (the others are Star Wars: Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure and Star Wars: The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure), Greg Rucka's Star Wars: Smuggler's Run: A Han Solo Adventure takes place directly after the events of Episode IV: A New Hope and finds Han Solo and Chewbacca reluctantly taking up what should be an easy rescue mission for show more the Rebellion. Of course, things don't go according to plan, and Han and Chewie find themselves the targets of not only a band of bounty hunters sent by Jabba the Hutt, but also the Empire, as Imperial officer Alecia Beck tries to capture both Han and Chewie as well as the Rebel they are trying to rescue.

While this is a short book, Rucka clearly knows Star Wars: Han and Chewie feel and act like themselves; the Millennium Falcon is practically a character unto itself; the galaxy feels large; the Empire is relentless and imposing. Even the new characters introduced felt like they belonged in the Star Wars universe. The story is just plain fun and fast-paced, if not abruptly ended, but it still feels like a complete story. The prologue and epilogue bookending the main story are set in the time frame of Episode VII: The Force Awakens and while they don't give us any concrete clues to the upcoming movie, you do get a little taste of what Han and Chewie are like.

While Smuggler's Run is marketed as a middle grade book and it isn't a necessary read for the overall Star Wars story, it's an engaging adventure that will entertain any Star Wars fan, young or old. For me, it fell squarely between Moving Target (the best of the trio) and The Weapon of a Jedi (the weakest of them). I'll definitely be picking up Rucka's Star Wars: Shattered Empire when it is released, a graphic novel set directly after the destruction of the second Death Star.

A note on the design of the book: All three of the middle grade books are packaged similarly, each set up in three parts with a prologue and an epilogue. Before each section there is an illustration by Phil Noto that is presented in greyscale with red highlighted areas. The red is reflected throughout the chapter openers, as well as the dust jacket covers and the boards of the book. The entire thing comes together in such an impressive package. I'm hoping that if they do anymore middle grade adventures of other Star Wars characters that they keep this same packaging throughout, as it is top notch. show less

A moody dystopic piece of a future world where a few families control vast territories. Their family retainers are serfs; everyone else is Waste. Forever Carlyle is a warrior and protector of the Carlyle family. She is a kick-ass ninja/samurai. In this story she discovers a terrorist plot to bomb the 'Lift', a mass testing convention organised by the Carlyles to 'lift' eligible Waste persons into serfdom. The story is well done and drawn, contrasting Forever's investigations with the show more travails the Barrets, a Waste family journeying to the Lift with nothing to lose. I will seek out the first in the series after this.

(After re-reading in 2021): This is still one of the stronger works of this series because it interleaves the Family struggles with the lived experience of Waste struggling to survive in this unequal world. show less