Weekend Review: Gotham Central, Book 4: Corrigan

Haven’t done a comic review in a while!  A weekend light reading review…because Pastors also need a break from heavy theological reading.

Greg Rucka.  Gotham Central, Book 4: Corrigan. Burbank, CA: DC Comics, March 15th 2011. 224 pp.

4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

Are you into Batman enough that you are interested in the world of Batman and also its peripheral characters?  Batman of course lives in Gotham City, a city that resembles a lot to New York City.  In this graphic novel (comic) volume Batman moves away from center stage so Gotham City’s police department’s Major Crimes Unit can take the limelight and focus for the readers.  DC Comics got a good team of artists and writers for this Gotham Central series and book four is no different.

The last few DC comics I read made me appreciate how this book unfolded the narrative.  With some of the recent Batman comics in the Rebirth series I didn’t appreciate how fragmented various Batman issues were when you go from one issue to the next consecutively; there were a lot of issues that felt like fillers.  But here in this volume even when there’s another short story there was a sense of continuity and it wasn’t just done to get issues sold for bare bottom line; there’s an actual good story and exploration of the characters and the characteristics of Gotham!  For instance the book begins with a story called “Nature” and while the second story was something else (it was about an alleged dead Robin) still we see its interconnected with the detectives determination to solve crime mysteries and also get down to the details to pursue justice.

The biggest portion of this book was related to the “Dead Robin” story which is on pages 33-126.  But what I felt was the uniting theme in this volume is the reality of police corruption, the difficulty of policing and police work such as solving homicide and the curve ball of trying to aim for a good outcome but the challenges of navigating with all kinds of challenges.  Unlike the other volumes there’s less exploration of the detectives’ domestic and personal life; but it builds on that from previous volumes in order to see how it affects these men and women serving as law enforcement with increasing challenges from evil doers and criminals.  The person strain reaches a critical point for detectives like Crispus Allen and Renee Montoya.  The questions with these two detectives in their inner monologues that the readers get to read makes one wonder along with these characters of whether all that they do with the costs in their own personal life is worth it.  I’m reading this in 2020 and I think in some ways it is relevant: For the men and women of law enforcement, I’m talking about the rank and file officers who are trying to do the right thing, what is the costs and tipping point where they say enough is enough and they quit?  What is the toll for them in terms of their family, their relations with others and also the trauma they’ve endured?  The book heads towards a conclusion that left me thinking a lot these things.  This issue perhaps more than the other three previous volume, felt the most human in showing the human side of policing.  There’s officers getting annoyed with bad police officers, detectives trying not to have their personal side affect their professionalism and also a whole group of officers on the move to stop another murder from happening and detectives revisiting old cases because they want to get things get made right.  Kudos to the team that produces this incredible work.