World Famous Comics: Gotham Central Book One: In the Line of Duty
Gotham Central Book One: In the Line of Duty
By: Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka Publisher: DC Comics Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: DC Comics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 240 Publication Date: September 16, 2008 Release Date: September 16, 2008
Product Description: The first ten issues of the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning series is collected in hardcover for the first time! Written by Ed Brubaker (Captain America) and Greg Rucka (Detective Comics, 52), this series pitted the detectives of Gotham City's Special Crimes Unit against the city's greatest villains – in the shadow of Batman himself. This volume collects two cases of the Gotham Special Crimes Unit. In the first, a cop is killed by Mister Freeze, and the squad is in a race against time to bring him in without the help of the Dark Knight. In the second story–the acclaimed, award-winning “Half a Life”–Detective Renee Montoya is outed as a lesbian and finds her work environment and personal life turned upside down. Things only become more complicated when she’s kidnapped by Two-Face. This debut volume features an introduction by acclaimed mystery author Lawrence Block.
Shining the light on 'secondary' characters This book is great. It's police drama that happens to be set in the Batman universe. Despite that, it's very moving portrayal of work-a-day cops just trying make it through their shift. I bought this during a "slow" comics week and went back the next week for all the other published trades and I still want more. This series also gives a lot of the back story for Renee Montoya that you only get as hints in 52 or the new Question book.
Well worth the read.
Beautiful Edition For all those that have read and enjoyed these issues in single-issue or TPB format, this book is totally beautiful and well worth upgrading to. The color is the major improvement here, and reveals this stunning artwork in a way that those gray-looking pages of the TPB just could not. The use of dead black throughout the book is unique and evocative. The artwork takes me back to the work of David Mazzucchelli from the Year One story. A very well done hardcover collection of a fantastic comic book series.
DC is stealing your money To start - the stories in this volume, and in the series, are amazing. The bad review is because DC cancelled this amazing series and now they are reprinting it. Buy the softcovers from Amazon or local sellers. There is no reason to spend money on a hardcover AFTER the softcovers have already been out for several years.
Hardcover collects the first ten issues of this outstanding 2003 DC police series Starting in 2003, the multiple-Eisner award winning "Gotham Central" series followed two separate shifts of police officers working in the present-day Major Crimes Unit of the Gotham City Police Department. It was written collaboratively by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka and penciled by Michael Lark. In the GCPD's struggle against crime and terror, Batman looms as both competitor and savior. This hardcover collects the first ten issues of the series and includes three major story arcs. Renee Montoya, a key figure in DC's "52" series and inheritor of "The Question" persona, is one of the day shift officers. Frequent Batman villains Mr. Freeze and Two Face appear in the first and third story arcs, respectively. Like most books from these writers, this excellent series is recommended for those who don't normally read comics as well as established fans of the genre.
excellent police procedural As a fan of Brubaker and Rucka already, and as a fan of noir/hard-boiled fiction, Gotham Central seemed a natural fit for me. I wasn't wrong. I came in late but I'm really glad I'm here. I'll leave it to others to detail the stories but just know that this is classic Bru and grand cop procedural story-telling. As for the art, Lark starts off a little rusty but grows to the job before the book is over.
...and if you haven't heard of Brubaker and Lark before, try some Captain America. He's dead, you know...
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
