Thoughts on Gotham Central, Vol. 1

For a while I've seen the trade paperback collections of this series sitting on shelves, and for the most part ignored them. I don't know why becuase I'm usually all over anything Batman related, but maybe that was it - the point of the story isn't about Batman, in fact it seems to try to prevent using Batman from doing what he does best. I know that now that I spent a little left over Christmas money to pick up the first volume.

Overall I was pretty satisfied with the book. The writing was pretty solid for the most part, and filler dialogue didn't take away from the overall story. I really enjoyed the run-ins with Freeze and Firebug, and the treatment they got with the very mortal officers. The few appearences of Batman also were handled well, giving a real imposing pressence. He was treated very much like a wraith that could be summoned to do some dead beyond the abilities of man, and I loved it.

There were a number of characters, which I have to admit came a little difficult to keep up with. The only name I was familiar with was Montoya, and I realize most of the characters were created for this series to fill out the police force to provide a dynamic cast. It was difficult to keep up with the characters visually due to the art style.

The way the pages were inked prevented much detail from appearing, and thus prevented easy identification of characters. I'll give the series points right now for constant style that ties the story visually, but I'm just not fond of this style. I like detail and percision - characters that appear visually different to a point where you know who you're looking at when they appear in a panel. That doesn't mean the lines need to be clean and crisp, just not blocky. The coloring was also mostly bland, maintaining similar shades for much of the book. I barely recognized Montoya for the little she was in the story, though Batman was easy to identify becuase, well, he's Batman (a large black flowy shape with a chin and eyes).

The last few pages where the overall case that bound the volume together was solved and the resolution were a good ending, and I felt satisfied with it. In fact, I would almost call the last few panels a 'happy' ending. Given that this is Gotham City, that's saying something special.

I'll probably pick up volume two, becuase like I said it was fairly original and written well. Hopefully as the characters are used more they will grow personality (more-so than in this volume). I also hope that character designs are developed more so you can follow who's doing what, aside from calling the characters out by name.