Gotham Central Vol. 4: The Quick And The Dead
December 4, 2006 | Trades
Gotham Central Vol. 4: The Quick And The Dead
Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudino
DC Comics
$19.99/$14.99 US (Paperback)
**** (out of five)
The Gotham City Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit is facing its toughest test.
After the brutal events of 2004’s Batman: Gang War, which saw dozens of cops killed and the Dark Knight stage a hostile takeover of the GCPD, Commissioner Michael Akins declares the vigilante a criminal and orders his officers to refuse to cooperate with him ever again.
When a beat cop has his physiology radically altered by a chemical trap, detectives Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen have track down the person responsible. When it turns out to be the villain Doctor Alchemy, the officers may have no choice but to accept Batman’s assistance — whether they want it or not.
This sadly missed series — it ended in February 2006 — was just so incredibly well put together and it really shows in The Quick And The Dead. There’re only a few brief cameos by Batman and the book proves it doesn’t need that famous face to shine. The characters were so darned strong (as evidenced by Montoya’s current starring role in DC’s 52 and Allen’s turn as the new Spectre).
There’s still a couple of collections to come to finish Gotham Central’s 40-issue run in trade paperbacks and one can’t help but wonder if they’d rushed the collections of this series out a little faster if it could have propelled it into stardom where it belonged.
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