Alright, so just finished up Gotham Central, a great series that ended way to soon in my opinion.
Spanning 40 issues, it followed the Gotham City Police Department, (or GCPD,) and was initially written by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka and penciled by Michael Lark, though Lark left after issue 25 and Brubaker after the Dead Robin storyline. The ending of the series was Brubaker's own decision, on account of a feeling that the project was not the same without all three of them. He finally decided to put a close on the project after the events of Crisis On Infinite Earths a massive DC event that basically retooled the entire DC universe, killing off unneeded characters and streamlining the DC world considerably.
I thought it was a very interesting take on the Batman franchise, (although it wasn't primarily a Batman comic per say, and the caped crusader himself barely appeared in the series,) and it gave a great feel for the men and women who protect Gotham City. Of course, the majority of the Gotham police are corrupt, seeing as how Gotham is primarily portrayed as a dark and ruthless city in the Batman world.
The specific unit that the comic focused on however was a rare case of thoroughly good cops; the Major Crimes Unit, or MCU, was a peck of good apples amidst the bad. However the corruption that racked the CSU and Forensics department did create multitudes of trouble, disrupting if not all together ruining cases. (In the end of the series in fact, one of the MCU is killed by a corrupt CSU although I won't, of course, tell you which officer took the fall.) The MCU's job is to handle the serious cases, and this of course often leads to cases involving the "freaks" of Gotham. (It was the MCU that had the bat-signal on it's roof until it was forced to remove the bat printed floodlight due to several events in the comic.) The villains that appear in the comic include Mr. Freeze, the Joker, Two Face, Poison Ivy, the Mad Hatter, and brief appearances by The Penguin, The Riddler, Killer Krok, and several others. I must emphasize that this comic plays a lot different than other Batman series, and that it's basically the equivalent of watching the detective's try to solve these odd cases and overcome personal and ethical hardships along the way. Several of the old cast went on to appear in other DC comics, although I don't feel like looking for the complete list.
The Gotham Central series had sales problem throughout it's run, although it was acclaimed by critics and had a very loyal fan base: the fact of the matter is though, that these do not always mean commercial success. The art wasn't exactly fantastic by any means, but the writing was compelling, and overall this was an excellent series well worth the time it took to read. For more on Gotham Central, check out the Wikipedia article.
~Luna
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