Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty - Part 1

[espanolbot]

Detective Marcus Driver and his partner are investigating an anonymous tip regarding a teenage girl who had vanished on the way home from a babysitting job...







Freeze encases Driver's hands in ice, and freezes one of his shoulders to a wall. His partner isn't as lucky, and is frozen solid while trying to save Driver. Mr Freeze isn't exactly happy at this situation, and demands to know why two GCPD officers were knocking on his door, snapping off one of Charlie's ears when Marcus refuses to answer his questions.

Marcus explains that they weren't after him, and that them knocking on Freeze's door was just a case of bad luck. This makes Freeze smirk, and he comments how horrible things happening to you because of bad luck is something that Gotham teaches everyone in time. Before him and his henchman make a run for it though, he decides to teach Driver "Gotham's more advanced curriculum... the tragedy of surviving loss... a preview of things to come...".

Maggie Sawyer puts Renee Montoya in charge of the investigation, and she and her partner Crispus Allen begin working through it.





Driver gets back the Major Crimes Unit's HQ, where Sarge (a cop from Harvey Bullock's time) offers his condolences about Charlie's death, and mentions something that he had introduced to the MCU. For all active cases the names of detectives are written up on a board, along with their cases so that people can keep track of their clearance rate.

Charlie wrote Batman's name up onto the board to shame the MCU with how much higher Batman's clearance rate was in relation to their's. When someone new took over the second shift, they tried to get Charlie to remove Batman's name on the basis that it was demoralising the MCU, which the detective said was the point.

With this in mind, Driver goes to Commissioner Atkins (Gordon's replacement after he retired following his wife's death and his near-fatal shooting) and asks that he hold back from turning on the Bat Signal. Marcus reasons that since it was a cop that died this time, it should be them that capture Mr Freeze this time as he sees it as a personal attack against THEM. Atkins asks if they can continue this conversation later, on the basis that this is Mr Freeze they're dealing with here so there's more at stake here than their pride.

Marcus is intervied by Renee,





It turns out that a cop just found Freeze's henchman, it seems that after he drove Victor somewhere in a van Freeze put his freeze-ray in his mouth and turned it on full blast...

Comments

[rdfox]

Yeah, I think I figured out the "why" as soon as I saw the name of the person who Marcus had to meet at the morgue...

[espanolbot]

No, Charlie's wife being called Nora is just a coincidence.

[filthysize]

Even weirder: the cop's name was Charlie Fields, and his ME wife's name is Nora Fields.

In Snyder's recent Batman Annual, it's revealed that there was never a Nora Fries, and that the Nora that Freeze is in love with was a woman from the 30s named Nora Fields.

Not sure if coincidence...

[northstarfan]

I love this series; one of the very few comics where I've bought the collections in two editions. "Homicide: Life on the Street", set in Gotham and guest-starring Batman.

[mrstatham]

I still think it's a damn shame DC seems to alienate the kinds of creators who put together books like this, favouring bigger sales over critical acclaim, really. Although at the same time, I'm glad that the project JMS was talking about at the same time as his WW and Superman runs - some kind of hospital-based series set in the DCU - never came to pass. It takes a certain kind of writer to just get that more down to earth feel, and JMS hasn't really been on top form since he left Marvel, whereas Rucka and Brubaker and their assorted art teams have arguably just gotten better since they did GC.

[northstarfan]

It is unfortunate that DC seems to have taken the attitude that it's the IP that will keep people coming back, regardless of who's actually handling it. For all that can be said about Marvel NOW!, they do seem to be pretty gung ho about letting the folks on the non-flagship books do their own thing. Hopefully the Gail Simone hubbub reminded the Distinguished Competition that creator loyalty isn't something that can be totally disregarded.

[filthysize]

I never get tired of seeing Gotham Central scans here.

[superfangirl1]

I agree. They are very great view of how things go about in gothem city.

Mr. Freeze

[adam_sherman]

While I think the rest of Gotham Central was awesome... I'm not the only one headdesking at Freeze seeming more sadistic than he normally would be, am I?

Re: Mr. Freeze

[espanolbot]

The regular DCU version was kind of a different ball game to the DCAU one, in that he also has the sympathic backstory (retconned in after Heart of Ice) but more often than not he's just out to steal diamonds in some way to stay alive or blackmail people to stay alive longer.

In other words, the version of Mr Freeze when he first came back as a severed head? The "think upon what you cherish most, and despair, for I have come to take it from you!" personality he got after loosing Nora, both to one of her doctors and due to him being, well, a severed head, caused Vic to become massively bitter and out to make everyone miserable.