“Sunday Bloody Sunday”
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Steve Lieber
Publisher: DC Comics
Plot: Gotham City becomes Sin City, as the fall out of the Days of Vengeance hit the city!
Comments: I’ll get this out of the way now. I love Gotham Central. It’s routinely one of my favorite titles. It’s a title I feel is always getting the short end of the sales charts. Also, Greg Rucka has always been one of my favorite writers as well, long before he started writing comics as his regular gig. And now we have Steve Lieber joining him for an issue. Sounds perfect to me!
Hold on a sec.
How does the old saying go? If it looks too good to be true, it is. Well, this book is not perfect. However, it’s still a very solid, albeit an Infinite Crisis/Days of Vengeance tie-in, tale.
If you’ve read Days of Vengeance #6, you know by now that the Rock of Eternity has exploded above Gotham City. (If you haven’t read it, I guess I should have warned you first to expect a spoiler.) How the detectives, primarily Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen, handle the situation that ensues is not what makes this story. It’s the internal dialogue that Allen has with himself as all this craziness happens around him. How he goes from talking to a shaken Captain Marvel in one scene, to nearly being killed by one of the lamest villains of all time (the Fisherman), to dealing with street punks bound to cause him even more injury is what drives this story. How Allen describes his feelings to the reader, how afraid he is and how he just wants to get home. How he refuses to give up and not die in a “stupid way” at the hands of the Fisherman.
Even though this is a “needed” tie-in to Infinite Crisis, it still is as real as comic can get while still dealing with the supernatural and super-heroic. What we have here are real human emotions. A cop who is duty bound to protect, while also battling through such insanity. Even more so when Montoya is possessed by one of the Seven Deadly Sins and draws her gun on Allen, before being saved by Capt. Marvel.
What made this issue really work was the great artwork by Steve Lieber though. Rucka crafted an excellent story, but Lieber pulled it off. He was able to add realism to what was unreal, to show real human emotions, the cause and effects of tons of rubble falling from the sky. And through it all, in the end, he was able to show the humanity that exists in a world where the supernatural and super-heroic is the norm, not the exception. He drew real, honest to goodness people.
The epilogue: The final 4 pages show why Allen was so determined. His reason for fighting. His reason for never giving up: Family. And in the end, that’s all that matters to him. Even if it’s another “end of the world” in the DCU.
What did you think of this book?
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