10 Incredible Batman Comics (That Don't Star Bruce Wayne)
1. Gotham Central
This police procedural focuses on the Gotham City Police Department and the struggles of being officers of the law when you have corruption and supervillains to deal with, on top of all the usual petty crime rampant in Gotham.
Within the forty issue series, the storylines run from the terrifyingly realistic, such as The Joker sniping police officers, to being heavily involved in the capes and cowl crowd when a boy dressed as Robin is found dead. The most well-known story, however, is the outing of Renee Montoya as a lesbian and being discriminated by her colleagues and family for it.
Ultimately, Montoya's storyline exemplifies the book's strengths. The humanity of the characters mixed vividly with some of the more fantastical elements of the DC Universe, but they never crossed into the land of the absurd. Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka kept it simple in co-writing the book, with Ed taking the night shift and Greg taking the day. Both writers were able to bring their powerhouse writing to the book, making it one of the most incredible Batbooks there is.
There were other books with this premise, such as the 1996 Chuck Dixon miniseries Batman: GCPD, or the post-Batman Reborn series Streets of Gotham, yet none could hold a candle to this tour de force!