10 Smartest Decisions In DC Superhero History

3. Showing A Different Side Of Gotham - Gotham Central

Gotham Central 1
DC Comics

Ignoring for just one second that maybe DC shouldn't have so many Bat books on the shelves at a given moment, one spin-off book that definitely justified its existence was Gotham Central, a project co-authored by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka in the early aughts that focused on the GCPD.

Brubaker and Rucka - joined by artists Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano and others - drew inspiration from television series Homicide: Life on the Street and invited readers to experience Gotham from a new perspective.

It was street-level, on the ground, and showcased how Gotham's ordinary cops do their jobs when they have to face supervillains like Mister Freeze, Two-Face and Joker, all with the Dark Knight operating outside their authority and all the internal conflict that brings.

Gotham Central is a truly extraordinary book, with arguably its crowning achievement being the Half a Life arc, which saw Renee Montoya outed as a lesbian, but the true genius of the comic lies in its ground-up approach to the DCU, spotlighting the ordinary dealing with the extraordinary.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.