Prevailing wisdom would have it that the mid-nineties era of Batman comics was as an uninhabitable, terrifying wasteland as they were set it. Don't listen to those haters, though, and especially not to the ones who claim the epic No Man's Land storyline was only good as inspiration for The Dark Knight Rises, the final entry in Christopher Nolan's series of Batman films that saw Gotham City cut off from the rest of the United States and officially abandoned by the nation's government. Thanks a lot, Barrack Hussain Obamacare. Some crazy guy in a gas mask blows up a couple of bridges and you leave a whole city to die! In the comic books, things happened a little differently. Which is to say awesomely, as Gotham was rocked by a series of huge disasters: first there was a lethal virus unleashed across the city that claimed dozens of innocent lives, then Bane returned to try and snap Batman's spine yet again, and then an earthquake that tipped 7.6 on the richter scale hit just over a mile outside of Wayne Manor and tore the city apart. Hundreds died, thousands more were injured, there were prison breaks, riots, and the emergency services couldn't keep up even with the assembled might of the extended Bat Family and friends. With attempts to maintain any sort of order dashed and the cost of rebuilding the city absolutely untenable, the US government officially declared the city a "no man's land", evacuating the majority of the population and leaving the rest to fend for themselves. This lead to a year of inspired little stories and grand machinations that saw the GCPD, Batman, and various gangs lead by supervillains fighting for supremacy, with uneasy alliances and double-crossing on the scale of a Game Of Thrones episode. Oh and death. Lots of death. It was ace!
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
