In fact Year One may have a big role to play in how Gotham turns out. Ben McKenzie recently tweeted out a photo of the reading material he has to get through as he gets into the role of Detective Jim Gordon. Not only did it include Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's classic story of both Batman and Gordon's first year trying to clean up the streets of Gotham, but McKenzie has also been way through collected editions of The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Earth One and the massively underrated Gotham Central series. This is mighty reassuring. Gotham may be charting new ground in a lot of places, but it's also got a wealth of source material to draw from, and from the looks of it they're cherry picking some of the best. Besides Year One, the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale double-bill of The Long Halloween and Dark Victory are a couple of the best stories to include Gotham's non-costumed crime fighters and criminals alike, and Earth One is an alternate-reality take on the familiar Batman story that the Gotham City Police Department play a large part in. Gotham Central, meanwhile, is something of a lost gem; created by Michael Lark, Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka (the latter of whom started off his career a crime writer), the series chronicles the work done in supervillain-strewn Gotham by street-level cops in the GCPD, in stark comparison to the high-flying adventures of the Batman Family. It was like The Shield or Homicide: Life on the Streets set in the DC Universe, and if Gotham turns out anything like that? It could be something very special.
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/
