Even before R Kelly wrote a song about it for Batman Forever, the gloomy, crime-infested, often arbitrarily art deco Gotham City (“A city of justice/ A city of love”) has been an integral part of the Dark Knight mythos. The producers of Gotham, the Jim Gordon-centric prequel starting this Monday night on Channel 5, are betting there’s enough brand recognition to bring Batfans flocking to see a very young Bruce Wayne and similarly unformed versions of his various nemeses. The show takes some moody cues from Gotham Central, the gritty crime procedural by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka that ran for 40 issues a decade ago, and a new reprint of the first issue makes the TV connection explicit. DC Comics is taking further advantage of the word “Gotham” being plastered everywhere by launching a wave of Batman comics that similarly don’t focus on Batman. Gotham Academy, exploring the cliques and tribes of the city’s most prestigious prep school, reads like Gossip Girl with a weirder undercurrent, while Gotham By Midnight is a straight-up horror comic. There’s also a spotlight on Burnside, Gotham’s hipster district, in this month’s Batgirl #35, which features the debut of Barbara Gordon’s new costume of biker leathers, clip-on cape and stompy yellow Doc Martens. Spandex-free and cosplay-friendly, it’s the most warmly received superhero redesign in years. No wonder Babs was taking a selfie on a recent cover.
There are more comics-related TV shows on the way, with DC’s Supergirl and Teen Titans the latest to be announced, but the major networks have been curiously slow to snap up Image Comics’ Southern Bastards, where the opening page features a mangy dog taking a crap. The first four issues of this profane, southern-fried saga from writer Jason Aaron and artist Jason Latour were recently collected into a trade paperback, introducing Earl Tubb, an ageing Vietnam vet returning to his Alabama hometown only to find it in thrall to a Dixie mafia crime lord. The collision between Tubb and Coach Boss – who also runs the talismanic local American football team – is a blackly comic tale of violence and vengeance, Cormac McCarthy meets The Dukes Of Hazzard. Despite the dog mess and graphic violence, it shouldn’t be read on an empty stomach, as Aaron and Latour have stuffed it with authentic BBQ appreciation, from rib plates cooked low-and-slow to jumbo porks and chow-chow. Tubb dishes out justice with a gnarly big stick, an unexpected echo of Aaron’s next high-profile gig: he’ll be writing the lightsaber-swinging adventures of the young Luke Skywalker in Marvel’s relaunched Star Wars series, due in January 2015.
The Red Skull has turned the Marvel universe upside down by weaponising the late Professor X’s brain – long story – and using turbocharged telepathy to mess with people’s minds on a global scale, inverting their moral compasses. That’s the big idea behind Axis, the nine-part Avengers-versus-X-Men maxi-series that kicks off this month: goodies becoming baddies, baddies becoming goodies, cats loving dogs, mass hysteria. Big, brash comics events always promise that “nothing will ever be the same again” while quietly returning to the status quo a few months later, but there are early signs that some of Axis’s aftershocks might stick. It’ll be the first true test of Sam Wilson (formerly the Falcon), since he took over as Captain America, and will also feature the heavily publicised female Thor bringing some glamour to the hammer, although her actual identity remains a mystery. The whole thing is overseen by Rick Remender, a pulp-loving writer who previously killed the Punisher only to bring him back as the monstrous, stitched-together Franken-Castle. Remender has promised audacious escalations in each of Axis’s three acts, a memorably dickish heel turn from Tony Stark, and an answer to the intriguing question: what if the Hulk had his own Hulk trying to get out? With an accelerated shipping schedule of three issues a month, Axis will all be over by Christmas, though figuring out who’s been naughty or nice this year might be more complicated than usual.
