By Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, Chuck Dixon, Steve Lieber, Joe Giella, Dick Giordano & Bob Smith, Brent Anderson, Paul Pope & Claude St. Aubin (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1360-2
Over the many decades of Batman’s existence, almost as important as the partnership between Dark Knight and assorted Boy Wonders has been the bizarrely offbeat yet symbiotic relationship between those caped and costumed vigilantes and Gotham City’s top cop James Gordon.
In this collection, compiling five individual pastiches released as the miniseries Turning Points in 2001, readers saw revealed significant moments in the development of that shadowy alliance produced, as an added bonus for long-term aficionados, in tribute to key eras in Batman’s waxing and waning career by veteran artists and the toast of the new wave creators…
It all begins with ‘Uneasy Allies’ by Greg Rucka & Steve Lieber, set in the days – and style – of the mysterious vigilante’s stormy debut in Frank Miller & Dave Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One.
Police Captain Gordon is still the only honest cop in a corrupt and brutally gung-ho force, reeling from the shock of his wife divorcing him. When bereaved, heartsick and crazed college professor Hale Corbett takes a wedding hostage, Gotham’s SWAT team commander is champing at the bit to storm in and rack up the body-count, but wanted felon The Batman offers Gordon a slim hope of ending the siege without loss of life…
All the masked nut-case wants in return is a sympathetic ear at the GCPD…
A working relationship established, ‘…And Then There Were… Three?’ (by Ed Brubaker & Joe Giella – who drew many of the 1960s stories and the Batman newspaper strip) celebrates the era of TV’s “Batmania†as, about a year after their first meeting, reports of a garishly garbed boy assistant to Batman begin to filter in. As deadly psychopath Mr. Freeze rampages through the city, Gordon demands to why the now-tolerated Caped Crusader is recklessly endangering a child…
In a romp filled with such past icons as giant props and gaudy villains, a decidedly deadly outcome makes Gordon realise the true nature of Batman and Robin’s relationship…
‘Casualties of War’ (Brubaker, Dick Giordano & Bob Smith) is set in the bleak aftermath following the death of second Robin Jason Todd, the crippling of Barbara (Batgirl) Gordon and the torture of her father, all at the bone-white hands of The Joker.
A solitary, driven Dark Knight haunts the streets and allies, ceaselessly crushing criminals with brutal callousness, whilst sinister serial killer The Garbage Man prowls unchallenged…
When the wheelchair-bound Barbara fails in an attempted intervention to calm a Batman pushing himself near to breaking-point, it takes a rooftop heart-to-heart with now Commissioner Gordon to finally crack the Gotham Guardian’s shell and begin the healing process…
Years later, as a result of a strategically systematic attack by would-be crime-lord Bane, an exhausted and broken Batman was replaced by another, darker hero. Set during the Knight-Fall publishing event, ‘The Ultimate Betrayal’ (by Chuck Dixon & Brent Anderson) describes the moment Gordon realised that his enigmatic ally had become a remorseless machine and exterminating angel hunting criminals with no regard to life anymore.
If only third Robin Tim Drake could have told him that the man behind the cowl – and claws and razor-armour – was actually Azrael: hereditary and murderously programmed living weapon of an ancient warrior-cult…
The journey comes full circle with ‘Comrades in Arms’ by Rucka, Paul Pope & Claude St. Aubin, wherein a mysterious stranger and his family hit Gotham on a mission to find Gordon and Batman, just as the Commissioner introduces his destined successor Michael Akins to the Major Crimes Unit.
Word on the street is that the Russian mob are planning a huge retaliatory strike and every cop is waiting for the hammer to fall when Hale Corbett walks into Police HQ demanding to see Gordon and the masked manhunter who changed his life all those years ago…
Filtered through gritty modern sensibilities but still able to revere past glories and the Batman’s softer side, this superbly readable collection also includes a cover gallery by artistic all-stars Javier Pulido, Ty Templeton, Joe Kubert, Howard Chaykin, Pope & Tim Sale.
© 2001, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
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