I dont know about you, but I don't wanna see Munch run out a bunt.
Oh my god, you guys, this day. this day. On the one hand, I should not have taken yesterday off - it would have made my morning a million times less fraught. On the other, everything worked out fine, and I still would have ended up in a meeting (second of the day) that was scheduled for 30 minutes but took two hours. All I lost was about 2.5 hours of sleep on the deal (because I woke up at 4 am panicking about stuff that still needed to be done and didn't get back to sleep), so I guess everything's a trade-off. (I got in at 7:45. I didn't get to sit down at my desk until 1 pm. Oy.)
And I got to spend all day yesterday reading Gotham Central from start to finish, which was fantastic and I highly recommend it, especially if you are a fan of Homicide: Life on the Street, because it shares a metric fuckton of DNA with HLotS. I feel the guys who wrote this must have read the book, if not been fans of the show.
Gotham Central follows the adventures, such as they are, of the Major Crimes Unit of the Gotham City Police Department. Like my beloved Baltimore homicide squad, they work partners, they have a Board on which open cases are noted in red and closed cases are noted in black, and, it's been said, they work for God (Pembleton: "The work itself is the most important thing. What we do is important. We speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves and you're not gonna ever find anything like that anywhere, not in LA, or patrolling the grounds at Disneyland." Pembleton, of course, is God's favorite cop.).
The MCU deals with high level/sensitive crimes, and at the start of the series, all of its members were handpicked by Commissioner Gordon and are known to be honest police amid the sea of corruption that is the GCPD. They catch the murders that likely involve metahumans or Gotham's particular brand of psychopath. Occasionally, they interact with Batman, with whom they have a very uneasy relationship. He's not one to overshare, you know? And they don't like that when it comes to information on cases.
The main partnership we follow is Renee Montoya - who is AWESOME - and Crispus Allen - who is likewise awesome. At the beginning of the series, Montoya is a closeted lesbian. There are numerous other awesome women in the cast, including Josie MacDonald, Romy Chandler, Dagmar Procjnow, and Captain Maggie Sawyer. I also grew fond of Stacy, the long-term secretarial temp who is employed by the department because actual city employees are not allowed to turn on the Batsignal, because doing so renders Batman an agent of the GCPD, and thus, the evidence he gathers in that capacity tends to be inadmissible in court.
If you read comics for the art, um, this is not the comic for you. It is not very pretty, nor could I tell the any of the white guys (but especially Driver and Patton) from each other most of the time.
But if you like police procedurals and women kicking ass while leading a diverse cast of cynical but driven cops, you will like this. The writing is sharp and tight, and you really get a sense of what it must be like to live in a city where you don't just have to worry about regular crime, but also criminals like the Joker or the Penguin popping up to wreak havoc.
I was SO SAD when Cris Allen died! I was not expecting that! I mean, I knew through fannish osmosis that Montoya left the force to become the Question, but I didn't know that was why. Oh, my heart. I totally teared up when that happened.
Allen reminded me of Pembleton in some ways, but most especially when he had his monologue about not believing in god anymore. He doesn't have quite the quotability Frank had, but who does?
I was also taken aback by the dead Robins, which I was not expecting! I mean, they weren't actually Robin, and it does lead to Tim having a couple of cute encounters with Stacy (and the running thing about Batman taking Chandler's gun [Tim: "He shouldn't have done that." Stacy: "Well, she probably shouldn't have shot him." Hee!] was hilarious), but still, unspoiled, it was quite an eyeopener.
I also liked - if by liked you mean was totally creeped out by - the arc where Two-Face tries to ruin Montoya's life because he's in love with her because she was kind to him.
Ah, there is so much I liked about this that I'm sad it ended, because that means there isn't any more, but I was happy it had a contained story that reached a satisfactory conclusion, even if it kind of broke my heart.
I highly recommend it.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/280147.html.
people have commented there.
And I got to spend all day yesterday reading Gotham Central from start to finish, which was fantastic and I highly recommend it, especially if you are a fan of Homicide: Life on the Street, because it shares a metric fuckton of DNA with HLotS. I feel the guys who wrote this must have read the book, if not been fans of the show.
Gotham Central follows the adventures, such as they are, of the Major Crimes Unit of the Gotham City Police Department. Like my beloved Baltimore homicide squad, they work partners, they have a Board on which open cases are noted in red and closed cases are noted in black, and, it's been said, they work for God (Pembleton: "The work itself is the most important thing. What we do is important. We speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves and you're not gonna ever find anything like that anywhere, not in LA, or patrolling the grounds at Disneyland." Pembleton, of course, is God's favorite cop.).
The MCU deals with high level/sensitive crimes, and at the start of the series, all of its members were handpicked by Commissioner Gordon and are known to be honest police amid the sea of corruption that is the GCPD. They catch the murders that likely involve metahumans or Gotham's particular brand of psychopath. Occasionally, they interact with Batman, with whom they have a very uneasy relationship. He's not one to overshare, you know? And they don't like that when it comes to information on cases.
The main partnership we follow is Renee Montoya - who is AWESOME - and Crispus Allen - who is likewise awesome. At the beginning of the series, Montoya is a closeted lesbian. There are numerous other awesome women in the cast, including Josie MacDonald, Romy Chandler, Dagmar Procjnow, and Captain Maggie Sawyer. I also grew fond of Stacy, the long-term secretarial temp who is employed by the department because actual city employees are not allowed to turn on the Batsignal, because doing so renders Batman an agent of the GCPD, and thus, the evidence he gathers in that capacity tends to be inadmissible in court.
If you read comics for the art, um, this is not the comic for you. It is not very pretty, nor could I tell the any of the white guys (but especially Driver and Patton) from each other most of the time.
But if you like police procedurals and women kicking ass while leading a diverse cast of cynical but driven cops, you will like this. The writing is sharp and tight, and you really get a sense of what it must be like to live in a city where you don't just have to worry about regular crime, but also criminals like the Joker or the Penguin popping up to wreak havoc.
I was SO SAD when Cris Allen died! I was not expecting that! I mean, I knew through fannish osmosis that Montoya left the force to become the Question, but I didn't know that was why. Oh, my heart. I totally teared up when that happened.
Allen reminded me of Pembleton in some ways, but most especially when he had his monologue about not believing in god anymore. He doesn't have quite the quotability Frank had, but who does?
I was also taken aback by the dead Robins, which I was not expecting! I mean, they weren't actually Robin, and it does lead to Tim having a couple of cute encounters with Stacy (and the running thing about Batman taking Chandler's gun [Tim: "He shouldn't have done that." Stacy: "Well, she probably shouldn't have shot him." Hee!] was hilarious), but still, unspoiled, it was quite an eyeopener.
I also liked - if by liked you mean was totally creeped out by - the arc where Two-Face tries to ruin Montoya's life because he's in love with her because she was kind to him.
Ah, there is so much I liked about this that I'm sad it ended, because that means there isn't any more, but I was happy it had a contained story that reached a satisfactory conclusion, even if it kind of broke my heart.
I highly recommend it.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/280147.html.
people have commented there.