The Best TV Show Never Made - Gotham Central

Imagine a television series that took place in Gotham City. Oh wait, that already happened. It was called Birds of Prey and focused on Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress. It came and went quietly. But imagine that it was done RIGHT, by making it in the Chris Nolan age where realism, grit and epic storytelling were the main themes.

Gotham Central started off as an experiment in 2003 by the best crime writers in the comics genre - Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka, two guys who know how to write genuine detective stories as well as police procedurals. Their idea was to do crime stories set in the city of Batman but with the costumed freaks firmly in the background. The main characters were formerly supporting ones themselves - Maggie Sawyer who previously was the head of Metropolis' Major Crimes Unit now transferred to Gotham, Crispus Allen from Detective Comics and the animated DVD Batman: Gotham Knight, Renee Montoya from Bruce Timm's Batman Animated and Marcus Driver, an entirely new character. Their stories focused on solid police procedurals that sometimes involved supervillains, sometimes not - and Batman's presence (if not the man himself) shadowing in the background. Many of the characters, of which there are almost 20 officers, look down upon their supposed need to always contact Batman to solve their cases. And while most refuse to accept his help when they hedge their own abilities to solve crimes, they do understand his necessity in taking down some of the supervillains when their own firepower isn't enough.

So combining top-notch storytelling and clever cameos by Batman and his Rogues Gallery (plus some cameos from the Titans and Flash's Rogues), what do you get? Eisner and Harvey Award attention in the first year for writing, series and inking. You had serious DC character development unmatched in other series, Montoya (who most of us remember as the plucky detective alongside Harvey Bullock and Jim Gordon in the DCAU) becomes a lesbian and starts her path into leaving the GCPD and turning into the next Question, and Crispus Allen is on his way into becoming the next Spectre. And it was a thrill to see how seemingly regular crimes ended up involving characters like The Joker, Mad Hatter, Two Face or Catwoman. Or vice versa, where you would think costume freaks are involved but you are not sure. Maybe not.

But funny enough, the series was a commercial failure. It was like a critically acclaimed art house movie that wins top honors at all the film festivals and yet never finds its audience. It ran for 40 issues before the writers could no longer justify its existence despite continually racking up awards.

And end footnote was that, ironically, TV execs at Warner Bros (owners of DC and producers of the Nolan films) LOVED the comic series. Although they were nonplussed with Birds of Prey's failure, their confidence in the quality of writing and character development (imagine Hill Street Blues or CSI, but with Batman in it!) would make it a reality if not for the fact that there is a moratorium on all Batman TV shows as long as the film saga will keep going. So we got that.

Asian Superheroes part 1 - Immortal Weapons

Iron Fist seems to have been getting a renaissance treatment these days. Having recently being written by Ed Brubaker, who is more known for crime stories like Gotham Central, Catwoman or other Batman titles. So taking the Chinese martial arts would seem to be a strange departure. But in some ways it's not to be totally unexpected that a top-notch writer has been hired on to write kung fu. The Asian superheroes subgenre itself is getting some momentum. DC Comics and Grant Morrison came out with the Great Ten in their Justice League titles and Crisis crossover and that got a lot of attention. (I will be covering the Great Ten in part 2)

The Iron Fist series has always been second-rate until now - Danny Rand, Marvel Comics' greatest martial artist, was paired up with an inner city urban warrior named Luke Cage in the 1970s to fight thugs and non-too threatening lowlifes. His mythical origins from the fabled city of K'un-Lun was nothing more than an exotic token to Asian martial arts and a hurried explanation as to why his kung fu was the best. But now he has been given a rich mythology, where his spiritual homeland is now known to be one of seven mythical cities, each one of which has their own champion similar to himself. And they kick ass. Seriously.

They first meet in a tournament to fight against each other to see which of the seven cities has the right to have open access to Earth. But then they discover that it is all a sham to destroy all of them and they team up. Now you would think, a supreme martial artist is usually partnered up with other super-beings in most comic books, but finally he is paired up with a superteam who are ALL supreme martial artists, each with their own set of specialty skills bordering on the supernatural.

Now accompanying Danny Rand is Fat Cobra, a sumo-looking giant who has the expected strength and endurance, but also lightning fast strikes that bely his appearance. Bride of Nine Spiders - a gothic wraithlike teenager whose upper torso launches swarms of spiders that engulf and confuse her opponents while she whirlwind kicks them into oblivion. Dog Brother #1 - an armoured assassin resembling the terra cotta warriors of Qin Shi Huang, who commands packs of wild dogs and is an expert with all swords. Tiger's Beautiful Daughter, a scantily-clad babe with two folding fans that also function as twin giant scythes and aid in limited flight, and has unexpected super strength. And lastly there is Prince of Orphans, the ultimate warrior. His real name is given as John Aman, previously known in Marvel Comics in the 1970s as Amazing Man. No one knows how he went from a lesser-known superhero to a facially-scarred ass-whupping martial artist who Rand considers to be far superior to his own skills. Aman's abilities to turn himself into a green mist storm on top of his considerable martial arts abilities makes his own teammates tremble at his potential.

There is now an Immortal Weapons limited series of 5 comics, each one giving an origin story to each of the Weapons, starting with Fat Cobra.