Zero Year will be featured throughout many DC books this month and 13th Dimension got an exclusive peek at Detective Comics #25 along with a chat about it with writer John Layman.
Detective #25 follows a determined, honest cop James Gordon, in a Gotham pre-Batman, and trying to deal with crime in Gotham, and corruption within the GCPD. It takes place during a terrible storm, where the lights are out, and both Batman and the people who will go on to be Batman’s inner circle have different challenges they have to deal with, in a pre-Batman landscape we have not seen before.
How much are we going to see of Gordon’s backstory? Will there be any elements of his family life? His wife, James Jr., Barbara?
It’s mostly Gordon on the job. The things that shaped as a cop for the days to come, when he is in charge of the cops on the GCPD.
Tell me your thoughts about Gordon as a character. How is your take different from what we’ve seen in say, Year One, or other iterations?
Like Batman, he’s very focused, and he wants justice, even if he makes enemies along the way. I think this is the James Gordon we’ve seen before… just a few new dimensions added to him.
Was it your idea to use Gordon specifically? How did this specific story emerge?
Well, a potential problem with writing Detective, a Batman-centric book, is that he also is the star of other books, in this case Scott Synder’s self-titled Batman book. There is a specific story being told there, and we’re trying to compliment it in books spinning out of it. In this case, Batman was off the table, so I chose another character that would be best to tell a Detective-type story in a pre-Batman world.
Are you laying groundwork for stories down the line, or is this more or less a contained piece that fills in some of the blanks for New 52 Gordon?
It’s largely self-contained, but it should add some new dimension to Gordon, and readers will get a better idea why Gordon and Batman work so well together — when they eventually meet and choose to work together.
This issue certainly sounds enticing, especially with that last line, which meshes with what Scott Snyder hinted about Gordon and Batman initially hating each other. Will you be picking it up? What other tie-ins are you planning on getting?
Source – 13th Dimension