Gotham Central

Gotham Central
Cover of Gotham Central #1, Art by Michael Lark
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Publication date	December 2002 – April 2006
Number of issues	40
Main character(s)	Gotham City Police Department
Creative team
Creator(s)	Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark
Collected editions
In the Line of Duty
Half a Life
Unresolved Targets
The Quick and the Dead
Dead Robin

Gotham Central is a police procedural comic-book series that was published by DC Comics. It was written by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka, with pencils initially by Michael Lark. The story focused on the Gotham City Police Department and the difficulties of its officers living and working in Gotham City, home of Batman.

Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker collaborated on the "Officer Down" Batman crossover. They wanted to do a series about the police in Gotham City and finally obtained approval from DC executives. The writers wanted Michael Lark for pencils and waited nearly a year to get him onboard due to scheduling, but used the opportunity to plan out the storylines. They plotted out the new series' elements and decided to script the first story arc together, then split the lengthy cast into two shifts: Rucka would write the GCPD's day shift storylines, Brubaker would take the night shift, and Lark would pencil them both.Gotham Central's debut yielded Eisner Award nominations in 2003 for Best New Series, Best Writer (Rucka), Best Writer (Brubaker), and Best Penciller/Inker (Lark).

Gotham Central repeatedly failed to break the top 100 comics in sales. DC Comics was encouraged by the improved sales of the trade paperback collected editions, and the book was never in danger of cancellation. Ultimately Lark and Brubaker moved on to other projects, and, after three years of publication, the series ended amid the Infinite Crisis aftermath. It continued to have sales troubles through to the conclusion: issue #37 ranked 102nd place, and issue #38 ranked 120th place on the distributor's charts.

Despite this, Ed Brubaker mentioned, in an interview, that the book sold pretty well and was never in danger of cancellation, outselling almost all of Vertigo's books at the time.