A new story arc begins as Greg Rucka takes over as the main writer (the basic setup of the collab is that Brubaker writes the second shift cops we met in the first arc, while Rucka writers the first shift cops we meet in this one).

“Half A Life” is arguably the definitive Gotham Central story arc, having won an Eisner Award in 2004, and it centers on the most famous member of the comic’s sprawling cast of regular characters: Detective Renee Montoya (who, as mentioned before in these newsletters, made her debut on the brilliant Batman: The Animated Series and was later added to comics canon, much like Harley Quinn).

“Half A Life” opens with Montoya going for a run one morning, greeting members of her community and generally just seeming like a nice person. Unfortunately for her, she is promptly served with court documents indicating that a suspect she recently arrested — a guy named Lipari, who later walked when the evidence against him disappeared (foreshadowing, perhaps?) — is suing her for $10 million.

At the station, our old pal Detective Driver makes a little cameo, shooting the proverbial shit with the day shift detectives, and we meet Crispus Allen (Renee’s partner) and Captain Maggie Sawyer (Jim Gordon’s replacement as head of the Major Crimes Unit), who insists that it’s going to be a beautiful day. She’s wrong, because it’s Gotham City, and a cop from downstairs — as in, not part of the Major Crimes Unit — arrives to dump an unsolved case on Allen’s desk. It’s a straightforward burglary that they’ve been unable to solve, and Allen suggests that the regular cops have a tendency to drum up phony connections to Bat-villains (in this case Catwoman) so they can pass the cases they don’t want to bother with on to the Major Crimes Unit.

(It would make my life easier if I used the acronym, but I refuse! It would be too confusing!)

Montoya and Allen do some investigatin’ and find out that a lingerie store was robbed, and that the owner’s brother is a shady character. They bring him in and immediately clock that he’s a junkie, but Montoya can’t stick around to question him because she has dinner plans. Allen asks about the lucky guy (hmm…), but Montoya laughs it off and says she’s actually meeting up with her parents, who are very concerned about whether or not she will eventually give them grandchildren. She’s not getting any younger! When is she going to settle down with a nice man? (HMMMMM…)

Feeling bad about herself, Montoya calls someone (presumably an ex?) and goes to meet up with them. The next morning, she returns to her apartment and is greeted by two men from Internal Affairs (always the baddest bad guys in any cop story) who inform her that Lipari is missing and that a private detective he hired to get dirt on Montoya was murdered. They suggest that she might be in danger, dancing around the more unpleasant question — “Did you do it?” — but Montoya’s day only gets worse from there. When she arrives at the precinct, she finds a group of detectives crowding around something that someone from second shift pinned up on the wall: a photo of her kissing another woman.

Hey, it was 2004. That counted as a dramatic cliffhanger. It’s also an important step in LGBTQ representation in comic books! Renee isn’t the main character of the book, but it’s still a big deal to have a recognizable person in a Batman-adjacent comic be a lesbian. (As far as I know, DC’s first solo comic led by a gay woman is the Batwoman comic that starts a few years after this.)

(Also, while we’re talking about LGBTQ representation in DC comic books and Batman: The Animated Series, I have to recommend Kevin Conroy’s incredible “Finding Batman” story, which was included in DC’s 2022 Pride anthology and is available to read for free. Seriously, I can’t hyperbolically endorse it enough: It’s a heartbreaking, perfect masterpiece.)

The Untitled Comic Book Newsletter Book Society continues next week with the seventh issue of Gotham Central. Read along at home! Email me your questions or comments if you can find my email!