Few things move faster than the Gotham City justice system, so, almost immediately after being arrested for the murder of a criminal dirtbag, GCPD Detective Renee Montoya is having her day in court… or at least her arraignment. [This is a good opportunity to point out that I wrote a last-minute essay on the season finale of Daredevil: Born Again, which was and is exclusive to email subscribers and will not be archived until I feel like doing it. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably a subscriber already, so you probably read it.]

Montoya’s arraignment features the first big surprise of this issue: Her cheap lawyer has been replaced by none other than Rachel Green from the show Friends — she had the haircut, and the poorly conceived romance with Joey, and she was once on a break from Ross. Actually, it’s just a character named Rachel Green, but it’s still a weird choice. Friends was still on when this issue came out!

Seriously, though, this character predates Gotham Central and appears in this comic as a little Easter egg for serious Bat-nerds. She mentions to Montoya that she was hired by Bruce Wayne for this case (what does Gotham’s most famous billionaire playboy have to do with any of this?), and that’s because she is canonically Bruce Wayne’s personal attorney. Apparently she helped with the paperwork that allowed Bruce to formally adopt his young ward, Dick Grayson, which is… interesting?

(It better be interesting, or I don’t know what we’re doing here.)

Anyway, Montoya and Rachel (who has to hurry back for her shift at Central Perk) file a not guilty plea and Montoya is shipped back off to jail to await her bail hearing. On the way, the prison bus is attacked by two armored cars full of dudes in masks with uzis who kill all of the guards, release the prisoners, and take off with an unconscious Montoya in their trunk. It’s a very Christopher Nolan Batman-y scene, and you’ve got to wonder if this arc was part of his inspiration for The Dark Knight (I don’t think there’s any connection between this Rachel and Rachel from the Nolan movies, though).

Enter: Crispus Allen, Montoya’s partner, and a guy who finally gets a spotlight after spending most of this comic book in the background. First, he makes an effort to be nice to Montoya’s girlfriend, and then he gets pissed when he returns to Major Crimes HQ and finds out that a new cop (MacKenzie? No, MacDonald?) has already been appointed as his partner. He’s mad because, as far as he’s concerned, Montoya will be right back. He knows she’s innocent, because he trusts her, so he thinks it’s pointless to have a new temporary partner.

Lucky for him, though, she’s surprisingly astute: She clocks that there’s some damage on a mailbox from the getaway car that attacked the bus, and she later notices that the damage on the mailbox matches the damage on a car in the GCPD garage — meaning a cop was involved in the attack! They figure out who drove the car last and go after him, Allen says he’ll personally do the lethal injection of Montoya is killed, and this cop is like “it’s not like that” but he doesn’t say what it is like.

Meanwhile, Montoya wakes up in the lair of Two-Face! He’s obsessed with things that are two things, his house is split down the middle in a nice half and an evil half, he drives a car that’s half nice and half evil, and we know for a fact that he cannot sanction Jim Carrey’s buffoonery. Actually, none of that happens, but he does say that he’s taking care of Montoya, the way he always has. What does that mean? What’s he up to? We’ll find out next week, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

The very first Untitled Comic Book Newsletter Book Society comes to an end next week with the 10th issue of Gotham Central. Read along at home! Email me your questions or comments if you can find my email!