Bad Seeds: Gotham Central Issue 1 Review

Bad Seeds: Gotham Central Issue 1 kicks off a tense week in the major DC crossover event. Poison Ivy has taken over the city with aggressive flora, cutting off travel and leaving the police force to manage a crumbling urban landscape. To make matters worse, Vandal Savage has turned the department into a corrupt mess, forcing honest officers like Jim Gordon to operate on the fringes to maintain any semblance of order.

Writer Christopher Cantwell does a great job of showing how isolated these beat cops are. The story splits its focus between a mysterious murder and a high stakes hunt for Anarky within the city underground. Throughout the issue, you really feel the strain on these characters as they try to follow procedure while the world around them falls apart. It is a bleak, uncomfortable look at a city that has completely lost its way.

Jacob Phillips provides art that perfectly matches the desperate tone of the story. The streets are covered in thick vines and thorns, and the coloring uses heavy shadows to keep the reader as disoriented as the officers. While the thick lines can occasionally make the action hard to follow, that lack of clarity actually helps sell the feeling of being trapped in a nightmare. If you want a gritty crime story that strips away the capes to focus on the regular people left behind, this is a must read.