Jim Gordon: GCPD: Nights *UPDATED*

Just a chip off the old brick.
LEGO HUMOR!

The news from Comic Book Hollywood (Would that be Comicwood?) is that we will see another comic hero making his way (Yeah. It’s a guy. You shocked?) to TV. A month back we heard about Flash coming to TV via a spinoff of the series Arrow. But know Warner Brothers will be producing a new series, based around Commissioner James Gordon, to show on FOX.

From the talk, it looks like he won’t be the commissioner of police. But he will be in Gotham City. It seems to be some sort of a prequel to the Batman era of the city. So it doesn't seem we should see any of the classic costumed criminals, nor have any sighting of Bruce Wayne (unless they are tweaking his history for the show as well).

Now the show is being made by the creator of The Mentalist, Bruno Heller, so we know he can make interesting criminal procedurals. But will it be a show worth using Gordon in, or worth getting excited about?

What origin will Gordon have. Jim Gordon has been given different origins over the years. Is he the guy who moves to Gotham and discovers how corrupt it is? Is he the guy who’s lived in the city for years, and has hit the wall of police corruption? Who will Gordon be?

From Gotham Underground #2
Art by Jim Califiore

And what it Gotham without the Bat? Or his Rogue’s Gallery?

This bugs me. You take out the superhero and the super villains from Gotham, you have a corrupt, dirty, mob infested city. And you have Gordon, the one honest cop…And we've all seen that show or movie. What is the thing that will differentiate the show? The fact that it’s Gordon? That it’s Gotham? That he’ll be BFF’s with a prosecutor named Harvey Dent? That he’ll eventually be trailing a teenage female cat burglar (wink wink)?

And who will, or can appear? Harvey Bullock? Renee Montoya? Maggie Sawyer? Harvey Dent? O’Hare? Or will they be skipped due to rights issues?

It just all feels odd, from this information sparse perspective. The story of Gotham is that things were seemingly hopeless (in the modern myth) until Batman appeared and changed the game on the mob.

I wonder what they are going to bring to differentiate it from other cop shows. I look forward to hearing.

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By Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka,
and Michael Lark

If I heard a show like this was coming out, I’d have assumed they would go straight for the Gotham Central comic concept. Follow the detectives of the Gotham Police as they deal with a city that has a lot of normal crime, and also super villains popping up, and also the other stress of being in law enforcement. It was a great book.

This seems like a great way to do a show. Batman was a virtual nonentity in the book, as the police were at point it was trying to show it didn’t rely on vigilantes to keep order. And it was full of good characters.

And I thought doing a West Wing type show like that book. Have Gordon be a more background character. Have Batman at a distance. But get the insane and colorful city, and the stories. You could also have Batman be an urban legend that Gordon is trying to keep a lid on, so he never needs to appear.

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But, yeah, Commissioner Gordon: The Series. And no Wonder Woman show or movie. You get the feeling Steve Trevor has a better shot at a show about a super spy, than Wonder Woman does. (And yeah, Steve Trevor would probably get a show before Lois Lane to.)

I’ll just say to Warner Brothers, look at the current appearance of Wonder Woman in the Smallville: Season 11 comic book to see how easy it is to introduce her, and tell and interesting and engaging story about her coming to Man’s World. It’s so flipping easy. It’s not hard, complicated, or confusing.

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UPDATE:

And following on the thoughts above about characters that would beat Wonder Woman to TV, enter another.

How he used to look
by Tim Bradstreet

How he looks now.
Justice League Dark #1
Peter Milligan & Mikel Janin

John Constantine is having a show developed by for NBC. Constantine is a long running misanthropic character. He's a trouble maker, a dabbler in the dark arts, and called a jerk by those closest to him. He's a cynic and heavy on the snark. Odds are he will get you killed, but in the process he'll take down a dangerous and nasty magical threat to the world.

He has a nice long history at Vertigo, a part of DC for more adult works. But now they've been trying to shift him more into the mainstream books. He's looking a little cleaner and toned down. He's also part of a subset of the Justice League (called Justice League Dark), which is also being considered for a movie right now.

And with these modifications, he's heading to TV (Would have been nice if it was a cable series based on some of the old darker stories of Hellblazer.) (Okay, there is the Constantine movie that was made in the good old days...But...Keanu Reaves!)...

...Maybe this means Zatanna, Enchantress, and Madame Xanadu will find their way to TV (Yeah. I know. Zatanna has appeared on Smallville and on some of the animated series.).