and Bellaire
DC Comics have announced “Gotham: Year One,” a six-issue miniseries starring Slam Bradley by writer Tom King, writer/artist Phil Hester, artist Eric Gapstur, colorist Jordie Bellaire, and letterer Clayton Cowles. The book will follow a young Samuel Emerson “Slam” Bradley two generations before Batman, when the infant Helen Wayne — one of the Wayne family — is kidnapped.
King states, “I can say it’s incredibly rare to write book like this, where you can add something large and essential to the mythos of the Dark Knight, as Scott did with ‘Court of Owls’ or Grant did with the introduction of Damian or Frank did with, well, everything he touched. In ‘Gotham City: Year One,’ Phil and I will take you to a noir drenched past, where the secrets that made Gotham become Gotham, the sins that made Batman become Batman are finally and violently revealed.”
Hester adds, “Tom has crafted a story that will echo across Batman lore past and present, and I hope the storytelling techniques Eric, Jordie, Clayton and I are bringing to bear will augment his razor-keen approach. I’m honored to play a small part in bringing [Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster’s landmark creation to a new audience, and in giving one of DC’s oldest legends the white-hot spotlight he deserves.”
P.I. Slam Bradley was created by Siegel and Shuster from a concept by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, and first appeared in 1937’s “Detective Comics” #1. He played a prominent role in Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke’s early 2000s “Catwoman” run, but has only made a few appearances in the comics since the ‘New 52’ reboot in 2011. One of those stories, 2013’s “Legends of the Dark Knight” #5, marked the first artistic collaboration between Hester and Gapstur, who has been his primary inker since. “GCYO doesn’t happen (for me) without it,” he tweeted.
Helen Wayne is a new addition to the Gotham mythos, although Helena Wayne was the name of Huntress (Batman and Catwoman’s daughter) in pre-Crisis continuity, and a character by that name appeared as the hallucinatory wife of the Dark Knight in the 2011 Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode “Mitefall!” (written by Paul Dini.)
“Gotham City: Year One” #1 will be released on October 4, with a variant cover by Ryan Sook, and a 1:25 variant cover by David Marquez; you can check out an uncolored preview here.
