Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book gets a grave makeover as Mowgli becomes Nobody (um, literally) and Neil Gaiman works his magic in The Graveyard Book. I also thought of Pip and Great Expectations a few times as I turned page after page, resisting the need to put the book down and go to sleep. Finishing this book made me feel better about never having been able to start reading American Gods for reasons quite inexplicable.
Hill Street Blues was on the shows comprising my long education on satellite television. Later, NYPD Blue took over the waves. Lingering memories might have been one of the reasons I enjoyed my introduction to Gotham Central, Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka's police procedural comic book series set in Batman's hometown. Like Kurt Busiek's Astro City, the focus was on people living in a world dominated by a superhero of sorts, on people we otherwise saw as part of the texture of a narrative dominated by Batman and his crusade against crime and his inner demons. In Gotham Central, Batman, like Keyser Söze, looms large on the lives of people, but only appears occasionally while we follow the lives of a police force bursting with ambition, corruption, secrets and administrative frustration. I really wish the public library had all the volumes, but it looks like, as with Busiek's series, I will have to wait for a miracle.
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