This is GCPD: The Blue Wall. It is Written by John Ridley and Illustrated by Stefano Raffaele. The Coloring is done by Brad Anderson and the Prime Letterer is Ariana Maher. The other Letterer for this book is Josh Reed. The cover used above is Illustrated by Reiko Murakami. Trigger Warning: This book contains elements that one might find concerning such as tense violence, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, racism, harrasment, alcoholism, homophobia, police brutality, sociopathy, and mental breakdowns. Readers discretion is advised. This book follows Renee Monotya, who has just accepted her first set of recruits as commissioner of the GCPD. Both her and the new recruits hope that they will be able to change the bad name that the GCPD has from the citizens of Gotham. Will they be able too, or are they just another cog in the machine that is Gotham City?
As you can tell from the trigger warnings, this is a really dark book. I was really curious about this book because John Ridley is a black man and has commented on problems that affect people of color in the past. So I was interested to see his viewpoint on what life is like inside the police force itself. And I have to say, he did not dissapoint with his commentary. I saw that he used this book to disprove the claim that the problems in the police force can be fixed with good cops on the inside. That these problems are deeply ingraned in police culture and will take systematic changes to fix. It is utterly fascinating the political discussion shown throughout.
One way that this politcal discussion is represented are through the new recruits. This story focusses on three recruits named Park, Eric, adn Danny. These new officers go into the police thinking that they can give it a good name after the years of bad press. Throughout the story, each one of them faces constant pressure and harrasment by the other officers. When they try to report what has happened, they are laughed off and deterred from taking action. And this all converges in a traumatic event which forever changes them. It is really sad because seeing these characters at the beggining of the book, to the ending is night and day. They become completely different people. Then there is Renee, who I believe represents someone who survives the constant harrasement. She has become the police commissioner and there is hope for change. But even she can’t stop it. With the constant harrasement that she received throughout her career, it turned her nihilistic and cynical. It is also been normalized to her. So when others come to her for help, she also just brushes them off. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. It’s a very depressing story which makes you dissapointed in the police.
Spoiler Alert: One interesting thing with this book is Renee’s PTSD and alcoholism. One of the main sources of Renee’s trauma is Two-Face, who outed her as a lesbian to the entire police force in a previous comic book series. This lead to Renee having a major distrust with his recent return to the public eye. This really adds to Renee’s ongoing cynicism and is used against her later in the story. I think this portion of the story really shows how complicated of a person Renee is. She isn’t a perfect person, and she has caused active harm against innocent people. Now, the latter section of this book is when all hell breaks loose. Danny, after reaching a breaking point with all the harassment, takes up police weaponry and goes to war against the police, with Renee being the main target. He shoots down a multitude of police officers, including the ones who harrassed him. He also targets members of Renee’s family as a way of punishing her. He then tries to kill Eric becuase he believes that he is with “the machine”. This section, in my mind, really shows what the police culture can do to a person in the worst cases. It can break people, and no one can be sure how that person will react.
With the art for this book, it is pretty good. The art is farely realistic, so it fits with the tone of this book. I also really enjoy how this book is much darker than other books. That gives fits the general themes that it is representing. Other than that, this book has some great art.
As you can see from my commentary so far, this book is rather different than the other books I have reviewed. It doesn’t have superheroes in it and there isn’t a costumed villain for the hero to defeat. This book is about regular people trying to make a difference a dealing with extremely complex situations. This book is extremely political and will piss people off. But why shouldn’t it. These themes and topics should be discussed. And comic books should be an outlet to do so. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in these types of political topics.