Sometime in 2010 comic book team Jeff Thomas and Celeste Green were commissioned by DC comics to create an animated series called Gotham High. The premise was a pretty simple one, take the basic premise of Batman and all his allies, enemies and general world, deage them all to teenagers and make them attend high school together.
It's not really my cup of tea, but it looks like it could be a fun, campy take on some of the characters. Plus when you think about it, Batman's whole wheelhouse is psychological drama and what better hot bed of psychological drama to throw the likes of poor, deformed Cobblepot, intellectually isolated E. Nygma and the positively split in two Harvey Dent than a high school setting. It had potential, and the artwork is particularly beautiful if you wish to check it out (the image above is thanks to the Batman wiki, which I'll link to shortly) but sadly was buried under a cascade of other Batman projects in the pipeline.
If your interest is piqued I suggest heading to Jeff and Celeste's blog for more art and the aforementioned Batman wiki for a potted synopsis.
But if you're really despairing at the loss of this show, then never fear! For Fox seems to have taken this idea and ran with it for a live action feature it's own!
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Gotham the latest attempt by DC to tell one, drawn out origin story for their heroes because they presumably want to save the really good stuff for their movies?
I really don't know, and I don't want to judge the series entirely from its trailer. However, there is a very clear albatross around this shows neck and it's part of the reason I brought up Gotham High above.
You see, Gotham has a lot of potential because it was already walking on fairly proven ground. A television show about Gotham city police department? That's essentially live action Gotham Central and that sounds awesome. Even if young Gordon doesn't particularly scream 'Jim Gordon'. However this show has done something particularly strange, they've decided to mix it up with the origin of young Bruce Wayne too.
This doesn't really need to be a problem by itself either. Having a sub-plot involving a budding relationship between young Wayne and Gordon is a pretty alluring idea, the problem is that where there's a baby Batman? There are baby villains too! And by goodness that trailer is pushing more than I'm comfortable with.
The fact that it reminded me of Gotham High is a white flag in itself, as this show is seriously setting itself up to be a serious drama on par with other show like Arrow and Smallville and we're essentially having seven to fourteen Bruce Wayne (I'm guessing, as traditionally Bruce loses his parents about seven, but they may want to up his age for television purposes) and his entourage of occasionally weird looking, tiny villains plaguing his life before the bat suit is even a thread between its tailors fingers.
I can't help but think this will lead to convulsions and awkward situations later down the line. If nothing else the show is going to have a very strange tone for it and I really can't help but think that they'd all have done a whole lot better abandoning the prequel angle entirely and just having an adult Commissioner trying to lead his team of detectives against the Riddler's latest perplexing puzzle. Racking their brains to solve a crime that spans the entirety of the city for clues before time runs out!
At least, that sounds more fun to me...
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