Gotham By Midnight #6 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Ray Fawkes
Art By: Juan Ferreyra, 
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: June 24, 2015

Monster of The Week

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to get back to walking the spooky alleyways of Gotham as we follow the Midnight Shift of Precinct 13 and after the events of last issue, I'm all for it.  When last we followed Jim Corrigan and his crew, they had their hands full with the manifestation of genocide that the original Colonial settlers of the area caused when they came to America and man does this thing want Gotham to pay for it's past sins.........which brings us to the ultimate dealer of judgement, The Spectre.  It was really incredible to see this giant abomination and a giant Spectre duke it out, towering over Gotham and luckily for all the people who inhabit the city, Sister Justine prayed for their well being and traded her life for theirs.  The threat was over but for who long?  As the entity slunk back to Slaughter Swamp it dropped the black flowers we've seen throughout the first issues of this book all over the city.  Hopefully, there won't be any ramifications there........  Let's see what our team are doing one week later as we get into this book.

Explain It!:

Our story begins at Sister Justine's funeral, where as you'd expect, not everyone is having the best of times.  Corrigan simply wants to get a drink and Dr. Tarr is in the church, questioning god about his existence for letting this happen, while the rest of the team want to know about Corrigan's spiritual nuke he carries inside of him and what's up with Detective Drake's death scream.  We all know that Corrigan is the Spectre, so there's nothing really new there, but with Lisa Drake we find out that she has Faerie blood inside of her and Corrigan believes that she was somehow switched at birth.  It all goes back to those omens of death from old folklore and the question about if death happens because of the scream or if the scream is simply predicting death..........noway to know and man I hope we get some more background on Detective Drake because this is really interesting to me.  Well, it doesn't look like they'll get to honor Sister Justine with a drink like Corrigan wanted because the team get a call about a problem at the Powers Corporation, so Corrigan and Drake go on the case while the others prepare to be fully investigated by Internal Affairs because Rook's a dick............. Yeah, that's all, he's a dick.  After all the shit he's seen and after our crew here saved his life, he's still trying to shut them down and even bring them up on criminal charges.........Just a straight up big bag of dicks.  Anyway, it looks like Lieutenant Weaver is going to call up an old attorney friend to help them with their troubles.

At the Power Corporation, Jim and Lisa hear about a ghost problem that the business is having.......Well, we hear a whole shit ton about the new Powers Watch that the company made first, but eventually we get to the ghost problem.  Lousy watches.  So get this, on top of a haunting that is happening out of nowhere, one of the Powers Watch team was attacked and began choking and at the hospital they found out that he had a piece of human heart wedged in his throat and man does that just blow a Amityville Horror style "GET OUT" right out of the freaking water.  Corrigan and Drake get some info about a worker who died of a stroke recently and after Corrigan has one of his Spectre senses, he discovers that this is in fact the ghost of the dead man and that it wants retribution for his death.  After the ghost comes back and attacks the man who called Precinct 13, Corrigan gets him to admit that he gave the man speed, which led to his death and then covered it up so his family wouldn't receive any of the life insurance.  So after the man admits it and promises to make it right, the ghost disappears and our team move on to catch their next creepy case.  

In the end, the attorney Weaver called shows up and we see the introduction of this new continuity's Kate Spencer.  She tells Weaver and us that whoever is behind Rook's investigation, seriously wants to shut down Precinct 13 and have them all put behind bars, but who this mysterious person is...........well, it's left a mystery for another time and besides for Dr. Tarr getting weirder and weirder as he experiments on one of those black flowers..........that's all she wrote.  

That's it for this issue of Gotham By Midnight and while I enjoyed this book and it's clearer visual style, there just wasn't much too it.  Yeah, I appreciated getting the background on Detective Drake because I've been curious about her since we first saw her scream, but I just would have liked a little more emotion out of our team dealing with Sister Justine's death.  I'm sure we'll deal more with it later, but this just felt like the perfect time for it because of her funeral and all and instead we're given a monster of the week type story........which isn't bad.  Yeah, I know.  I'm back and forth here.  I liked the story and the art and there's no reason that you shouldn't pick this up if you've enjoyed the rest of the series, this just feels like a missed opportunity to really get some emotion out of the group is all.  Many love what Ben Templesmith did with the first five issues of this series but I'm happy as hell that Juan Ferreyra is on this book now because I didn't miss any of the story because it's perfectly told through his art.  

Bits and Pieces:

Gotham By Midnight is back and I'm happy as hell about that.  Even though I feel like we could have gotten a little more emotion out of the characters due to the circumstances that they're dealing with, this is still a fine horror comic that keeps me wanting more.  Juan Ferreyra's art is really enjoyable, especially since now I feel like I'm not losing any of the story due to the art on the book.  

7.5/10