Gotham By Midnight #7 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Ray Fawkes
Art By: Juan Ferreyra
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: July 22, 2015

Gotham Is Screwed

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

In the previous issue of Gotham By Midnight, we saw that the Precinct Thirteen team were dealing with Sister Justine's death after what I like to call "The Spectre Incident"......... I didn't say that it was a good name, it's just what I call it.  The death of a teammate isn't the only thing that our Midnight Shift have to worry about though because it seems that even after everything that Agent Rook witnessed while he shadowed the team, he's still gunning to shut them down....... So it's a good thing that Lt. Weaver knows a lawyer and we got our debut of Kate Spencer into the new continuity.  Besides all that though, the previous issue balanced the wrap around story with a monster of the week scenario where Corrigan and Drake took down a vengeful spirit.  I'm a fan of the monster of the week type story, but I hope that this series doesn't become known for that by overusing it.  Let's jump into this story and see what our Precinct Thirteen team is doing and if they can stop "the man" from shutting them down.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with us seeing some terrible shit.  Apparently when Lt. Sam Weaver was a boy, he found his father's body after he committed suicide and while that doesn't really do much for this story, it does let us in on what kind of shit Weaver's been dealing with his whole life. While it's spread out through this book, I guess I'll just break it down here because this is the issue where we get some background on the good Lt.  So we catch a glimpse at what Weaver's childhood was like and then we jump to the day that Gordon first transferred him to Precinct Thirteen, because........well, because Sam Weaver went and saw himself a monster and man, did he not deal well with that.  I don't know Gordon's reasoning behind the transfer because from what we see here, Sam is a bit of a wreck from what he saw, but I guess Gordon knew better than me because even though he's not particularly looking well in this issue, do to the Internal Affairs investigation and him seeing Jim Corrigan become the Spectre, I'd have to assume that he did his job stopping ghosts and ghoulies pretty well up until this point.  I'm just happy as hell that we're getting more backgrounds on these characters because it still feels like we don't know them very well and I'd like to.  

The main focus on this story is another case that the regular cops don't want because........well, because it's weird and The Midnight Shift get the call.  After Detective Drake and Dr. Tarr arrive, they find that the crime scene is indeed weird because the victims of this household seem to have just laid down and died.  After using what I guess is a Egon style ghost detector, Dr. Tarr realizes that whatever affected these people came up from the ground, like a spiritual root and just pulled their spirit down until they eventually died.  So of course Dr. Tarr wants to check out the basement........ because I suspect he's a lunatic....... Who the hell would want to go and do that?  Detective Drake calls Corrigan in as backup before they go down, but sadly Jim has his hands full with guilt as he tried to pack up Sister Justine's place and arrived at the crime scene a little too late.  Even though Drake and Tarr didn't go down into the basement, apparently they were there long enough to get affected as well and the spiritual root grabs hold of Dr. Tarr and starts making him sleepy.  It's a good thing that Corrigan didn't dilly dally with his guilt all day because I don't know what would have happened if he didn't arrive, grab a hold of the root and Spectre the hell out, cleansing the entire neighborhood of this demonic presence.  Actually, yeah I do.  People would have continued dying and that would have been terrible for that area's property value.  

As the story ends, Jim Corrigan comes walking out of the crime scene after the wrath of god light show and pulls a Zelda Rubinstein from Poltergeist impression with "This house is clean".......... Yeah, that didn't actually happen, but that's how I saw it.  Things seem like they actually might be okay in the world of Precinct Thirteen, but apparently Internal Affairs has found a witness in prison, who is willing to testify that he saw Detective Drake shoot three people and Corrigan helped her cover it up.  Looks like Kate Spencer is going to have to work overtime to get our heroes out of this mess and Lt. Weaver's ulcers are only going to get worse.

That's it for this issue of Gotham By Midnight and while I really enjoy this series, at the end of the day there doesn't seem to be much to it.  Again we get a monster of the week story with small amounts of Internal Affairs coming down on the Midnight Shift sprinkled throughout, but not really enough to make us interested.  Especially when the Spectre is out and about, hogging all of our attention and just making us drool with delight whenever he comes around.  No, I'm serious.  Without the Spectre's inclusion, there really isn't anything spectacular that makes you glad that you picked this up........ but with him and the bad ass art by Juan Ferreyra, it just bumps the entertainment value of this book sky high.  I don't get it....... Yeah, I'm a fan of the Spectre, but just him taking over the crime scene blew me away, which is weird because it was only like three pages of this book.  It was just awesome and that's all I can really explain about it.  I'm not saying that the rest of the book is boring though, it's just not that interesting compared to the epicness of The Spectre and I have to sit back and ask myself "would I still like this book if it didn't have The Spectre?" and at this point I don't know.  There's a lot of heart to this series that is being wasted because of the monster of the week type story and I really hope that the book deals with that heart more in the future because I really want to see these characters like actual people because like I already said, I'm just waiting for The Spectre to pop up and I want more than that.  Excellent art all the way through and while I think I could have had a better time with this issue, I'm still happy that I read it.

Bits and Pieces:

I don't know if this monster of the week type story is something that is going to attract more readers, but it certainly won't hurt the readership it already has because the creative team does some real fun stuff with it.  I just hope that this formula isn't repeated too much because I could seriously see it hurting this series if it's overused.  With amazing art all the way through and the arrival of what I think is the best part of this book, it was a really fun and eye catching read.

7/10