mike carlin

It's Star Trek's 50th anniversary and between the well-received Star Trek Beyond, the fact that all of Trek is available streaming basically everywhere, a new TV show coming next year, and the continued release of new novels and comics, it's a good time to be a fan of the USS Enterprise and its brethren. Comics have been a part of Trek lore from almost the very start. Beginning in 1967, when the original Trek was wrapping up its first season on NBC, Gold Key published a series that only had two consistent features: an irregular publishing schedule, and an almost total disregard for how the characters actually looked.

To say that Greg Rucka had a profound impact on DC Comics in the 21st Century is underselling things quite a bit. After arriving on the scene in the late '90s, he became one of the few writers to have written all three of DC's biggest characters, with critically acclaimed runs on Action Comics and Wonder Woman. It was on Batman, however, where he made his biggest impact, as one of the writers for the year-long No Man's Land crossover, the relaunched "New Gotham" era of Detective Comics, and cowriter of the enduringly influential Gotham Central. In part one of our in-depth interview, Rucka discussed his arrival in Gotham with the popular "No Man's Land" megaseries. In part two, the writer detailed his involvement in the "New Gotham" revamp of 2000, including the Bruce Wayne: Fugitive saga, the introduction of Sasha Bordeaux, and the difficult transition from longtime Batman group editor Dennis O'Neil to Bob Schreck. Today we finish our three-part interview series with a look at Gotham Central, the book that focused on the non-superhero police detectives of Gotham City. Rucka speaks at length about how looking at Batman from the outside changes how the character works, the nature of collaboration with series co-writer Ed Brubaker and artist Michael Lark, and how the book produced one of the greatest Joker stories of all time.

Flashpoint is DC Comics' summer event of 2011 that promises to change the DC Universe unrecognizably until the event's climactic finale, when the DC Universe will instead be left changed somewhat recognizably. In support of the event, DC is releasing 60+ issues of comic books across 22 titles in just three months...