Gotham City Garage Chapter 1

Story by: Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing
Art by: Brian Ching
Colours by: Kelly Fitzpatrick

DC Comics have had a string of good luck in the past few years when it comes to tie in comics to their video games and weirdly enough, their collectible line. With comics like Injustice and DC Comics: Bombshells doing well for DC, it was just a matter of time before a new, digital-first, tie-in would appear.

Enter Gotham City Garage. Based on the collectible line of the same name, Gotham City Garage Chapter 1 begins the story by introducing us to Kara Gordon, a technician living in The Garden, the last city on Earth after what they are calling Luthorrise. We learn from Kara that Lex Luthor became president of Earth and that her home is his reflection of the ideal world: no sickness, no pain, no bad thoughts ever. For Kara, this doesn’t seem to be enough. She dreams of a different world where the superheroes were still these mythical beings, and more precisely, dreams of Wonder Woman - she being the first in the collectible line if memory serves.

Kara, if you haven’t guessed by now, is our resident Supergirl but with a twist. Kelly and Lanzing don’t dwell on her back story too much in this opening chapter, but quickly learn that she fell to Earth very much like her famous cousin and was adopted by Jim Gordon. As with a lot of the versions of the super family’s origins, she just discovers she has powers after being attacked by the resident police force: cyber-Batmen (I think, not quite sure).

Kelly and Lanzing do a good job for a first chapter in establishing a living-world and introducing us to this new version of Kara. They don’t try to introduce too much right off the bat - the aforementioned Wonder Woman only appears in Kara’s dream for now - but we get a good sense of how this world works in the 10 pages we are given.

On art, Ching was already known to me as a good Kara artist, he was the artist on the Supergirl Rebirth series, and brings this new world to life. I am always a fan of an artist that has their own unique style that is recognizable, and Ching is one of those artists. I really enjoy his re-designs of some of the characters he gets to play with - not all come directly from the collectible line just yet.

In all, this is a good opening for DC’s new digital-first comic series and should be a fun ride.