Commissioner James Gordon is one of the best characters in comic books. He has been since his inception, and is the victim of numerous writers who just can’t seem to work out how to write him properly. In fact, the majority of the Gotham Police Department suffers this fate, unless they’re being scripted by Ed Brubaker or Greg Rucka. But, the fact that Gordon, the patriarch of that whole world, and one of the central pillars in the Batman universe, suffers more often than not, it’s somewhat a breath of fresh air to read this book.

The sixth Bruce Wayne: The Road Home one-shot surrounds an attack on Police Headquarters as Commissioner Gordon and a rookie named Patel attempt to escape from the besieged building, all the while protecting the target of the attack, one Vicki Vale. As part of this particular arc that’s been threaded throughout the mini-series, this issue works perfectly; it shows that the villains are becoming aware of Vale’s quest to unmask all the superheroes, and it throws in some familiar faces, primarily the Penguin, for a brief cameo.

The Commissioner Gordon angle of the story, which is, obviously, the focus of the issue, harkens back to the style of Gotham Central and almost conjures up even more desire for that fantastic book to return in some form. It also manages to successfully tease the Gordon back-up which is set for Detective Comics in the near future; if it’s anything as good as what Adam Beechen has penned here, it’ll be fantastic. That’s not to say this is a perfect story; it’s unbelievably simple, the major twist is obvious from the start, and the moments with Barbara Gordon and the Insider leave much to be desired.

Szymon Kudranski manages to apply an Alex Maleev style to the art in the book, making the whole issue feel constantly grimy and harsh, but almost never in an ugly way. There are some unpleasant moments where characters faces change and some of these unfortunate errors occur on the same page, but for someone who’s clearly an up-and-comer, it’s promising stuff.

The end of the issue teases that we’re going to finally receive some closure to this story in the next two issues, which is good, as so far, the only threads that have kept the book going are the Vicki Vale side-plot and the Insider arc, which in itself, is repetitive and boring. This, however, is an example of how decent one of these issues can be; just imagine if the whole series had been like this.

To be continued in “Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: Oracle”