Review: Fat City
Mick McMahon & Dave Gibbons - Story
Mick McMahon - Art
Jack Morelli - Letters
Mark Chiarello - Editor

The first thing you notice about "Fat City" is that it looks very different to McMahon's 1993 "Watchtower". The three parter in the Legends of the Dark Knight series was gritty and cinematic, while this new strip is British, dark humour at its best, rich with puns and toilet jokes.
As usual, McMahon has adapted to suit the story. Unlike his stony features in "Watchtower", here Batman has a big, fleshy face, (reminiscent of his Dredd, so memorably described by Brian Bolland as having a chin like "a slab of raw meat").
Jim Gordon is captured beautifully, as are the other regulars, Alfred and the Batmobile.
Stylistically, this resembles "The Tripods", McMahon's recent ABC Warriors story in 2000AD, but where the ABC artwork captured the chaos and confusion of large-scale martian warfare, the emphasis here is on character.
As with "The Tripods", "Fat City" inhabits a regular nine-panel grid. Storytelling is McMahon's priority and the innovative layouts typical of his earlier work are not allowed to intervene. It works, and the action flows wonderfully, especially on the first page, (although the lettering occasionally threatens to obscure important details).
The story itself, (for which McMahon shares a credit with Dave Gibbons - their first collaboration since The Fink?) with its pun-laden delivery, sleazy politicians and an obese key character, could almost star Judge Dredd instead of Batman. It's a light-hearted, self-contained epsiode and complements the sombre main feature that it follows in the comic.
"Fat City" isn't trying to be the next Dark Knight Returns, it's just a good idea well told, with story and art working perfectly together. A pleasant surprise, tucked away in the back of one of the many Batman comics published each month. A gem.