Fans of the Batman series will find all these little nuggets of background information here that they will probably love. But the book is also fun enough for people who aren’t that much into Batman. There’s a creepy school. There’s a mysterious leading character with a past that might come back to haunt her. There’s a broken relationship. There are creepy things going on at night. There might be a ghost haunting the school. And there’s the occasional Batman sighting, but then again, things like that happen more often in Gotham…

Gotham City Sirens #1 written once again by Paul Dini tells of the adventures of Gotham girls Catwoman, Poison Ivy and of course Harley Quinn.

Will the real Gotham City please stand up? Gotham City is a fictional American city appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, best known as the home of Batman. Batman’s place of residence was first identified as Gotham City in Batman #4 (Winter 1940). New York Times journalist William Safire described Gotham City as “New York below 14th Street, from SoHo to Greenwich Village, the Bowery, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the sinister areas around the base of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.” Batman artist Neal Adams sees the 1940s mobster history of Chicago as the basis for Gotham, while writer/artist Frank Miller has stated that Metropolis is New York in the daytime and Gotham City is New York at night.

Gotham City’s atmosphere took on a lighter tone in the comics of the 1950s and part of the 1960s, similar to the tone of Batman stories of that era. However, by the early 1970s, particularly with Dennis O’Neil becoming a prominent Batman writer, the tone of the city, along with that of the stories, had become grittier. In most stories since the 70s, the portrayal of Gotham is that of a dark and foreboding metropolis rife with crime, grime, corruption, and a deep seated sense of urban decay. This tone was particularly prominent in the parts of the city not rejuvenated post “No Man’s Land”.

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