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Fans of Batman and DC Comics more broadly have long joked about why anyone would live in Gotham City. Some folks say that the rent is probably super cheap in Gotham, and that Gothamites might not have much of a choice but to live in Gotham City (I mean, anywhere is better than Hub City, right?) if they want to find an affordable place to live. But for Matt Fraction, DC's new Batman writer, this question was worth exploring in depth. 

At Rose City Comic Con 2025, Fraction quipped, “I always joke about, why do people live there [in Gotham City]? Like, ‘Do you live by the three abandoned chemical plants?’ ‘No, I live by that hospital that’s been on fire for 34 years.’ ‘Well, you know, my dad makes giant oversized novelty props, so we transferred in for his job.’”

Later on, he said, "The first line in the [first issue] is ‘No rain,’ not because I'm a Blind Melon fan, but like I am weary of Gotham looking like a wet factory. It’s always kind of the cover of color of, like, a decaying avocado. I spent a lot of time in Tokyo recently, and kind of all these different cities around the world, and with the nature of how we make artificial light, like, there is a quality of light at night that didn't used to exist. I worked on this TV show we shot in Tokyo at night for almost two weeks… At some point I was in an alley — there’s children in the audience, so I can't share the name of what the alley is called colloquially — but it was where the black market began during the occupation after the Second World War, and all the GIs who left then handed over the keys to their criminal empire to what would become the modern Yakuza. But even in this, the literal epicenter of criminal history in modern Tokyo, you could have read a book at night by just the quality of ambient light. There's colors at night in the worst places."

He continued, "I wanted a Gotham that I understood why people lived there, right? I wanted a Gotham that could be inspiring and not just oppressive, because it's massive and feels like it's crushing you. There's color and life and it's vibrant and vivid in their different communities and neighborhoods.”

Based on everything that Matt Fraction has said about his and Jorge Jiménez's Batman run thus far, it's clear that he's thought carefully about what he wants his vision of The Dark Knight to be. In Batman #1, he let Batman's humanity shine through as the Caped Crusader helped Killer Croc, who was more like Kid Croc in the issue. I really enjoyed Fraction's neighborhood-first approach in his and David Aja's Hawkeye run, so to see Gotham get a similar treatment is something I've been hungering for some quite some time. 

He is vengeance, he is the night, he is... one of Popverse's favorite subjects. Learn how to do a Dark Knight movie marathon right with our Batman movie guide, and for the true World's Greatest Detectives out there, dive deep into the heart of Gotham City by getting to know Batman with Popverse. Here are some of our latest Batman stories:

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