Open Question to All DCU Experts

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

In the DC Universe, are there any established police officers or police detectives who are (a) not secretly superheroes and (b) operate out of New York City? Not Metropolis or Gotham, but New York City.

PAD

37 comments on “Open Question to All DCU Experts”

  1. During the brief period Ðìçk Grayson lived in New York and was working as an NYPD officer, it seems to me he had a supporting cast of officers, but I couldn’t name any of them off the top of my head.

    1. Ðìçk Grayson is sort of a secret superhero. And I suspect that if you can’t name them off the top of your head, they probably aren’t too established beyond being supporting characters for a brief period.

      1. It was in Nightwing after issue #100. *wikipedia checks* #118 for sure.

        Other than that there might be some regular cops in Vigilante. And did you check Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers minis? Several were set in NY.

      2. The only cop in Seven Soldiers, though, was Jake Jordan, who is both an ex-cop and not-so-secretly the Manhattan Guardian.

  4. Grayson’s time as a cop was in Bludhaven. He did do a stint in NYC before the Battle for the Cowl, but I don’t know if any police were mentioned.

    I did a quick google on “new york city” “dc comics” “police detective”…

    First hit worth anything is Nate Waylon, he was Jim Corrigan (The Spectre)’s partner… that’s an old reference though. I don’t have time to dig through the 3100 hits, but at least there’s one! 🙂

  6. I’m sure there’s more, but Arthur Hall from the New Teen Titans in the 80’s was an NYPD captain.

  8. I was going to say Slam Bradley, but it looks like the current continuity for the character has him working in Gotham exclusively.

    1. Does current continuity actually matter? If it’s an alternate Earth or something, then Slam was working out of New York at one point. That was after started out in Cleveland, on account of having the same creators as Superman and them having a fondness for Cleveland.

  9. Uh-oh… I remember PAD has no great love for DC (ask him about getting permissions for his “Writing For Comics” book… or, then again, maybe don’t). I have a suspicion that X-Factor is going to run into a misplaced face, and it will NOT go well for the displaced officer of the law.

    J.

  10. On the other hand, PAD is a professional. He’s quite careful about burning bridges, and this could be a legit project…
    .
    J.

  11. He IS writing for the Young Justice cartoon…
    .
    Shouldn’t Mark Waid be able to give you a complete list of names and badge numbers?

  12. Didn’t the Teen Titans operate out of NYC ? They should have met at least a few police back then.

  13. My friend Ben remembers that Nightwing used to work with a cop before he became Batman.

    Having become your fan through Star Trek, I really have no idea about comics, but Ben is a huge comics nerd and big fan of your stuff. On the assumption that this is a project, I’ll make you an offer: name a cop “Ben Bresnahan” and I’ll donate $30 to CBLDF.

    Ben’s a Sailors forward deployed to Japan, if that helps guilt you into it. 😉

  14. I keep thinking that Lady Cop, from FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL #4, was NY-based, but it’s been a long time, so I’m not completely sure.

  15. Unfortunately Captain Hall is dead. Vigilante killed him in one of the VIGILANTE issues.

    In the second ANGEL AND THE APE series (the one by Phil Foglio) which was set in the DCU (Sam Simeon was a former resident of Gorilla City and grandson of Grodd, who used his mind power to make people think he was human) there was a Detective Oskner in the NYC police department.

    Don’t know if that helps, as the character might be too much of a joke to be useful.

  16. Found this site which might be useful:

    http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/New_York_City

    Mentions James Hall who was mentioned in here before. And it reminds me (as I’m going through it) that the original Firestorm was based in New York. Maybe someone with easier access to their run of it than I have can flip through and see if any cops are named, or are sitting in Radu’s with a readable badge on.

    1. I thought the original Firestorm series was set in Pittsburgh. (Well, the one that lasted more than a half-dozen issues.)

      Wonder Woman was New York-based in the 1970s, when Diana Prince worked at the UN, but you’re really digging to go looking for established characters that far back. The JSA is New York-based, but I don’t recall prominent cops there. I don’t think there were any in Primal Force, other.

  18. The former head of Checkmate, Harry Stein, was a NY cop and was Gary Washington’s partner. I’m not sure what happened to Gary or him after the first Checkmate series ended. Hopefully they’re sufficiently low profile that they haven’t been decapitated or disemboweled to add false ’emotional weight’ to an event.

  19. The aforementioned Capt. Hall from New Teen Titans and Vigilante was the only one that leapt to my mind.

    After reading the rest of the replies, I sorta-kinda remembered Harry Stein, but not any details about him. Wasn’t he a Vigilante transplant?

    One of the major problems with everything being so dámņ big and world-shaking in so many comics these days is that non-costumed supporting characters tend to either disappear quickly or simply not be introduced. Even Superman’s cast, aside from the Lois/Jimmy/Perry troika, can be offstage for so long that they can reappear as completely different characters with completely different histories and no one notices. Lucy Lane’s relationship with Ron Troupe (and the resulting child thereof) was ignored, and how long do you suppose it’ll be until Pete Ross and Lana Lang were never married and didn’t have a kid?

    Sorry, I digress.

  20. The Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’onzz) used to be cop John Jones (based on an actual human police detective that was later murdered by his crooked partner; J’onn had been trailing John to learn to be a police detective & later assumed the human identity). Here is link on J’onn/John’s fellow police officers:

    http://www.fanzing.com/mag/fanzing17/letters.shtml

    “For the longest time he kept his Martian identity secret from Earth people, but sometime before Detective 275 he went public. As John Jones, police detective, he worked under the command of Captain Harding of the Middletown police department. His constant companion in his job was policewoman Diane Meade. Captain Harding and Diane Meade were usually seen in police uniforms. John Jones could be seen wearing a blue suit.”

    Hope this helps PD.

    1. Ooops, my bad! You specified New York. Ðámņ! Wait, wasn’t there a cop in the original Firestorm that used to give Prof. Stein & Ronnie Raymond a hard time? Also, former New York DA Adrien Chase aka The Vigilante have some cop buddies named in the Wolfman/Perez run of The New Teen Titans? Others mentioned Harry Stein, although he’s also a agent of Checkmate, I don’t know if this disqualifies him for PD:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Stein_%28comics%29

  21. @Paul1963: Yes, I think Harry Stein was a transplant from Vigilante. Harvey Bullock was his number two man in Checkmate, a very bad casting choice, frankly. Never did understand that one.

  22. Regarding Arthur Hall, i seem to remember him appaearing in New Teen Titans (second series) after Adrian Chase had committed suicide, so after he was supposed to have been killed by the Vigilante. Of course, it all might have been erased during Zero Hour, or Infinite Crisis, or Final Crisis, or become a casualty of Hypertime.

  24. I believe the Teen Titans, while in New York, worked with an Inspector Hall late in Marv Wolfman’s run back in the ’90’s. This would have been while Tom Grummet was pencilling.

  25. I think I may have solved your problem, Peter, even if I had to take a trip back some twenty-two years ago. More precisely, the “Huntress” series, written by Joey Cavalieri and drawn by Joe Staton. There were two cops who Helena Bertinelli came into contact very frequently, although one of them wasn’t very friendly toward the new vigilante in town. Their names were Fiorello (the “bad cop”) and O’Shea (the “good cop”, who tried a second career as a stand-up comedian). I know that they haven’t appeared (AFAIK) anywhere else, but they are cops, from the DC Universe, work in NYC, and are not super-heroes.

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