Some of you might have been distracted last night with the start of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD but Fox and DC dropped some news on us.  Following a bidding war between the major networks Fox has announced the arrival of a new show entitled ‘Gotham.’  To give you an idea the level of confidence Fox has in the new show its worth pointing out this is a straight-to-series order, meaning no pilot stage.

Early reports from Deadline state that the new series will focus on young Detective James Gordon and ‘the villains that made Gotham famous.’  It was also made clear that Gotham will take place before Jim Gordon meets Batman and that Batman will not play a part in the series.  If you want one of my patented conspiracy theories though, notice they never said that Bruce Wayne would not be in the series.  Keep an eye open for a possible Bruce Wayne cameo.

Bruno Heller, known for writers credits in Rome and The Mentalist, will be writing the Jim Gordon based series.  Right now, many people are expecting the series to launch in the 2014-2015 TV season.

This is quite the coup for DC and WB though.  Arrow has become a surprise breakout hit and DC has also announced plans to make a Flash spin-off.  Add in this new Jim Gordon series and its entirely possible that there could be 3 DC Comics series on the air in 2014.  While some might say that DC is losing the movie war against Marvel they will definitely be the leader when it comes to TV shows in 2014.

At this point we haven’t heard anything about crossovers between the three shows.  This could be difficult as the shows are broadcast on two competing networks, but you never know what could happen.  However, I think its entirely possible that the Jim Gordon series could be used to establish the Gordon character and Gotham City before the Superman/Batman film released in 2015.  One thing to keep in mind is this folks, its a great time to be a comic book fan as comic properties are going to be everywhere for the next few years!