Gotham City is scariest when the sun never sets. DC’s new horror series Gotham by Daylight is now live on WEBTOON, after premiering on Monday, October 19, at 8 p.m. ET, or 7 p.m. CT. The first three episodes are free, and readers with Fast Pass can jump ahead with eight episodes available at launch. New chapters arrive every Tuesday.
A Gotham with no night
The series is written by Mike Birchall, creator of the WEBTOON hit Everything is Fine, with art and storyboards by Jeannine A. Halley, inks by Ekass and colors by Paula Fidelis. Its hero is not Batman. Instead, it follows Duke Thomas, Gotham’s daylight protector better known as Signal, as the days keep getting longer and the people around him start acting strangely.
WEBTOON’s synopsis sets up the hook: “There is no night, and without night, no darkness. And without darkness, there can be no Batman.” Duke teams up with a group of ordinary citizens as his friends are targeted one by one by a supernatural threat called the Daylight. WEBTOON rates the series Young Adult, for readers 16 and up.
Horror for regular Gotham citizens
Birchall has said the series is less about why anyone would live in Gotham and more about how they manage it. “It’s so easy to say ‘why would anyone live in Gotham?’ but when you break it down, that’s actually such an interesting question, and there are, of course, many good reasons,” he told CBR. “What’s more interesting to me, though, is ‘how do people live in Gotham?’ How do they get by? How do they support each other? How do they react to crazy, cosmic-level threats?”
“Putting these characters through their own horror stories is, to me at least, the perfect way to explore these questions,” Birchall added. ScreenRant has reported that the series is planned to run for 45 episodes.
Gotham by Daylight is part of DC’s growing partnership with WEBTOON, which also runs the long-running Batman: Wayne Family Adventures. WEBTOON is about to become an even bigger home for superhero comics, too, with its Marvel Comics app launching November 16 as Marvel Unlimited winds down.
If you want a Batman-adjacent horror read for October that does not require years of back issues, the free first three episodes are an easy place to start.
