Taking a break from Marvel this week with the first review foray into DC for this segment. At a time when the gods that be have just decided to completely reboot all DC titles from issue 1, completely retconning many details that identify their characters from the last 60/70 years, and when a distinctly bizarre new Batman cartoon has been announced (what I assume will be the typical nerd reaction can be found here, a more measured response is here), it seems as good a moment as any to take a look at the world's greatest detective.
So, we're going back to the "beginning" of one of the greatest characters comics to have been created- Batman. That is, the birth of the character continuity-wise, not the first appearance in an issue of Detective Comics from the 30s. And yet, Batman: Year One (written by Frank Miller, illustrated by David Mazzucchelli and coloured by Richard Lewis) is more about James Gordon than the eponymous caped crusader. Confusing? A little. But is it worth a look?
Now, even a layman to comics knows Batman's basic origins- God knows, it's shown at some point in every single cartoon and film he's in. The play where Bruce Wayne as little boy sits with hsi parents, leaving early, taking an ill-advised walk down Crime Alley where the Waynes get shot, pearls scatter, a rose falls, etc. Bruce as a young man travelling the world, gaining skills and learning martial arts. Returning to the manor, applying himself to science, technology and fitness, brooding and hating criminals. Then- bosh! In comes a bat through the window and Bruce has his eureka moment.
That much has been set in stone, in various degrees of explanation, since the very beginning of Batman. In Detective Comics issue 27, this happens-
But after that came decades of adventure, crimes to solve, victims to save, Boy Wonders to raise, train, say goodbye to or lose. An entire rogues gallery grew up, with men and women responding to the odd, winged-mammalian suit and the mental but cheery man inside it, and reacting in kind with their own personas.
What Miller does is meld the jolly, Golden Age idea into a much darker, much more modern Batman. Grit and gloom are the watch words, with Mazzucchelli's stark and unassuming pencilling sketching out the shadowy shapes of Gotham without over-detailing them, and Lewis' inking reflects that, with patches of light and dark, a muted palette daubed over the efficient drawing style. It isn't the realistic, photo-finish artwork that comics like Kingdom Come have, nor is it the cartoon-y, basic 30s designs, but somewhere in between, much like the story. It takes the origin of Batman and uses it as a foil against which James Gordon, struggling to gain ground in the corrupt Gotham City PD after a transfer, can play out his story. Through Gordon, Miller tells us more than we could ever be told by Batman/ Bruce Wayne about the state of Gotham. Instead of a Dark Knight watching over but involving itself in the city, we get first hand the issues, and then the Bat swoops in to begin sorting them out.
The progress throughout that first year is well paced. Increasingly advanced fighting, increasingly advanced gadgets (a hang-glider is used at one point, pre-empting the Batwing but in response to Alfred's flippant comment that Bruce would be flying "like that fellow in Metropolis"), and the marks of this graphic novel being a definitive work in the canon are clear. Moments of "Batman behaviour" are pinched from Year One and included across Batman games and films. That genius moment of cover in Batman Begins where bats from the Batcave flock to a summoning frequency from a device in his boot? You saw it here first. Gordon's kids being kidnapped? Yup, here. Harvey Dent, attorney, being introduced as a white knight to Batman's dark knight? Here again.
The story is almost all set up, but that isn't a criticism. It has to be. It's a much neater and more condensed version of what sprawled, previously, over a lot of story arcs in different comics across a few decades. Miller takes the character and instead of changing him makes the reader know him more. It's about his effect on the city more than anything else. The police run scared of him. The crime bosses get a rude awakening when he crashes their feast. The whores and pimps and thieves become fascinated with him, in particular a prostitute named Selina Kyle who sees her pimp beaten up by Batman's first forays into fighting crime and follows him closely, becoming Catwoman with the reasoning "why not a cat, when there's a Bat?".
There is some resolution, and it isn't a spoiler to say that Batman wins but gets his licks along the way. The crime bosses get their first beating, and in a very neat and character defining (or re-defining) way Batman is born, ready to fight his rogues gallery across the years. If I had one criticism it would be that it felt a little abrupt in ending, but then maybe it would always, as it has to end somewhere and there's so much more to follow it. The only solution would perhaps be to have introduced another villain or even a little more development among allies, but that would perhaps be rushing what is after all just the first year of a decades long tenure.
Definitely one to read as a definitive beginning, even retroactively, to the Batman titles.
Incidentally, DC are releasing a straight to DVD animated film of Year One soon, featuring the "cute bad boy bloke" from The OC instead of Kevin Conroy as the Bat. Make of that what you will, but from the clip released so far I'd say it's not a bad job. Better than Christian Bale's throat infection and tracheostomy, anyway.
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