Batman: Year One
Writer: Frank Miller
Artist: David Mazzucchelli
And then there was the Batman...
Ranking: 5 stars
Somewhere along the east coast of the United States, lies a major metropolitan area known as Gotham City. From the outside, it looks like a peaceful and prosperous city, but below the surface, it is a crime-ridden hell-hold of greed, corruption, graft, sin, and villainy. Viscous crime lords like Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, and Sal "The Boss" Maroni have an iron grip on the city's economy and politics. Even Gotham's finest are no strangers to corruption. Cops like Detective Flass and Commissioner Loeb are being paid off by the mob, and in return give them protection. It's almost as if there is no hope for Gotham City. No hope except for.... THE BATMAN!!!
BATMAN: YEAR ONE is the ultimate retelling of Batman's origin! It defines who Batman is, how he came to be, and what he fights against like never before! Frank Miller (author of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, SIN CITY, and 300) builds up on the original two-page origin story created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939, and redefines it for a modern generation! We get to see how corrupted Gotham is from the view points of both Jim Gordon and Batman. Jim Gordon is a young police officer that has just moved to Gotham City from Chicago, with his pregnant wife Barbra. After joining the GCPD, Gordon is assigned as a lieutenant to Detective Flass's unit. Immediately Gordon sees how low the police department has fallen. He witnesses Flass taking bribes from drug dealers and learns that Commissioner Loeb is a personal friend of crime lords like "The Roman." The stress of cleaning up the police department, along with trying to support and protect his pregnant wife from harm, leads Lt. Gordon to carrying the burden of a dark secret from everyone else.
In Batman's point of view, his alter-ego Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham City after a 12 year long absence. He is now fully trained, and ready to take on the scum of Gotham. However, he still lacks one crucial element: the power to install fear in his enemies. He realizes this on his first night of crime fighting, when he is brutally beaten by a gang of prostitutes, and shot by the police. He is able to escape back to Wayne Manor before he succumbs to his injuries. As he is trying to figure out how to scare his enemies, a bat comes crashing through his window. Knowing that bats frightened him when he was a boy, he decides to take up the mantle of a bat to turn his fear as a weapon against his enemies. It was only after that night, that he truly became the Batman. The dark and menacing figure of the night, who uses fear against those who prey on the fearful.
Frank Miller uses both viewpoints to create the sensational story of Batman's first year of crime fighting. He tells us not just of how Bruce Wayne became Batman, but also of how he introduced into the setting of Gotham. He is not the legendary crime fighter that he is today. He is still inexperienced, vulnerable to injury, distrusted by the police, and is continuously building his way up from a novice crime fighter, to the dark knight. Miller also expands Jim Gordon's role in the Batman universe. In earlier comics he was thought of as an ordinary and elderly police commissioner who simply was allies with Batman, because he helped bring in criminals. But Frank Miller gives us a completely different outtake on Gordon. That he is an average man who has devoted himself to cleaning up the corruption in not only Gotham City, but in the police department as well. He does not fully support Batman's methods, but allows him to carry on his vigilante activities because of the good he does for Gotham. Frank Miller created the Commissioner Gordon that we know today.
Its is a truly remarkable story that only the genius behind THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, could've created. Miller breaks the chains of Batman's original origin story, and gives us a realistic story of two men's crusade on saving their city from corruption. A story that would change Batman's world forever, and inspire the film BATMAN BEGINS. You can never call yourself a Batman fan without reading the legendary BATMAN: YEAR ONE!
