Batman: Year One

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When James Gordon joined the Gotham City Police Department, he had no idea of the cesspool of corruption it was. Fortunately, there are a few good cops left in Gotham and Gotham has a fledgling protector of its own, Batman!

I'm three decades late to the party but I'm glad I showed up. Batman: Year One has been hyped as one of the definitive Batman stories ever since it was published. Is it?

No. It's the definitive James Gordon story and it's spectacular!

Batman: Year One is told from the point of view of James Gordon, the man who would later be Commissioner Gordon. This Jim Gordon isn't the buffoonish commissioner of Batman '66 either. He's a good cop and a good man, surrounded by bad cops and bad men in the worst city in America. And there's this vigilante running around in a bat suit who may or may not be Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy who recently returned to Gotham after thirteen years abroad...

So fucking good. David Mazzucchelli's art had to be an inspiration for the feel of Gotham Central decades later. The gloomy, Mignola-esque feel is perfect for this gritty tale. Frank Miller was yet to enter his prime and his writing was pretty crisp, although I wasn't crazy about him making Catwoman a sex worker.

The bad guys are the worst kind, corrupt men in positions of power. I couldn't wait for Gordon and Batman to take them down. While this book was one of the ones that ushered in the era of the grim and gritty super hero, it feels authentic here and isn't grim for the sake of being grim like a lot of books that came after.

Whole swathes of this book used in the Nolan trilogy. Much like the Nolan movies, this would have been a great comic even without Batman in it.

Great stuff. Batman: Year's One is one book that definitely lived up to the hype and deserves its reputation. If you're only going to read one Batman comic in your entire life, you could do a lot worse than this one. Five out of five stars.



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