Batman: Year One — A Masterpiece
It’s not only one of the most important comics ever written, it’s also among the best.
As Hilary Goldstein puts it above, in a quote from his 2005 review for IGN [1], the DC comic-book story known as Batman: Year One, originally released across four issues of Batman in 1987 by legendary writer Frank Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli, is widely considered one of the best Batman comics ever made, and I am here to elaborate on just a few of the reasons why, even after 34 years, Year One is still a masterpiece deserving of its exalted place in literary history.
Back to Basics
First among Year One’s accomplishments was how it took the character of Batman back to his roots, in more ways than simply retelling the first year of his existence within the world of the story. As Frank Miller himself alludes in an interview for the 1988 documentary Comic Book Confidential, Batman as he was originally conceived in 1939 was quite the brutal and scary character [2], but then came things like the advent of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, which — in response to the perennial generational panic that occurs whenever a new form of media becomes popular — made it its mission to guide comic-book publishers in rating and self-censoring their products so as to ensure everything would be age-appropriate for their readers (and not mind-rotting or morally corrupting, as was being alleged) [3]. And then there was the camp 1960’s Batman television series starring Adam West, whose popularity, as reported by Newsweek, “had turned [the character] into a joke” in the popular cultural consciousness of the time [4].
By this point, Miller notes in the documentary, comic books increasingly became treated merely as stories for young children, and this only led to Batman’s being more and more watered down and simplified until there was little substance left. But then Miller did something about it. As Newsweek explains, beginning most prominently with the revolutionary graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, Miller ushered in a new age for comics by crafting a dark, gritty tale for the character completely removed from anything even resembling the TV series. And this more serious tone that came to redefine Batman continued in the mainstream continuity of the comics as the character moved forward off of the success of Elseworlds title The Dark Knight Returns into Miller’s official canonical installment Batman: Year One.
I took a sanitized version of a tough character and took him closer to his 1940s roots. [4]
Another way Year One honors the character’s beginnings would come from Miller’s intended approach of telling stories that, while presented in a way that he personally finds especial value and interest in reading, would still draw from the original comics, as he describes in Comic Book Confidential. One example that highlights this idea brilliantly is how Year One recontextualizes the seminal event catalyzing Batman’s whole origin story. Here is the original version, as depicted in 1939 in Detective Comics #33:
And here is the same moment in the rebooted Year One. Miller makes changes both in the narrative and visual style which manage to turn what could have been seen before as somewhat ridiculous in its depiction into something outright Shakespearean in its drama and mythic in its gravitas, yet still he chose to faithfully recreate the scene in question in the first place, paying homage to and enhancing its iconic nature in the process:
Keeping It Grounded
Another strength is how Year One delivers its story by opting not to take its potentially more fantastical comic-book characters and events for granted, but rather to take the material seriously enough to ground those things in a genuinely compelling narrative told through a realistic world in Miller’s innovation of the dirtier, broken Gotham City [4]. This choice is reflected in many elements of the story, most prominently through its being structured more like a crime drama than any traditional superhero fare, not to mention through the bleak and moody, yet striking, art. In fact, as Hilary Goldstein describes in his review, the unexpected but brilliant choice of making it “much more a tale of Jim Gordon than the Batman” allows Year One to be an origin story for the non-superhero, future Police Commissioner Gordon, as well, as an ally of Batman’s.
Both characters’ individual plot lines are followed, and through their parallel experiences as lone good (but certainly imperfect) men entrenched in a city dominated by corruption at every infrastructural level, to which they have both only just returned and that they have the duty to fix themselves, what drives them each of them and how their famous “relationship was forged” — “how two men came to the dirtiest, crummiest city in America with the hope of doing some good”— becomes viscerally clear by the time their arcs finally converge at the end [1].
But while “Gordon’s journey is used to illustrate the corruption in Gotham, of the grime and darkness as viewed from the man on the streets,” how else the story chooses to portray this groundedness is through “Batman’s tale [as] more of the transformation from man to myth, of how the harshness of Gotham forced Bruce Wayne to put on a bat costume” [1]. In Year One, Miller realizes the necessity of truly explaining what readers may be quick to dismiss as a mere gimmick — and it certainly could have been written as nothing more by lesser creators — as his story instead treats “Batman” as a legendary figure, the bat coming to be a form of iconography within the world of the story, which, like all iconic imagery [5], becomes something essential and more universal and powerful in the meaning it has for the people of Gotham, whether it be as a monster in the eyes of the criminals or as hope to the ordinary citizens.
People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I’m flesh and blood; I can be ignored, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol — as a symbol, I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting […] Something elemental, something terrifying. [6]
Legacy
A final point of praise for this comic lies in the extraordinary legacy it would have outside of itself, already somewhat alluded to with the quote above. First it would go on to serve as the foundation for other comic stories like Batman: The Long Halloween [1], which continues in the same era of Batman’s career in the story, carries over the crime noir influences of Year One, and is in its own right “hailed as one of the greatest Batman stories of all time” itself, as well [7]. Another very major contribution Year One would have for the character in popular culture, however, would of course be in serving as one of the primary sources of inspiration for director Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, released in 2005, which is listed by Empire as one of the greatest movies of the 21st century [8].
The sheer importance of mentioning Batman Begins and this story’s role in that film cannot be overstated. Simliar to the comic on which it is based, Batman Begins is a film of phenomenal quality, but also of massive influence. As discussed by Forbes, the film was not only a great success that singlehandedly resurrected the then dying live-action Batman movie franchise in a big way, it also ushered in a new era of filmmaking in general with new emphases on the “reboot,” on origin-story films, and on “dark and gritty” genre storytelling, as film after film has attempted to follow in its footsteps; and it set the stage for its follow-up films in Christopher Nolan’s incredibly successful and culturally impactful Dark Knight Trilogy, including The Dark Knight, which was universally adored and broke countless records, including becoming the first ever superhero film to earn $1 billion in the box office (and which Empire included as the third greatest film of the 21st century [8]) [9]. On the subject of the comic-book movie genre, Kevin Feige, chief architect of the also hugely successful Marvel Cinematic Universe of superhero movies, even credited Nolan’s Batman films with “bolster[ing] everything,” going so far as to call them “the greatest thing that happened,” in an interview with Wired [10].
And so, through the films’ continued impact on the Hollywood landscape, Batman: Year One’s own legacy, too, is proven to be not only large in scale, but also incredibly enduring, and — remarkably — the words originally written by Goldstein in his 2005 review of the comic regarding it as “not only one of the most important comics ever written,” but “among the best,” have only become truer and more powerful with time.
Sources
- https://www.ign.com/articles/2005/06/17/batman-year-one-review
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_G7l8Za_Fo
- http://cbldf.org/2015/11/61-years-of-after-the-comics-code/
- https://www.newsweek.com/batman-dark-knight-returns-frank-miller-dc-1459497
- Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, pp. 28–31
- Batman Begins
- https://www.ign.com/articles/2005/06/02/batman-the-long-halloween-review
- https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/best-movies-century/
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2015/07/30/exclusive-christopher-nolan-talks-batman-begins-10th-anniversary/?sh=20bebe10a8b5
- https://www.wired.com/2012/05/kevin-feige-avengers/
