If there has ever been a modern Batman story more
influential than Frank Miller's 1986 masterpiece, The Dark Knight Returns, it was Frank Miller's 1987 masterpiece, Batman: Year One. It's remarkable that
the same writer scripted two such extraordinary stories a year apart, but truly
incredible that the two stories approach the character so differently and
accomplish such different things. Yet, there is no contradiction between the
two works: Year One depicts a young
man who is about to leap, literally, into his life's work, while DKR stars an aging man who accepts that
his mission is something he can never leave behind. But these two moments are
so far apart that we can barely fathom that the same character's life contains
them. Year One stands separate from DKR, not as a prequel.
Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC characters were
significantly redefined by post-Crisis reboots, but Year One leaves the facts of Batman's life much the same as before. Year One, rather, fills in small
details during a legendary year; the time frame that Year One spans is covered by just four panels in an earlier origin
story, 1980's The Untold Legend of the Batman.
This gives Miller freedom to blend existing stories and new elements into a new
work that feels familiar just often enough to make Miller's inventions resound.
Year One has a
particular quality that is shocking to the reader, a quality that virtually all
previous superhero comics had energetically rejected: Realism. Could Batman be
real? Of course not. But could the Batman in Year One be real? Still, the answer is no, but many scenes play so
close to real life that we feel like we've jumped right out of the superhero
genre and into a different world. Year One
shows Bruce Wayne going into action eight times, and three of them go badly. He
is stabbed once, shot four times, beaten over the head once, and trapped by the
police twice. True, he escapes both time he's captured, and the most
unrealistic thing in the story might be that he heals well enough to continue
as Batman, but for a while here and there, we forget that Year One's world isn't our world. This draws the reader into
thinking about Batman's weapons and tactics on the practical basis that
Batman's voice-over narration provides, and so the story works on a level that
a Green Lantern or Flash story never could, and earlier Batman stories usually
did not. Year One's realism has spun
off a new "How To" subgenre of Batman story, with narration exploring
Batman's training and tactics filling many pages in post-Year One stories and at least three entire published books. The
practical details of being Batman show up in every Batman movie since 1989's Batman, and provides much of the basis
of Batman Begins and was a major
focus of a new title, Legends of the Dark
Knight, which focused on key events early in Batman's career when his crime
fighting approach was being shaped.
In addition, Year One
introduced the organized crime family of Carmine Falcone, who, unlike many
"disposable" mobster characters seen in Batman stories over the
years, provided a substantial basis for future stories exploring the same era. Year One's take on the Falcones and a
younger Harvey Dent recurred in The Long
Halloween and other stories, building up a rich Godfather-like early
history of Batman continuity. This created a timeline in which Batman faced
more realistic, organized-crime opponents, rather than masked super villains,
early in his career. While Year One
devotes considerable time to developing Selina Kyle as a third focus, and
mentions the Joker in the very last panel, the emphasis on realistic criminals
further grounds the series in realism.
At the heart of Year
One are two men: Bruce Wayne – who has the inspiration, on panel, to become
Batman – and Jim Gordon, then a junior officer new to Gotham. The narration
alternates between the two men with calendar dates in the captions, showing us
a year in their lives as Wayne figures out how to fight a war in the streets
and Gordon fights one at work and another one in his marriage. Both men are
fiercely principled, physically tough, and in way over their heads. In time,
they learn to trust one another, but not until the titular year reaches
November. Along the way, they square off against one another, directly and indirectly,
with Gordon gradually figuring out how to wrest himself from the clutches of
the corrupt Gotham City police force that prefers its criminals to the new
caped crime fighter.
Gordon is yet another element who grounds the story, even
down to his Chicago (a real city) origin. It is his story that makes the
narration work, filling in the blanks between long stretches of time (according
to the dateline captions) in which we don't see Bruce Wayne at all. Between
January 4 and March 11, we don't see Bruce Wayne do anything at all except
return home and kick a tree trunk. What is he doing in the meantime? Certainly
not "nothing." The blank spaces invite the reader to contemplate that
question and imagine what elaborate preparations of Wayne's body and equipment
must be taking place. But they are left unseen, while Gordon begins a long and
difficult road to fight temptation in the form of an attractive female partner
and a very dirty police department.
But when Bruce Wayne first goes into action, amid scenery
right out of Taxi Driver, and fails
badly, we find out that his unseen preparation wasn't nearly enough. Wayne
barely escapes with his life and identity intact, and beats a self-imposed
deadline – a literal deadline, in which his blood will run out of his body if
he doesn't summon Alfred to save him – to devise a better way to fight crime, a
way that comes to him in crashing glass and a vow to become a bat.
Nothing goes right for the new Batman on his first try, and
not always on his second. Year One tells
us succinctly about his dozens of encounters interdicting street criminals and
focuses, instead, on showing us how he uses skill and brilliance to bring down
the city's big criminals, some of whom were elected. He fights a many-front war
against ordinary crooks, big bosses, and even the Gotham police. His victories
ultimately break up the logjam of corruption that made Gotham "no place to
raise a family." By story's end, Gordon is free to call Batman to help on
a case. That is the story arc that Year
One brilliantly travels, taking an almost plausibly real city and
introducing Batman into it, giving us for the first and arguably only time, a
compelling explanation for the set-up that other Batman stories have simply
assumed, that a man who dresses like a bat is the police's ally (and their
superior) in fighting crime.
Batman: Year One
stays with you. You don't forget Batman's failures and successes, the new
Selina Kyle, the struggling Jim Gordon, or the Falcones. Miller's plot and dialogue
and David Mazzucchelli's art create a new world, and although many creators
have tried to take us, we've never really gone back to that place since.
