Batman: Year One (1987)

Batman: Year One Review

Batman: Year One is a comic book story arc and graphic novel that was written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli. It was first published in 1987.

The story recounts Batman’s first year as a crime-fighter as well as exploring the life of recently transferred Gotham police detective Jim Gordon, eventually building towards their first encounter and their eventual alliance against Gotham’s criminal underworld. This arc was first released in volumes as a comic book story arc, but eventually it was put together as a graphic novel and that is how I read it myself. I found it to be quite overrated.

This is a comic book that relies heavily on its art to carry it through the finish line. Yes, what David Mazzucchelli did here was remarkable. His illustrations are filled with detail, but are also genuinely artistic in composition and so grounded in reality. The shading was particularly fantastic while the mixture of larger and smaller panels was consistently innovative. There were so many panels here that were truly gorgeous to behold and striking in their color palette, style and undeniable elegance.

With that being said, the story was the issue here. This arc famously rebooted the DC comics back in the late eighties and it gave us the definitive and most modern retelling of Batman’s origin story. While I did respect that they updated the source material to the current era and evaded the usual plot points or at least minimized them in favor of other more interesting scenarios, this was still your standard origin story that failed to differentiate itself from numerous others.

Frank Miller did a very good job in terms of characterization and dialogue, but my main issue with this comic is that it was overly minimalistic in not just dialogue, but plot itself. There was very little story and too much emphasis on art and also action, though the action scenes were at least thrilling with the highlight being Batman fighting the police and countless bats busting in on the scene. Gordon was excellent in this story and so well utilized. I loved his role in all of this and the ending was quite memorable, but Batman himself and every other character were far from interesting and barely developed.

Batman: Year One is an overly minimalistic comic book that relies way too heavily on its art to carry it through the finish line. The storytelling is familiar and slight here and so is the characterization, but at least the action was great and the illustrations were phenomenal.

My Rating – 3.8