Take a look at the first year of Bruce Wayne being the Batman. Honestly though, this is almost more like "Jim Gordon - Year one". For every one page about Batman, there's two about Gordon and what he's doing. The story starts with Gordon being transferred to the GCPD, and Bruce Wayne's return from studying abroad. It follows these two characters through some pretty boring situations for the first issue or so. It's not really entertaining, and not a whole hell of a lot happens. It does slowly build to be interesting, but it takes it's time. There's a pretty entertaining scene, for the wrong reasons, pretty early on where before he's Batman, he just puts a mild disguise on and goes on patrol and gets his ass kicked pretty severely by a bunch of prostitutes... i loled... Anyway. Jim Gordon is really the start character here. I guess they just couldn't find a way to make Batman's first year appear interesting, because he does fuck all, and Jim kicks a bunch of ass. You watch him rise to the star cop that he is, and why the public likes him, and why all of the other cops respect and/or fear him.
Once Batman finally gets the suit on, his scenes get a little better, and i can say i enjoyed them quite a bit. There's one really bad ass scene where Batman gets cornered by the GCPD and the building is collapsing or something. It's the best "Batman" scene in the whole movie, and while it was good, it's just sad that there was nothing better. Jim Gordon has a weird side plot where he starts dating this chick from his precinct, and has a kind of affair on his wife. It's a little awkward because nothing is really ever done with it. I would say that i wish i had seen more of it... but i don't. It was weird and felt kind of forced, Almost like they had plans for it when they set out, but lost them somewhere. Batman's bits feel more like a Punisher story, because there's no real villain here. There's a couple of crooked cops that Gordon deals with, and Selina Kyle, Catwoman, and Harvey Dent, who would later become Two-Face, make cameos, but they're not much more than that. It's insinuated that Batman's working with Dent, but like i said since it's almost done from Gordon's point of view, you don't really know for sure what's going on here and there. Catwoman doesn't even interact with batman, she just gets mistaken for him once or twice. She even has a line in the last issue that goes something like "next time I'll just have to do something worse" so that she gets the recognition instead of Batman, and then the book ends shortly after without even going back to her character. Or there's one scene before that *Spoiler Alert* where she's robbing some crooked people and Batman helps her out for a second from the shadows and she smiles at him. And i don't really know what his motivation for helping her was. Maybe he thought she was another vigilante or something, but Batman's never seemed like the kind of guy that runs off the honor system if you ask me...
I will say this for the book. I'm glad it was written. Because if books like this and Long Halloween hadn't been written, despite how mediocre i feel that they are, then they wouldn't have been able to inspire similar scenes in Christopher Nolan's films Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. I mean there are several scenes in this book that are copied right into Begins, which is really awesome for Batman fans. Now maybe it's because i saw the films first, who knows, but i just didn't feel that this book held up as well...
Once Batman finally gets the suit on, his scenes get a little better, and i can say i enjoyed them quite a bit. There's one really bad ass scene where Batman gets cornered by the GCPD and the building is collapsing or something. It's the best "Batman" scene in the whole movie, and while it was good, it's just sad that there was nothing better. Jim Gordon has a weird side plot where he starts dating this chick from his precinct, and has a kind of affair on his wife. It's a little awkward because nothing is really ever done with it. I would say that i wish i had seen more of it... but i don't. It was weird and felt kind of forced, Almost like they had plans for it when they set out, but lost them somewhere. Batman's bits feel more like a Punisher story, because there's no real villain here. There's a couple of crooked cops that Gordon deals with, and Selina Kyle, Catwoman, and Harvey Dent, who would later become Two-Face, make cameos, but they're not much more than that. It's insinuated that Batman's working with Dent, but like i said since it's almost done from Gordon's point of view, you don't really know for sure what's going on here and there. Catwoman doesn't even interact with batman, she just gets mistaken for him once or twice. She even has a line in the last issue that goes something like "next time I'll just have to do something worse" so that she gets the recognition instead of Batman, and then the book ends shortly after without even going back to her character. Or there's one scene before that *Spoiler Alert* where she's robbing some crooked people and Batman helps her out for a second from the shadows and she smiles at him. And i don't really know what his motivation for helping her was. Maybe he thought she was another vigilante or something, but Batman's never seemed like the kind of guy that runs off the honor system if you ask me...
I will say this for the book. I'm glad it was written. Because if books like this and Long Halloween hadn't been written, despite how mediocre i feel that they are, then they wouldn't have been able to inspire similar scenes in Christopher Nolan's films Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. I mean there are several scenes in this book that are copied right into Begins, which is really awesome for Batman fans. Now maybe it's because i saw the films first, who knows, but i just didn't feel that this book held up as well...
I just don't know. There's not a whole hell of a lot of story here, and there's almost no resolution. As a Batman story I didn't really find it all that interesting, not a lot was revealed about the character, and there isn't too much to be seen. There was a slow build up to what felt like a rather anticlimactic ending... If you're looking for a Batman origin story, then go watch Batman Begins, but if you like Gordon a lot then this might work for you too. If you'd like to check this book out for yourself, you can Search Amazon.com for Batman Year One
, or you can click the box below!
, or you can click the box below!Thanks for reading
James
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