Batman - Year One Review

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...

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!

Thanks for reading

James

Joker Review

The Problem with Batman comics, is this: If you read them, and your friends don't, and they're watching say "Batman: Begins", or the more popular sequel "The Dark Knight", then they're like "Man Batman is so cool!!!" This is a problem because then you're like "I know! Maybe you should read some of his comics!" and then when you go to recommend them, all of the current, or at least moderately so, books are about him fighting Darksied, or him coming back to life and traveling through time, or not him at all but instead his old sidekick who went off and did his own thing for a while and is now Batman along with Bruce's son Damian as his Robin... Do you see? No one who watches The Dark Knight, and has that Comic Nerd Adrenaline pumping wants to read any of that shit! I mean while all of those can be good stories at the right time, they're just not the same feel as Christopher Nolan's new take on the character. Brian Azzarello's "Joker" is the answer to that problem.

This book came out around the same time as the movie, so I'm sorry if I'm using it as a frame of reference a lot, but this book is basically a spiritual successor to that film. This was not made to retell the same story, it wasn't to cash in on the films success, it was a project that ran parallel and ended up being a really similar look into a really similar world. There are no cheesy origin stories here where they try and modernize these characters, instead they assume you know who they are, and by now who doesn't know Batman's rogues gallery? This book is a gritty realistic look into the world of the Joker that could almost literally be a sequel to these major motion pictures. 

Now enough with the comparisons, on to the actual book! First off, I feel like I need to mention how amazing the art is through this whole book. From start to finish my breath was damn near taken away. Lee Bermejo, who I haven't seen a lot of his other works, is fantastic here. Everything looks real, and touchable. The way he draws all these characters it looks like something you'd see downtown one night, and piss your pants because it's so dark gritty. Mad props sir! The story starts as the Joker is being released from Arkham on the pretense that somehow he convinced the doctors there that he is no longer insane, and that he is successfully rehabilitated. The whole story is told from the Joker's point of view, and follows him on his quest to get back what is rightfully his. When he was put away all the other super criminals and gangsters in Gotham split up his territory, and he wants it back. So he proceeds to coerce, kill, and terrorize anyone in his path. He is also followed by his right hand man throughout the book a character named Johnny Frost, frequently referred to as Johnny Johnny by the Joker, who also narrates the story. This character is used to ground the story, it makes us feel a sense of connection. Because he's not insane, he's not a super villain, and he's certainly not powerful, but he wants it all. He wants to be Batman's next big villain, so he follows the Joker around and acts as his secretary almost in hopes to raise his credibility. Throughout the book there are almost guest appearances by other Batman villains. Killer Croc is a big black guy who eats human flesh, Penguin is a rich gangster, Riddler is a super genius arms dealer of sorts, and Two Face plays a couple of different angles throughout the story, no pun intended. All of these characters are grounded and could exist in a real world. One of the only misgivings of the book is actually that we don't get to see each of these characters long enough. Joker is the main character, Johnny's kind of just there narrating, Croc is the Joker's muscle throughout the book, and Two Face opposes him on a couple of occasions, but Riddler and Penguin are almost bit characters that you see for maybe a couple of pages apiece. Maybe it's because Riddler is one of my favorite Batman villains, but I just wish they would have had more room to breathe. And other than that my only other problem with the book was that it was a tad bit Anti- Climactic. *Venturing into Spoiler country...* 

*Here are the spoilers if you don't want to read them then stop and skip this paragraph!* So the book slowly builds around Jokers terrible crimes, one after another, until he finally does enough to bring the Batman knocking on his door. There is one confrontation between these two, that's not even all that long, and then batman just knocks him out and that's the end. Now up until this point Batman hadn't even shown up, but if you look closely at the art you can see him just watching the Joker waiting for him to seriously fuck up, and the Joker knows this. He addresses Batman at several points and none of the other characters know what's happening. My only beef with this is that I tend to take the Joker as a bit smarter than that and I just wish that such a fantastic book had a more epic climax. The ending still worked fine given the poetry of the dialogue. Plus, given the grounded realism of the rest of the comic, it kind of made sense. 

So if you want a fantastic look into the day to day life of the Joker, check this book out. If someone you know likes The Dark Knight, and who doesn't really, get them this book! Or if you are a Batman fan in general, pick this up. Hell even if you haven't read a Batman story in a while, this one will show you how dark one can be. I'm serious, it's that good, one of my favorite super hero reads in a while!If you would like to take my advice, you can Search Amazon.com for joker or click the box below!

If not you can continue to live your life never knowing the awesomeness that is this book...

Thanks for reading!

Jimmy Jimmy