Batman Overview: Batman: Year One

Batman: Year One is Frank Miller’s follow up to The Dark Knight Returns. We go back to the return of Bruce Wayne in Gotham City after a lengthy, unexplained absence and watch as he turns into the malevolent legend that is Batman. The origin story is much like Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and follows a similar trajectory. One key difference is motivation. While Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins seeks justice, Miller’s novel weaves an anti-capitalist motivation into his story. However, Miller’s ‘capitalism’ is the corrupt organized criminals of Gotham City, specifically Carmine ‘The Roman’ Falcone and his ilk.

Batman presents himself to these elite of Gotham by crashing a dinner party hosted by the Roman and then announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, you have eaten well. You have eaten Gotham’s wealth, its spirit. Your feast is nearly over, from now on–none of you are safe!” He leaves, and the impression is certainly made upon the crooks and politicians who dine with the Roman that night.

Two things are striking about this key scene. The first is that in many ways Wayne can count himself among those crooks; not through his actions (of course) but through his heritage. Wayne must hide behind the mask to give his actions meaning, or else Bruce Wayne (or any elite member of society) attacking those at the dinner would be seen as a spoiled rebel of some sort. No, Wayne must attack the elite from a distance under the guise of a symbol, to become as he says in Batman Begins, “incorruptable.”

Secondly, this scene echoes one in The Dark Knight where Joker crashes a fundraiser for Harvey Dent. Though the motivations are different, their actions are surprisingly similar. Joker and Batman are both pieces on the game board that is Gotham City but are opposites. They have different goals but play by similar rules, they will both intimidate and rile their foes into submission. They are both willing to topple those in power, but for different means.

The story of Batman/Bruce Wayne in Year One is paralleled by the story of newly transferred Lieutenant James Gordon. A ‘hero cop’ now working in Gotham City. As a hero cop he is immediately hated by everyone on the Gotham force. From Detective Flass to Commissioner Loeb the force is corrupt and the last thing they want is a goody-goody like Gordon spoiling all the fun for him. But Gordon was always going to spoil their fun. After being violently attacked several times by Flass he retaliates and strikes a blow against Flass, making him a threat. But once that threat is realized, Flass and Loeb execute a plot to scare Gordon into submission, blackmailing him with an affair and kidnapping his young wife and child. Batman helps from behind the scenes, but Gordon proves that he is a force to reckoned with and is promoted; the novel ends like Batman Begins, teasing the rise of the Joker.

Batman: Year One really is more of Gordon’s story than Batman’s. Wayne’s return to Gotham is convenient, but as Gordon moves to the city we see it’s ugliness fresh through his eyes. It’s corruption and the hell he has brought his family to from Chicago. With the new blood of Gordon, Batman is free to evolve on his own without Miller exhausting his story. The great thing about these early Miller novels is how he uses the world of Gotham City. The characters are surrogates and Batman doesn’t have to be the whole focus. Like Christopher Nolan’s films, Gotham offers plenty of room for a crime saga/epic to evolve where several characters have their part and Batman can take a secondary role. We see how Gotham as City fares with Batman, not just how Batman integrates himself into the city. By shifting narrative perspective on a popular story we open up the world and create a wider expanse to explore. We explore how the politics of corrupt officials mingle with organized crime rather than the tunnel-vision view of Batman, where criminals are bad and must be stopped. Batman Year One tells us how Batman interacts because we see him from such a distanced perspective, often across buildings or in shadows.

If you haven’t yet read it, do so. It’s a very large influence on Nolan’s world and especially Batman Begins. The recent animated rendition is fantastic as well– Bryan Cranston does the voice of Gordon and it couldn’t be better (I’d watch Cranston in anything these days!).

 

*No bits this week, I’ve said all I need to on Year One. Next week, back to the movies with a Double header: Batman Returns and Batman Forever: The Times They Are A Changin’

Dark Knight Returns Sneak Peek (Superman vs The Elite)

Here it is folks. A preview (and review) of Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns animated movie.  This is a great commentary by the producers/fans who are bringing this (now) legendary comic to the small screen.

A great discussion for fans and newbies alike on what’s great about Batman as a character and how we tell stories about Batman. He transcends comic book hero traits and, as Christopher Nolan showed us, Batman’s stories are about Gotham as much as Batman and make great crime sagas tacking social and political themes like few other comic superheroes can. Without having to deal with Nietzchean ideas about men and supermen, or the Spiderman ideology of “with great power comes great responsibility”, Batman’s stories can deal with how Batman fits into Gotham City and what his role is. He is the protector, but unlike Superman his skill-set must be different, he must make himself a legend as opposed to being born one.

The Dark Knight Returns tackles the legend of the Bat, and bringing it to an animated film is a great way of continually expanding this universe and introducing it to newer audiences at such a great time to understand Batman in this new way.

Batman Overview: The Dark Knight Returns

In the 1980s you would find it very difficult to see the Batman that many know and love today. It was Frank Miller who turned Batman into a more ultraviolent character that we see in many places today. As ultraviolent as he was, in The Dark Knight Returns, Miller safely remains grounded in the mythos of the character. Batman still kicks with such a force, but he will not kill and his goals are still grounded in the real world.

What is the impact of Dark Knight Returns, though? Would we have a film like Batman Begins or The Dark Knight without The Dark Knight Returns? Hard to say, considering many say that Tim Burton’s ‘dark and gloomy’ Batman owes a lot to Miller, but in retrospect, does it? Dark Knight Returns is almost cyberpunk (a style elevated in Miller’s sequel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again) while Burton’s film returns to Gothic and Dadaist roots. In comics, however, Miller’s influence was felt with intense gravity. Gone was the campy and lighter Batman and here was someone who held to his convictions with extreme prejudice, and his villains certainly did the same.

What followed were some of the darker stories told in the character’s history: Death in the Family, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke and Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb’s The Long Halloween, to start. These stories eschewed the action packed adventure of Batman in favour of examining the darker psyche of Batman and Bruce Wayne, his villains, and the broken mechanics of Gotham City, which almost certainly directly influenced Christopher Nolan’s adaptations.

Dark Knight Returns is a great read and a fundamental examination of American culture at the time. Miller, for a time, had his fingers right on the pulse of American culture and in Dark Knight Returns evident how harmful it could be. The book is peppered with talking head segments from news and specialty programs that discuss politics and Batman among “experts” that in many ways predicts the news we have today. All these experts look a little too tidied up for television, and that’s the point. While experts talk and politicians worry, their streets turn into warzones; in short, much of it is about perception. The Joker, perceived to be “cured” of his psychological disorder and presents himself as such on television begins a murderous rampage once he’s officially released. Two-Face, once a surgery is completed which repairs his disfigurement, is too tormented on the inside but his psyche that Harvey Dent cannot escape the Two-Face personality. And Batman must build up the perception of his existence, rebuilding the myth of Batman, before he can “Return”. What we perceive and what is are two wholly different things through the dangerous power of media and new-age sciences. Miller’s Batman cautions us about these things in a way that Scholar’s like Marshall McLuhan or Naom Chomsky may not be able to, but it certainly made these themes a little more accessible.

Bits and Bats: Notes on The Dark Knight Returns

• Frank Miller’s 1986 The Dark Knight Returns is widely considered to be the story that brought darker storytelling and visuals to the Batman character. It’s referenced almost directly in the “New Batman Adventures” (1997-99), where a post apocalyptic wasteland is featured in a speculative sequence.
• A future gotham riddled by gangland rule, Gotham, the Joker and mutants are contested territory. Each political body passes on responsibility for their activities on to other institutions so it becomes unclear just who rules Gotham city.
• Batman, a 55 year old Bruce Wayne, returns after years of silence; it is rumoured that The Dark Knight Rises borrows slightly from this, where Batman has disappeared and the story takes up eight years after The Dark Knight.
• The Joker is up to his usual tricks: manipulating the public through psychology. Psychiatric doctors claim that the Joker is cured, but when Joker continues his murderous rampage he proves the doctors wrong. Does the Joker suffer a psychiatric condition? Do you think he could be cured?
• Further, the Joker takes steps to push Batman to break his “one rule” as referenced in The Dark Knight. Batman will not kill. The Joker, who constantly escapes Arkham Asylum and proves that the legal system constantly pressures Batman to take his life. He comes close in Dark Knight Returns. After suffering paralysis at the hands of Batman, the Joker twists his own neck, killing himself but hoping it would look like Batman is responsible. Even if Batman is not capable of taking a life, the world with think it, similar to the end of The Dark Knight where Harvey Dent’s murders must be absorbed by Batman.
• Years after the various Robins — Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, etc — we get the first female Robin in 13 yr old Carrie Kelley, who proves herself as adept a Robin as the rest, and certainly more restrained than Todd, who in some versions becomes the villain known as ‘The Red Hood’.
• We typically see Batman working alone but due to the shattered state of Gotham City by Russian atomic missiles and Superman’s attempts to stop them (1986 and cold war politics were nothing new to comics, just look at Watchmen). Batman teams up with the mutants to help aid come to Gotham city and together they all halt violence as much as possible. Batman, revered by many in Gotham for his violence, insists upon avoiding violence and trains the ‘Sons of Batman’ (a vigilante splinter group) and the mutants to carry on his intent.

Next time: Select Viewings of Batman: The Animated Series