' "Year One" and a Half' or 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Scott Snyder's "Zero Year" '

Why?

We ask this awful little question of our art and our artists often. Why did you make this choice? Why didn't we get to see that thing? Why does this entire thing exist?

(Ask me someday about the time I met Rick Remender. Boy, did I put my foot in my mouth!)

You're far and away not going to be the first or the last to ask that question about the current epic Batman saga from Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo: "Zero Year," yet another reimagining/updating of Bruce Wayne's return to his corrupt hometown and first steps toward becoming the world's greatest crime-fighter.

The Kane/Finger Golden Age original

Yeah. Batman's origin. Bob Kane and Bill Finger's story. Again. Why is Snyder biting off more than he can chew? Why do this again?

I asked it. Vehemently, actually. Why measure yourself directly against the greats of the past? Why take the risk?

But I'm reminded of one of my proudest academic moments: I sat discussing "Othello" in a freshman year Shakespeare class at Bard College and another student questioned Shakespeare's placement of a long side-narrative soliloquy spoken by the poor, much-abused O himself, pretty much right in the middle of the otherwise fast-paced big suicidal finale. 'Why do this whole side-monologue-thing?' my fellow student asked. And he wasn't entirely wrong. But I blurted out something along the lines of: Because it's FUCKING BADASS! That's why! He put it in because it's good!

Now we're less than half-way through the Snyder/Capullo team's eleven-issue-long-origum-opus, but I'm going to go out on a limb and declare it to be GOOD.

The third issue makes remarkably intelligent and brave storytelling chronology choices I've never seen in comics before. American superhero comics, certainly. These three panels below are in their intended order but Panel 2 takes place before both Panel 1 and Panel 3. Somehow this works, despite all sanity.

The jarringly beautiful storytelling on display in the new "Batman" #23

Seriously, read issue #23 if you read nothing else of the story. It's pretty amazing. If you want to hear more about my thoughts on the quality of the issues, it just so happens to be the subject of the first episode of my new podcast recorded in comics-related NYC locales reviewing recent comics related to those locales.
(Listen here, I'd love it if you do!)

Capullo's hologram bats...

Perhaps strangely, perversely even, the parts of "Zero Year" I'm enjoying the most are the parts that reference and directly or indirectly contradict Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's celebrated work from 1987: "Batman: Year One."

I suppose that shouldn't be so strange since I've said for years that although "Year One" is good, it's not really Batman's story but James Gordon's. Until the Miller/Mazzucchelli story, Commissioner Gordon had been a paper-thin character. Miller introduced us to LIEUTENANT Gordon, made him ex-military, gave him an ex-wife, and made him extremely angry. As insipid as that makes it sound, he lives and breathes as a vivid personality in the books. 

So, for example, we've been given very little of Gordon so far in "Zero Year." I have no idea where he comes from or if he has a pregnant wife fed-up with his workaholism, but he is certainly angry. And tough. The few times we see Snyder's Gordon have had added weight for me because nothing has contradicted Miller's Gordon. They are, so far, identical characters.

The same is nearly true of Bruce and Alfred. And, more importantly, their relationship.

Miller/Mazzucchelli 80s take on the moment

In-between page 8 and page 22 of the first issue of the 1980s "Year One", Bruce is put through a torturous evening his first night as a crime-fighter that forces him to rethink his entire plan. Until he sees a bat fly into his father's study and realizes he needs to make people fear him on a primal level if he's going to win his war. A similar event happens over in the entire third issue of "Zero Year", in the aftermath of just about everything in issues #21 and #22.

3 panels- expanded to 14 pages- expanded to roughly a full 22-page comic-book.

None of the three make it explicitly clear that all the events depicted happen on the same night or that they don't, which keeps it loose. Most importantly, we see a scene of Alfred and Bruce after the resourceful butler has performed the life-saving surgery Miller hinted at and the scene is sad, beautiful, and rings true. I imagine the scenes Snyder wrote fitting precariously in-between the pages Miller wrote, the pages Miller wrote filling-out the panels Bob Kane wrote, and we get something even more powerful than each was separately. Seventy-plus years in the making.

(I actually wrote an editorial years ago about how awesome it is when this happens. Intertextuality, yo!)

Snyder/Capullo version of the same

The answer to this article's initial question could be many-fold. Snyder thought he deserved a crack at it. (He may as well be right.) Capullo wanted to do it. Snyder thought "Batman: Year One" didn't have enough Batman in it. (I'd say he's right.) DC Editorial figured it would sell them some comics. (They definitely turned out to be right.) Some fan somewhere asked for it. Liberals hate Frank Miller now. Everyone agreed it could be badass.

Who knows? But, in other words...

Why not?

~ @JonGorga

Wednesday's New Things: Remender, Rios and Kelly Sue

1) One of my serious flaws is a reader of comics is that I have trouble reading single issues more than once, even if I've really enjoyed myself or I'm confused by something. This is frustrating, of course, because I've read all of these comics I've only read one time and which are now sitting around, taking up space. Luckily, sometimes, there's stuff that's so good that I will read it twice-- like the first issue of Pretty Deadly. If this second issue is even as close to as good as the first one was, it'll be worth the price, no matter how many times you read it.






2) I've always been a little ambivalent about Rick Remender. His books are bad (Uncanny Avengers) just as often as they're good (Captain America), and he seems to be good at very particular, very odd, things. Black Science, though, is a book that looks pretty odd; a psycha-sci-fi-fantasy odyssey through the impossible. Sort of like Fraction's Defenders, but with more latitude. How could you say no to an elevator pitch like that? 

Chatter: Kieron Gillen

If Young Avengers ever became just another Superhero book it would depress the living hell out of me. I’d always rather be a firework rather than a low-watt bulb.

Kieron Gillen, talking about why he and Jamie McKelvie are ending their Young Avengers run with #15. It's a shame that its over so soon, but I'm absolutely with Gillen here; the fact that comics have traditionally been serialized, and that fans always want more rather than less, has meant that many good stories go on long enough that they stop being good stories. The bonus here is that we'll see that third Phonograph volume in the near future, and I expect that, sooner rather than later, Marvel will hand something else to this lot. 

Coming Soon to A Spinner Rack Near You: Ms. Marvel

The new Ms. Marvel series, coming out in February, is to be written by G. Willow Wilson and drawn by Adrian Alphona and will feature a new character, a shape shifting Muslim-American teenager named Kamala Khan. Today's announcement came by way of a New York Times article: 

The creative team is braced for all possible reactions. “I do expect some negativity,” Ms. Amanat said, “not only from people who are anti-Muslim, but people who are Muslim and might want the character portrayed in a particular light.” 

But “this is not evangelism,” Ms. Wilson said. “It was really important for me to portray Kamala as someone who is struggling with her faith.” The series, Ms. Wilson said, would deal with how familial and religious edicts mesh with super-heroics, which can require rules to be broken.

I've read Wilson's work before, and remember particularly liking her graphic novel, Cairo. I have every confidence that this book will be very good. That Times article goes a little too far out of its way to pat Marvel on the back, though, and it is important to remember that comics' diversity problem is not going to be solved by little, well publicized displays here and there. This is definitely a step in the right direction, moreso than Mighty Avengers was, and it will be interesting to see the reaction, both inside the comics community and outside of it, as we move closer to seeing this new Ms. Marvel in print. 

The Glamoured Disenchanted

Yesterday, Disenchanted, the Si Spurrier written, German Erramouspe drawn, Avatar published, weekly digital serial about a city for the English fay, premiered online. You can find it here. Unsurprisingly, given Spurrier's recent successes, it's pretty good.

Not perfect, mind you; for one, Erramouspe's art is what you expect from Avatar, heavy on the exploitation blood and guts, serviceable if not stunning. This has its benefits, of course, pure visceral thrill, for one, but it also facilitates storytelling; this sequence, for example, or this one, reveals the scope of what Erramouspe and Spurrier are up to and it does so without demanding that the reader stop reading for too long to admire the art. This focus, though, shows some further cracks, most notably that this first episode suffers from a debilitating case of what you might call world building syndrome. Rather develop a single narrative as a way in, Spurrier gives us several concurrent stories: Tibitha, the elder who teaches the young the old ways, a pair of cops, some disaffected, alienated, and recently arrived, day laborers. Still, although he doesn't develop any of the stories, save maybe the last one, enough for this initial installment to be satisfying, this approach, agains, opens up the world of Disenchanted in a way that gives a larger sense of what it is that the story is after. It's enough to pique curiosity, but not enough to pull you through; if you think you'd like a cross between Spenser, Dickens, and The Wire, then it's certainly enough to bring you back next week. 

Of course, one of the intriguing things about this project is the way it integrates digital and physical distribution; unlike traditional single issues, which, I think, are still primarily physical objects that some people read on their iPads, or webcomics, which are digital first and released into the physical world at intermittent intervals, if it all, or, even, what you might call digital first floppies, like the stuff Monkey Brain puts out, which are slowly being released in physical form by partnerships between that publisher and more traditional comics companies, Disenchanted's episodes are published online first and then, every six months or so, will be collected into trade paperbacks. If you don't want to come back next week, you can come back in six months and read a much more developed story at a much faster pace. Following it either way, you get a significant number of pages at a relatively short interval. The two squarish pages available online are likely going to be stitched together to make a single page for the book release (which, I think, will make the sequence I linked to above interesting in a different way; you can see where it's going to be pushed together into a splash page, it could evoke wonder, rather than being a formally unusual sequence), you're getting 12 pages an episode, 48+ pages a month, over a six month period. That's twice what you get from a monthly releasing Big Two comic book, on a pay if you want scheme. It's a pretty good deal, one that Avatar knows works from Freakangels and Crossed, and its nice to see them keeping at it.