Batman : Year One Trade Paperback for $10.19 currently at Amazon
I’ve always found the dual-character story telling method difficult to enjoy. As in, where two characters with different views or methods are developed at the same time and the story skips back and forth between them. It works well enough in cheesier comics, but in more serious attempts, it’s fallen flat for me more than a few times.
Fortunately, that’s not the case here. The writing is solid, and it’s Miller at his best, which is to say, a gritty city with gritty screwed up characters. That kind of scenario is the only time I enjoy his writing. His gritty city work has enough variety between characters (Batman/Daredevil/etc..) that it stays fresh. Seeing Batman utterly fail on his first few missions and what he learns from it, and seeing Gordon rising through the ranks of the Gotham Police Department, it flows perfectly.
The art fits the comic very well. The colours are very muted, relying on a darker palette. It’s very moody, which as you can tell from what I say about the writing, is completely appropriate.
5/5. This is considered one of the must-read Batman stories, and for good reason. It revitalized the character, it focused him, and it’s a blast to read. This is another story that the movies drew some of their inspiration from, in this case, for Batman Begins.
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