Batman: Year One
written by Frank Miller; illustrated by David Mazzucchelli
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Caution: Spoilers.

This is a four-issue miniseries from 1987, which ran from issue 404-407 of the "Batman" comic book, and was later reprinted in a collected edition. I must have been aware of it for several years before I first read it. Now I don't even remember if that was in the 90s or 2000s. But I'm going to reread it in 2012, because I've finally bought another collected story, The Long Halloween, which was written about ten years later, but was set shortly after Year One. So I thought I should refresh my memory of this story before reading that one. It's also about damn time I get around to writing a review of "Year One," considering it is one of the most critically acclaimed and influential and fan-beloved Batman stories ever told.

So... it's sort of an origin story. I'm sure we all know about how Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered when he was a kid, and later on he did a lot of training and whatnot. This isn't about all that. It starts out when Bruce is 25 years old, and returns to Gotham City after having spent twelve years abroad. At the same time, a police lieutenant named James Gordon moves to Gotham, along with his wife, Barbara. Apparently this was the only city where Gordon could still find work as a cop, because of things he'd done elsewhere... I wasn't clear on exactly what he'd done, but I got the impression he'd busted some dirty cops, wherever he worked before, so it's kind of surprising he managed to get a job in Gotham, considering it seems like most of the cops there were as dirty as they come. The dirtiest of the lot was Commissioner Gillian Loeb. (I've never heard of "Gillian" as a man's name, so that seemed a bit odd to me, but I suspect it's pronounced with a hard "G," so whatever.) The other really dirty cop in Gotham is Detective Flass. They do not make things easy for Gordon, but there are at least a few good cops on the force, including a guy named Merkel, and more importantly, a woman named Sarah Essen. Then there's Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent, who tries to make cases against various criminals, but of course the police and the mayor make it practically impossible to do much good.

So. Gotham City is corrupt, a pretty terrible place to live, unless you're a criminal, I guess. And this is when Bruce begins his own crusade, becoming the vigilante known as Batman. At first, Commissioner Loeb doesn't seem too concerned about him, until it becomes clear that he intends to take down not just petty criminals, but the elected officials who are working with organized crime. The main gangster in the story is Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, though it didn't seem to me that we actually saw much of him (and I never noticed him being called anything but "The Roman" in this story). After Batman makes his intentions clear, the police begin thinking of him as a major threat, which means Gordon will have to try to stop Batman, at the same time less honorable cops are trying to do so (including a SWAT team, led by a man named Branden). The difficulties Gordon has with the cops decreases slightly as he himself becomes popular with the press, on a par with Batman himself. Though of course, Loeb, Flass, and Branden (and probably lots of others) still hate Gordon, and continue to make his job and his life difficult, even dangerous.

There's a third story going on, from the perspective of Selina Kyle, who is apparently inspired by Batman's rising fame to adopt her own alternate identity, Catwoman, though the comic barely touches on that. In fact, while the main story is supposedly about Bruce Wayne's early struggles to begin his crusade to clean up Gotham (he makes mistakes, and is not nearly as awesome as we usually see him, later in his career... though he's still pretty damn good)... it actually seemed to me like Batman was the secondary protagonist, and the real primary protagonist was Jim Gordon. Aside from his struggle to survive in a corrupt department, he has a pregnant wife (and worries about bringing a child into such a terrible world), and meanwhile, begins to fall in love with Sgt. Essen (for which he feels great guilt). But mainly the story shows us what an amazing cop Gordon is, why Batman comes to respect and trust him, and why Gordon eventually realizes that in spite of Batman technically being a criminal, he's someone who can also be trusted and respected.

I don't really want to say any more about the plot. As the title suggests, it covers a one-year period, so you can't expect too much to be resolved by the end. (Obviously, a lieutenant like James Gordon isn't going to automatically get promoted to Commissioner, the title I'm most used to thinking of for him.) Some bad guys are thwarted, but Gotham has a long way to go, as do all the people who live there, before becoming what we might expect them to be, someday. But it's definitely a damn good start.