Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli

Almost forty years later, what surprises me this time is that Frank Miller used to know how to be subtle.

He lost that, somewhere along the way - probably in the '90s; a lot of subtlety died in comics in the '90s - and has never gotten it back. But Batman: Year One is subtle, and carefully constructed, and insightful, and completely devoid of any fat whatsoever. This is a tense, lean story that has a lot of ground to cover and intends to show important points to the reader once at most, trusting us to pick them up.

It's also a heavily narrated book, which could add to the density but just makes it more precise. I know that style - overlapping narrative captions, in varying colors, to convey internal states and stream-of-consciousness thoughts from multiple characters - is now thoroughly out of fashion, and probably will never come back. But it's a huge shame: that style works really well for American-style adventure comics with some depth to them, and there's no reason American creators need to steal the techniques of French and Japanese creators when they've got a homegrown version that works well with the toolbox most of them are already using.

But that's a counterfactual: Year One, from 1986, is near the high point of this style of comics-writing, in that period when Miller and others (Alan Moore, most obviously, especially with Watchmen and Swamp Thing) used captions extensively and well. Every high point leads to a crash, I suppose.

I've read Year One at least twice before - probably more than that; but two stand out - first, as individual issues of Batman back in 1986, and then twenty years later, which might have been the first time I bought it in book format. (Though I think I also had the earlier trade paperback.)

Year One was one of the pieces of fallout from the massive Crisis on Infinite Worlds project at DC Comics: as the cliché went, worlds lived, worlds died, and nothing was the same again. And, since things weren't the same, DC wanted to tell readers how they were now. So there was a relaunched Wonder Woman by George Perez and a relaunched Superman by John Byrne, and lots of other tinkerings and changes. But the Powers That Be at DC thought Batman was basically right: they didn't want to change him substantially, just underline what they considered important. So instead of a revamp, we got a retelling of the origin - not the first time that happened in comics, but maybe the first really important time, the first time it was this crisp and precise and right, making a model that a thousand other creators would look to over the next decades, as they tried and failed (often miserably) to do the same thing.

It's not fair to blame a book for what comes after it, but Year One led to a lot of crap. A lot of What You Never Knew! A lot of Shocking Secrets of Superhero X! And, these days, any reader with a knowledge of the field needs to be able to ignore all of that to read what's actually in Year One.

It's set in grungy Gotham City, at its most '70s New York. The time is five to ten years before "now" - now being the 1986 when it was published, but also that eternal now of Batman and every other continually-published superhero. The main characters are Bruce Wayne, not yet Batman as the book opens, and James Gordon, a newly-arriving police lieutenant from Chicago. (Every time I read Year One, I'm struck that DC Earth seems to have a lot more mobility of mid-rank police officers around the country than is actually common, and shrug it off once again.)

Their paths cross and re-cross multiple times over the course of this year - the story is captioned with days, beginning in early January and ending in early December - as they both learn how corrupt this city is, and who the players are. Both of them are tough and committed, but they both have a lot to learn, and plenty of powerful people are looking to kill the new vigilante or suborn the new hero cop.

Every character is important. Everything we see, every scene, has a purpose, and adds up to something larger as the book goes along. This was four standard-size comics issues, and Miller was ruthless in his writing to get everything in, often smashing from one day to another on the same page to keep the narrative moving forward at pace.

And, of course, it was all drawn by David Mazzucchelli, at one of his career peaks. (He went on to a very different kind of career than anyone expected from this work, which is why I phrase it like that.) Every panel is dark and grungy and right, perfectly fitting Miller's taut plot, and propelling the story forward to make it all seem inevitable.

This is one of the great Batman comics: even forty years haven't damaged it. I suspect it reads better today than Miller's other contemporary Batman pillar, The Dark Knight Returns, which was always more overwrought and, if I can say it, Miller-esque. I don't usually make sweeping statements, but if you read only one Batman story, this is probably the one you want.