Throughout this mini-series within a series, Snyder has tred carefully to ensure that he wasn't exactly ret-conning Frank Miller's iconic work on "Batman: Year One." The stories that Snyder tells throughout "Zero Year" could theoretically fit between the gaps of "Batman: Year One" and its related stories ("Batman: The Long Halloween," "Batman: Dark Victory," etc.). But, in the end, Snyder makes you realize that it's a moot point. More than any other story that I've read in the DCnU, Snyder reminds us that we are really, truly dealing with a new universe. Sure, we can pretend that "Batman: Year One" and "Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne" really happened. But, Snyder seems to be gently encouraging us to let go of that need to constantly assess how the stories that he and his colleagues are telling in the new DCnU era mesh with the previous DCU continuity.
How does he do it? If I had to put my finger on it, he does it by making Bruce's challenges so over the top. By having Batman fight Dr. Death on a floating weather-station and the Riddler sending Gotham City into a new Dark Age, Snyder embraces exactly the sort of stories that Miller was rejecting with "Batman: Year One." Miller essentially invented the modern Batman, the determined detective fighting crime threat by threat on the dangerous streets of Gotham. In so doing, he moved Batman beyond the more cartoonish image that people associated with the character as a result of the 1960s television show and the campier Batman stories, like "Detective Comics" #241, where he has to wear a different colored suit every night for reasons that elude me. To be fair, Snyder doesn't entirely reject this grittier characterization; in "Batman Eternal," Bruce is again hitting the streets to fight criminals threatening to engulf Gotham in a gang war. But, even telling a gang-war story, Snyder uses a scale beyond the one that Miller employed. We've already seen the destruction of the Iceberg Casino, and we know that Snyder's gang war is going to end with Gotham burning with Bruce nailed to some sort of cross. In other words, it's not the understated story that Miller told, where it ends with Bruce saving Gordon from an attempt on his life and the kidnapping of his family.
In other words, Snyder is saying that the physics of storytelling in the DCnU are different from the DCU's. It's not just Matches Malone doing some gumshoe work to figure out which warehouse at the waterfront is going to host the meeting of a bunch of thugs. The way that a story progresses from Point A to Point B is now different. Along the way to the warehouse, Batman may now be stopped by Mr. Freeze trying to freeze the entire world or Ra's al Ghul blowing up Tokyo. It's not just the Joker poisoning a reservoir. Snyder is using "Zero Year" to tell us to embrace these new laws of physics.
To be honest, I'm not sure that I do, since I still really question how exactly the Riddler managed to put his scheme into action and how Gotham managed to recover from it so quickly. Part of the reason that I liked Batman stories is that they feel like they could happen in the real world, and I'm not sure that this one does. But, I'll admit that Snyder has made the most persuasive argument to me that I should at least try to move past the DCU, since part of my angst over this story was the idea that we'd never heard of Zero Year in the DCU. If you embrace it as a DCnU story, then it essentially becomes focusing on the merits of the story itself and not immediately rejecting it based on our previous understanding of the DCU's history.
Moreover, Snyder doesn't go too off the rails. If anything, he makes sure that Bruce is somewhere that we recognize at the end. His relationship with Gordon is now on firm footing, Lucius is taking over Wayne Enterprises, and Alfred accepts Bruce's role as Batman. In other words, he's telling us not to panic. Snyder's Gotham might be more cartoonish, in its over-the-top stories, than Miller's, but the relationships at the center -- the reason that we all read this book every month regardless of the author -- are the same.
All that said, it's the final scenes of this issue and story that are the most devastating. Snyder sends into the world a fully formed Batman by crushing Alfred's dream of Bruce living a regular life. The montage of Alfred day-dreaming of Bruce's happy life with Julie Madison is one of the most devastating things that I've ever read in comics. Snyder maximizes the impact by initially making the dreamer's identity unclear. Is it Bruce realizing that he can never have a relationship with Julie because he'd endanger her and their children? Or, is it Bruce wondering if he could manage to be both Bruce and Batman because his love for Julie is so strong? Nope. In the end, it's Alfred accepting the fact that his foster son was irrevocably ruined that night in Crime Alley. Bruce may say that he's only happy as Batman; Capullo even draws a smile on his face in the final scene to underline that. But, Snyder uses Alfred to say to the reader that we all know that it's not true. Bruce might feel complete being Batman, but he's never really giving himself the chance to know what happy is. But, Snyder makes sure to definitely end that line of thought with Alfred himself accepting that. It's harsh, but necessary, for us to recognize the Bruce at the end.
Overall, I liked this story more than Snyder's other outlandish tales. "Court of the Owls" ended with a bizarre twist that oddly replaced the main antagonist at the last moment, and "Death of the Family" told a convoluted story where the tie-in issues called into question the entire premise of the main story. "Zero Year" did what Snyder said that it would do, and it leaves us at a point that feels consistent with the events that we've seen detailed throughout this year of issues. I'm not saying that it's the best Batman story ever told or that it was flawless. But, after my disappointment with the last two events in this title, I'm just glad to say that I accept the ending as a logical conclusion to the story. It might be a low bar, but at least we surmounted it.
*** (three of five stars)
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