Comic-Con 2011: Batman: Year One Coverage and Panel

Batman: Year One premiered for 4500 eager fans at San Diego Comic-Con last night and I believe every single one of them came away with their expectations met or exceeded.   My only beef is that it really should be called Gordon: Year One.  But that's something I should discuss with Frank Miller, not the team of Bruce Timm, Sam Liu, Lauren Montgomery and Andrea Romano - a group of filmmakers who are absolutely unstoppable right now. 

Superhero cartoons are for kids? Nonsense. This tale of how Batman's first days change Gotham City, essentially an essay on social reform, is as dark as anything produced by Christopher Nolan.  Marital infidelity, child prostitution and civic corruption are bluntly (although tastefully) displayed - it just so happens that there's also a guy zipping around town in a bat suit.

Unlike Nolan's Batman Begins, Batman: Year One leaves the mechanics of Bruce Wayne's transformation into the Dark Knight Detective offscreen, focusing primarily on Gotham City's other great defender of righteousness:  Jim Gordon.

We meet him as he first makes his transfer to the City of Crime, admitting in voice over that he has misgivings about his wife's pregnancy.  Man's inhumanity to man has hollowed him out.  "I hate the job, hate the gun, but I keep practicing" he incants on the firing range.  When Batman arrives on the scene he recognizes in him a true partner.

As in Miller's original, there's the origin of Selena Kyle and Catwoman.  She's portrayed sympathetically; a "working girl" inspired by Batman's vigilantism, but uses the technique for her own "getting by."  There's a great three-way showdown when she and Batman both target the local crime boss Falcone - he for collecting evidence, she for collecting loot.

Visually, Batman: Year One is masterful and iconic.  Set in the 1980s (a VHS and Beta store makes that clear) there are occasional new wave flourishes, though this is still Gotham we're talking about.  The most striking images involve light playing off Gordon's glasses (watch for the Straw Dogs reference) or Bruce Wayne alone in his mansion.  Chase sequences are somewhat stylized with blurring techniques and the roly-poly faces of the baddie politicos pull no punches.

Much like the recent Batman: Under the Red Hood, this is a REAL movie.  We in the US are a little late in accepting animation as a medium for adults - and using characters that are often Slurpee cup tie-ins don't help - but I think the pacing, art and voice performance from Bryan Cranston as Jim Gordon might really change some opinions.

Batman: Year One will be out on Blu-ray in October.  In a parallel world it's playing in theaters.