As the furor over The Avengers begins to die down, comic fans are beginning to look forward to other blockbusters due to hit this summer. Not to slight Sony’s The Amazing Spider Man, but as it is a reboot of an insanely popular franchise, it has a lot to prove in order to be considered in the same weight class as Nolan’s Batman films.
Nolan saved the Batman films from the enduring mockery that followed them for almost a decade after the disaster that was Batman and Robin. He showed that the character could be done in a serious and realistic way by setting an incredibly dark tone, surrounding his Batman with an Oscar-calibre supporting cast, and choosing just the right blend of ingredients from the best Batman tales of the last thirty years to form his epic masterpiece.
For those who are more familiar with the films than with the comics, here are the five stories that are key to what Nolan has done thus far… and may yet accomplish.
1. Batman: Year 1
Written by legendary comics scribe Frank Miller, Batman Year One is where the modern Batman mythology began. The story chronicles a young Bruce Wayne’s return to Gotham after a long absence, his first failed attempts at crime-fighting, his conflicts with the corrupt Gotham City Police Department, and an idealistic Jim Gordon’s struggle to accept that a madman may be the best hope for a city that has lost it’s mind.
It is the primary source material for Batman Begins, the first film in Nolan’s trilogy. A great many of the thematic elements from this book, as well as a several nearly-complete scenes, made their way into the Nolan film. If you want to understand where the film’s writers got their ideas and where Nolan took his stylistic cues from, this is the place to start.
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14 Comments
Great list! Though I would swap out “Knightfall” (which is good, very good) with “Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth.”
McKean just…captures it all.
Also: five is such a small number!
I’ve yet to read The Killing Joke and KnightFall. But like Matt said, why didn’t you include Arkham Asylum? Or at least Batman and Son, Return of Bruce Wayne, Death in the Family, Under The Hood, Hush, All star Batman and Robin the boy wonder, and the recently released Night of Owls? I found all of these extremely entertaining and an important part of the Batman mythos. To clarify, I’m not saying the titles you mentioned aren’t important or entertaining, I’m just saying that you should have included these titles. Awesome article by the way!
The major reason I chose not to include Arkham Asylum was that it only tangentially relates to what has been going on in the films. Outside of the name, it hasn’t really contributed much to the story that has been constructed over the last several years.
The same can be said of Death In The Family, HUSH, ASB, etc. While these are all great stories, they aren’t really new-reader friendly, requiring a lot of background in Batman in order to understand them.
The titles that I chose were done so on the basis of being accessible to new readers as an entry point into the Batman mythos.
I do love most all of the stories mentioned, though, and perhaps will look at them in the future for “Batman Essentials: Volume 2″ or some such article.
Thanks for reading!
And also Batman Noel, Batman RIP, Batman: Dark Victory….and that’s about it.
I don’t think Nolan would ever do The Dark Knight Returns (even if he ever did return to the Bat franchise). It goes against his ‘real’ portrayal. Unless they totally cut out Superman from the story.
I don’t necessarily think that it’s very likely either. Most of the cast and crew have said that they’re done with Batman after Dark Knight Rises.
Christian Bale has expressed an interest in a return to the character at some point, and it seems that The Dark Knight Returns would be about the only place that they could go, especially if they wait until after the Nolan-godfathered Superman franchise gets off it’s feet.
What about the brilliant Batman Year 100 by Paul Pope?
I think id Heath Ledger didn’t die that Arkham Asylum would have been one of the Graphic Novels used to inspire the 3rd film. I know it obviously wouldn’t have had all the rogues but it would have been a great way to have the Joker as the main villian again while introducing some of the inmates as villains. There could have been a scarecrow and joker team up added in which would have been cool i think.
Well we’ll never know. Id oubt we’ll see the Joker in a movie for many years and reboots to come
Ah but Nolan has already done The Dark Knight Returns – at least, his version of it – with The Dark Knight Rises! :) Rises is essentially an amalgamation of Knightfall, No Man’s Land and The Dark Knight Returns.
Year One is pretty rad
I’ll be honest, I really dislike A Killing Joke. There’s a lot of crossover writing that seeped in fom Moore’s “Watchmen” – panelling layouts etc. As you pointed out there is very little plot and it’s actually a very short book, 40-odd pages from memory. The rest are great examples of Bat-goodness. It’ll be interesting to see if Scott Snyder’s current run on Batman measures up to these books.
Good list, however, I believe Hush should have at least gotten an honorable mention. While not exactly a classic, it is great and includes almost every important character from the Bat universe. A great way for anyone to dive into Batman and his world.
I would replace ‘Knightfall’ in this list. The story isn’t on the same level as the other books on this list. Nolan only really used the breaking of batman, the breaking out of prisoners and Alfred resigning from that whole saga.
I would include Batman: The Cult instead, The Dark Knight Rises is basically this story, with Bane replacing the villain Deacon Blackfire. The villain brainwashes and builds an army of homeless and disenfranchised of Gotham in the sewers. He imprisons Batman underground and breaks him mentally, batman escapes and doesn’t return for an extended period of time.
The villain blows the bridges and wages a war against the corrupt and powerful elite of Gotham society, victims are hung in the street as warnings.
Gordon is shot and hospitalised, the national guard are called in and ambushed in one raid in the sewers, like the SWAT in the film.
Batman returns, visits Gordon in hospital and wages war on the streets with a new Batmobile to take back Gotham… This was a controversial story at the time, due to the gore and graphic brutality of the artwork. It was even banned by certain media outlets.