10 Comics That CHANGED History
7. Batman: Year One
Global history is one thing, but to truly understand the world we must also put an emphasis on the history of specific people and places. Batman: Year One took us back to Bruce Wayne’s early days of fighting crime in Gotham, showing us a man and a city that were just beginning to evolve into their full potential.
By narrating the story through the diaries of Bruce Wayne and a young Jim Gordon, writer Frank Miller gave Year One the feel of a historical document. Gotham had never felt more like a real place, and its inhabitants had never felt more like real people. By embracing this almost documentary-style approach, Miller was able to create the benchmark that all other origin stories are now compared to.
The same could not be said of Miller’s more recent Superman: Year One, a strange attempt to give the Man of Steel the same treatment. Whereas his work on Batman forever redefined the character’s backstory, Superman: Year One adds little to the Superman mythos. Oh, except for a downright weird story in which young Clark Kent joins the army, then almost immediately ditches it to take a gap year in Atlantis and date a mermaid. It’s also worth noting that, for a book with such a specific title, the story took place over several years.
Still, we suppose Year One is a catchier title than Superman: Year One, Two, A Bit of Three Through Sixteen, And Then We Jump Ahead To Twenty Or So And Just Sort Of Keep Going.