Previously we had mentioned how the spectre of Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli's seminal Year One looms large over any storyteller attempting to bring a new wrinkle to Batman's early career. It's unlikely that story will ever be beaten: it is uncompromising in it's vision but concise in it's presentation, it hits all the beats you would expect but also provides several unexpected delights. When he was constructing Zero Year, Scott Snyder was been candid in interviews about how he tried to stay as far away as possible from Year One, in pretty much every way he could think of, as there is no sense in trying to compete with a stone cold classic. Here's the thing, though: Year One is four issues long; Zero Year is three times that. Year One is a small-scale crime story; Zero Year is a large-scale, Hollywood blockbuster style epic that builds in scope as it goes on. Year One's colour palette is very muted, full of blacks and greys; Zero Year paints Gotham in neon yellow, pink and green. Snyder has referred to the colouring, by FCO Plascencia, as punk rock. In many ways, 'Zero Year' purposely does things in the opposite manner one would anticipate, and the garish colouring is top of the list in this regard. It makes the story very singular, a one of a kind vision. Does it work all the time and will we be hoping to see more hot pink in the Gotham City sky in the future? Probably not, but it sure made for a fun experiment.
