If you’re reading this website, you know Batman’s origin. You’ve probably seen several different variations on it throughout the years. Some of these takes are of such quality that they can be considered definitive (see: Frank Miller’s Year One). Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo mercifully take the opportunity to show us something we haven’t seen before and the results are pretty good, even if they don’t knock it out of the park.
Written by Scott Snyder
Illustrated by Greg Capullo– Bruce Wayne has returned from his worldwide quest to take the law into his own hands!
– This issue reveals the early steps of building everything that surrounds Batman — the costume, the cave, the car, the gadgets!
Part of the mission statement of the New 52 was a promise to modernize things. Whether coincidental or not, the majority of the issue is very reminiscent of the Christopher Nolan Batman films. The first half concerns a bank heist perpetrated by the “Red Hood Gang” and it evokes the opening heist sequence from 2008’s The Dark Knight, right down to a sense of realism, uneasiness and misdirection. Snyder and Capullo recreate the magic of some of their pitch-perfect middle issues in the “Court of Owls” arc by upping the stakes with every passing page and ramping up the tension in each subsequent action beat. The threat doesn’t pull any punches, lending itself to a comic that is both frank and relevant in its depiction of street-level crime.
When things slow down a bit, Snyder begins to tap into the life of Bruce Wayne just before he will become a bat. We’ve already seen Snyder mold the history of Gotham by creating a very specific mapping of the city with the names of forefathers to go behind it, but we haven’t seen him tackle much from the younger years of Bruce’s life. The Nolan influence is even more present here, as Snyder pulls back the curtains on a pre-Batcave safehouse for Bruce and his gadgets. Bruce has begun playing vigilante before he has fully realized what his masked identity will be. Snyder and Capullo show intelligence in crafting a vigilante past for Bruce that feel familiar, but just not honed down yet. This is quite evident literally in the form of Bruce’s ordinary-looking boomerang, which hovers over Bruce’s first meeting with Jim Gordon like an omnipresent omen of things to come.
But while it’s fun to see pre-Batman Bruce Wayne fighting crime in Gotham City and a bunch of gadgets that still need some serious aesthetic design work, it’s surprisingly shallow fun. Snyder took a cerebral and thematically weighty approach to his exploration of Gotham’s history and architecture. Each building or person represented something else about the identity of the city. That same level of detail is missing from his exploration of Bruce Wayne’s history. Honestly, Bruce’s early interactions with Gordon and Alfred are surprisingly rote regurgitations of the kinds of discussions they have all the time in the pages of “Batman” comic books.
The backup written by James Tynion IV actually has more to say about what Batman’s arrival means for the people of Gotham. We see it through the eyes of all of the most important characters in the Bat Family, in several entertaining scenes highlighting the unique traits of all the former Robins. The backup is more memorable, even if only for the mere fact that the non-Damian “Robins” haven’t felt tied together very neatly in the New 52 continuity.
Though the main story is a little shallow, it does help that Capullo’s artwork is as kinetic as the best issues of the “Court of Owls” arc. A precisely plotted heist scene is easy to follow, because Capullo charts the movement of all of his players as good or better than any artist in the comic medium. There’s never any confusion as to who is doing what and why. These sequences are carried by Capullo’s confident pencils, making even a guy with a ridiculous red trashcan on his head into a menacing threat. Capullo favors a sense of vivacity in his cartooning over being particularly detailed. There’s an underlying playfulness in seeing Bruce with a more boyish haircut or the way he draws a more angular, fresh-faced Gordon. Andy Clarke’s detailed work is featured in the backup story, but things get a little rough around the characters’ faces. Capullo is a master of finding the appropriate facial cues for a character, while in his segment of the book, the characters don’t always have recognizable expressions.
Snyder and Capullo have been one of the most in-synch pairings in comic books and have set a mark of quality that few in the mainstream can live up to. That said, Capullo’s art does most of the heavy lifting and even overshadows the writing at times. Snyder writes a thrilling enough story, but there’s none of the usual meat behind it. None of the startling revelations or thematic weight that makes you stop and think about the implications of what’s going on. It could be a case of a great team having set the bar too high, but it really does feel like no one had much to say about Bruce’s early years.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – a dip from what they’ve been doing on “Batman”, but worth anyone’s money all the same.
