by Paul Bowler:
Ever since DC Comics launched The New 52, effectively paving the way for a fresh approach towards many of its most popular characters, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s best-selling run on Batman has continued to go from strength to strength. Through a series of incredible story arcs, Scott Snyder has given us some of the most memorable Batman stories in recent years. The Court of Owls emerged from the dark history of Gotham City itself, with secret connections to Bruce Wayne’s past; they unleashed their Talon army during The Night of Owls to destroy Batman and his allies, before the Joker returned in Death of the Family with a ghoulish new grin and a stomach churning recipe for dinner.
Now, in the aftermath of Damien Wayne’s death, a new chapter in the Dark Knight’s legacy is about to be revealed as Snyder and Capullo prepare to explore Bruce Wayne’s early years in the cape and cowl in Batman: Zero Year.
Batman Zero Year will be an eleven-part story arc, in which Scott Snyder will revisit the Batman’s origins, bringing new aspects to the character, while offering an insight into the formative years of his crime fighting career. While this may sound discerningly similar to the Batman Year One, fans needn’t be concerned, as Snyder has often stated how highly he regards this classic story by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, and that Batman Zero Year will in no way be just a simple retelling of this seminal masterpiece. Speaking at WonderCon 2013, Scott Snyder told Comic Book Recourses: “Yeah, I’m really, really excited about it. I genuinely feel from the bottom of my heart, on my kids, that this is the best thing we’ve done on “Batman. … When the 52 started, I guess, nobody was more adamant than the Bat-people — me and Pete Tomasi and Gail Simone and Kyle — about keeping Batman’s history intact, and DC was great about letting us say those stories happened, but little by little since the 52 started, what we realized was that people had done stories in the separate books — like “Catwoman” or “Detective” and me too, in “Batman” — that had slowly taken away the pieces that were possible for “Year One” to exist now as the origin.
Batman Zero Year is set in the same time frame that was established in Batman #0, roughly between five and six years ago, and will explore the period in Bruce Wayne’s life that has been relatively untouched since Miller and Mazzucchelli‘s Batman Year One over twenty five years ago. The many changes that have slowly been introduced over the course of The New 52 have effectively altered some aspects of what Year One established, so it doesn’t necessarily fit within the context of The New 52 continuity. Zero Year offers the perfect opportunity to revisit these early days while remaining faithful to spirit of Miller and Mazzucchelli’s masterpiece.
Batman: Year One
Snyder is clear that Zero Year will retain many of the core elements of Batman‘s origin: Joe Chill, the alley, and the bat, while addressing the key differences The New 52 continuity has built up around such characters as Jim Gordon, The Falcone Gang, and Selina Kyle. “I had this story in mind that I wanted to do for a while that’s an earlier story that shows Batman’s first adventures as Batman in a way that’s totally different than anything you’ve seen.” With so many differences in the origins already in place for characters such as Selina Kyle, Barbara Gordon, and the fact that James Jr. would be five or six years old in this new continuity, instead of trying to reclaim parts of Year One and work around it, Snyder has wisely opted to take an entirely fresh approach. “The book is designed to be like, you open it to page one and you say, “God damn. What is happening?” Literally, when you open it up to page one. I promise you, you’ll be like, “What is happening?” and for every page to be that way, where you turn it and you’re like, “Oh, my God! I’ve never seen the origin like that.”
One of the most fascinating aspects about Year One was how it covered both Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne’s early years in Gotham City, their lives inexorably being drawn together as Batman begins to make his presence felt. The brilliant thing about Zero Year is how Scott Snyder proposes to realize the hitherto untapped potential of Bruce Wayne’s tranformative years, such as how did he build the cave, what adventures led up to him becoming Batman, and how will these events fit sit within the framework of The New 52 continuity.
The events in last years Zero Month issue of Batman in some ways acted as a kind of preview of what to expect from Zero Year. While it Batman #0 offered a glimpse at the period in Bruce Wayne’s life before he became Batman, one thing Snyder can assure us of is that Zero Year will be just not be a retread of the events depicted in Batman #0: “My hope is that you love it as much as we do. Everything you see was made to honour what came before, but do it in a way that’s completely different. You’ll see Gotham in a way you’ve never seen it, you’ll learn things about the Waynes and the Kanes you’ve never learned before, you’re going to see your favorite villains in different ways, there’s new villains and you’re going to see Batman come into his own in ways you’ve never seen”
One key aspect of Zero Year will be the back up stories which will detail the skills that Bruce Wayne learned from his travels around the world, during his long absence from Gotham in his quest to hone his skills to perfection: “The backups are designed with Rafael Albuquerque by me and James Tynion. They’re going to be skillsets — I’ve never said this before, actually — skillsets that Bruce learned around the world. No ninjas, no Himalayas, no ice, it’s completely modernized, really, really fun. I don’t want to say it’s almost a punk rock version, but it’s meant to be fast and bright and different than “Year One.” “Year One” is a masterpiece, there’s no touching “Year One” period. Period. I get it. But if we’re going to do it, you gotta swing for the fence and say we’re going to do it our way and try something that’s completely 180 degrees away from that. It’s a story that means the world to us and shows Bruce’s early years in a completely, completely different light.”
Batman Zero Year will be a more self-contained story than The Night of Owls and Death of the Family. This is Snyder and Capullo’s own take on Batman’s early years, one more reminiscent of the singular style of stories like Black Mirror, unlike the big crossover evens of the previous story arcs. It is certainly Snyder and Capullo’s mot ambitious project so far, one that will offer a fresh perspective to the early version of many familiar characters, old and new, while presenting Batman’s origin in an entirely new way: “This is the biggest, craziest, most ambitious thing we’ve done. It’s the riskiest. We might fall on our face on it, you might hate it, but at the end of the day, there’s no story I love more. I mean it, from the bottom of my heart, it’s our Batman origin. What I hope is that everyone who’s been so supportive of us, you feel it’s yours too. We’re trying one for a different generation of Batman fans.”
So it would seem that Zero Year wont be just another continuity story just for the sake of it, this will be an extremely personal take on the Legacy of the Dark Knight, one that will add a whole new dimension to the mythology of the Batman. While it’s entirely possible that Zero Year could divide fan opinions, it’s clear that this is the Batman origin story that Scott Snyder has always waned to tell, and he hasn’t tried to hype it up beyond asking that we approach Zero Year with an open mind and judge for ourselves: “Open it and see what you think. If the first four pages don’t win you over — because they’re my favorite four pages on anything I’ve ever written in “Batman,” literally, my favorite four pages as an opening — if you don’t like it, I understand, you can drop everything I ever wrote. You can never buy another book of mine and I’m sorry to have lost you, but I would stand by them to my dying day. I’m really proud of it. I mean that, honestly.”
The eleven-issue Zero Year storyline begins this June, in Batman #21
DarkMedia contributor Paul Bowler is a self-Confessed Sci-Fi Geek, Doctor Who fan, and Zombie Disposal Expert. He likes movies, comic books, and all things PS3. He likes to write about his interests, would love to write a novel one day, and also enjoys chatting to the many people he has gotten to know on Twitter. When he’s not busy being an Impossible Astronaut, he likes to take a break from his adventures in time and space to enjoy some of his favourite tv shows and movies – preferably with a nice cuppa tea & a sandwich! You can follow him on Twitter @paul_bowler, or find him at his website, Sci-Fi Jubilee.
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