DC Comics is finishing the second year of the New 52 with a fresh take on Bruce Wayne’s first year as a vigilante and becoming the Batman. Scott Snyder is writing a yearlong crossover event titled Zero Year.
Greg Capullo and Danny Miki are the illustrators of the first five issues of Zero Year and have done an incredible job. The detail on each page sets the perfect tone for Snyder’s story.
Zero Year established a new origin story for the Batman and succeeds. DC Comics has already released the first five issues and several crossovers from various titles.
The first three issues of Zero Year consist of the story arc Secret City. These issues cover Wayne’s return to Gotham after years of traveling while he was presumed dead.
Each issue of Secret City features an account of the various training Wayne received while he was away. As a reader, I enjoyed the moments when Wayne learned the skills he uses as the Batman to help him fight crime.
The scenes include evasive driving, improvised mechanical engineering and various martial arts. These scenes also humanized Wayne, and they allowed the reader to connect with him more because a reader is able to see his struggle to become the Batman.
Secret City details the state of Gotham during Wayne’s return and his attempts to fight crime before becoming the Batman. Wayne returns to Gotham to find the notorious Red Hood Gang spreading like a virus throughout the city. The gang’s leader, Red Hood One, blackmails citizens into his gang everyday.
After the Red Hood Gang attacks Wayne, he gets the inspiration to become the Batman. Zero Year does a fresh take on the historic scene from Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, where Wayne is inspired to become the Batman when a bat shatters a window and rests on a bust of his father after he is severally beaten.
The new take on this classic scene, found in Batman 23, is visually striking. Snyder pays homage to Miller’s Year One while breathing a new life into the story. This scene was expertly drawn and was truly inspirational.
The next issue, Batman 24, begins the second story arc of Zero Year, Dark City. This arc covers Wayne’s first months as the Batman and his first challenge is to stop the Red Hood Gang. Wayne deduces the gang’s plan to destroy the city and brings the fight to them.
Bruce publically announces that the Red Hood Gang plans to make weapons at Ace Chemical plant, the historic site of the Joker’s origins. Snyder pays homage to Alan Moore’s classic The Killing Joke in the first issue of Dark City. Snyder recreates the classic standoff between Batman and Red Hood. However, it adds a new level of depth to the story.
Perhaps my favorite aspect of Zero Year so far is the dialogue between Red Hood One and Bruce, before and after he dons the cape and cowl. Snyder does an excellent job of showing Red Hood One’s obsession with Wayne. Even before Wayne became the Batman, Red Hood One had an admiration for the vigilante trying to stop him.
In addition to the main story occurring in the Batman title, there are several popular comic book titles participating in a crossover event. Each crossover issue features a particular character before becoming a hero that is affected by the events in Zero Year.
Each crossover issue is a self-contained story that does not directly affect the main story in the Batman title. The Zero Year crossovers are an example of well-done, self-contained stories. Each character is affected by the chaos of Gotham city and has a defining moment to rise above the madness to help those around them.
In my opinion, the crossovers are a great move by DC to establish the Batman as the first costumed crime fighter among his counterparts in the Justice League. Since Director Zack Snyder announced that Batman vs. Superman will feature an older Batman, Zero Year is a great move to establish that Bruce is slightly older than his fellow heroes.
Though I am a fan of the story being done, I think DC needed to do a yearlong crossover for Batman because they wrote themselves into a corner with the current timeline and needed a year to figure out where to take the present day Batman title. However, so far Zero Year has been excellently written and drawn in every regard and shows promise for the issues to come.
