Rebuilding Batman After 75 Years
How Zero Year has re-introduced Batman for a new generation.
What do you love about Batman?
Is it the movies, or the cape and cowl, or the fact, that no matter what, he will dish out the hammers of justice? Batman turns 75 this year and DC Comics has declared today Batman Day. Today also marks the conclusion of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s year long origin story of the New 52 Batman story: Zero Year. The character has come a long way since 1939, a year long origin story proves that. However, is this new Batman better than older interpretations? Will the character last, or rather what keeps this character relevant and popular? Lucky for us Batman (at least in terms of his monthly comic book) is in good hands with Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo.
Batman’s origin was first revealed in Detective Comics #33 in a two page story written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane. His origin would be updated in 1987, following DC Comics’ event Crisis on Infinite Earths by Frank Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli in a four issue story: Batman: Year One. How does a story justify going from two pages to four issues to twelve issues without becoming bloated? You reinvent every detail around those two pages. Zero Year uses those two pages from Detective Comics and uses it as it’s skeleton. This is Batman, where he comes from, how he got here, and why he does what he does, time to fill in all of the blanks and rebuild not only Batman’s origin but Batman himself. Snyder gives the two page skeleton, organs, muscles and ligaments.
Everyone knows Batman’s origin, most people could tweet the entire thing out if they needed. However, my favourite thing about Snyder and what he does with Batman is how he explores different aspects of the character without betraying the character. In his first arc of the New 52, The Court of Owls, Snyder humbles Batman. Snyder turns Batman’s relationship with Gotham and twists it into a thousand different directions. Gotham is still Gotham but it is no longer Batman’s ally or friend, it is a stranger, an enemy. In Death of the Family, Snyder takes on Batman’s greatest enemy, the Joker. The tone of this arc feels like a horror movie. We find a Batman who will do anything to protect his allies and the people he cares about most, from a threat he deems too dangerous for them to fight even if it means risking those relationships.
*Spoilers for Zero Year*
With Zero Year, Snyder wants to answer the question: what drives Batman? And for those familiar with the character the question doesn't need an answer, it’s common knowledge. However, Snyder demands to dive deeper. Not only does he want to know what drives Batman but what happens when that drive is tested, what happens when he hits a few early speed bumps. Zero Year is Batman’s baptism through fire. Bruce Wayne might have spent seven years abroad learning and training but learning and training does not make one Batman. There is a madness to it. A type of madness that a city like Gotham rewards.
At the beginning of Zero Year we find a young Bruce Wayne who has recently returned to Gotham disrupting the efforts of the Red Hood Gang. The leader takes a liking to his “vigilante.” Bruce attacks the gang’s operations with gusto and bravado. He scowls, talks trash, and acts like someone who doesn't know how to channel their energy. Bruce returns to Gotham incognito and after being declared dead while he was abroad. Despite Alfred’s best efforts to convince him otherwise, Bruce does not feel the need to ever reveal that Bruce Wayne is back. Instead Bruce’s sole focus is taking down the Red Hood Gang, who seem to act without any pattern or grand plan besides to cause chaos in Gotham. Bruce believes in his methods and refuses any help when he’s out in the field. He wants to take on the entire world and fix it tomorrow.
This is not just Bruce’s story. It is a story about everyone in Bruce’s life, both immediate and not. We see Alfred, someone who can’t understand Bruce’s mission but will support him as best as he can. Lieutenant James Gordon, who is trying to do what’s best for Gotham even if his orders say otherwise. Phillip Kane, Bruce’s uncle and head of Wayne Enterprises. The man responsible for outing Bruce and forcing his return as a public figure. Lucius Fox, who has been reassigned by Bruce’s uncle and made obsolete in the company. We even get introduced to Edward Nygma aka the Riddler, as he works as Phillip’s head adviser and strategist. Snyder weaves these characters and story-lines, sews them together, and gives them each resonating moment(s) to give us Gotham, the real star of the show.
What do you love about Gotham City?
Bruce poses this question to the citizens of Gotham in his first official public appearance since being outed. Here we see his stubbornness wane and his confidence grow. All it took was the Red Hood Gang invading his base of operations, blowing it up, and leaving him for dead for Bruce to return to his roots, to his home. After Alfred patches him up and promises he always will, Bruce has the moment where he transforms into Batman. However, before he can make the transformation, he first admits his failures:
Father…I’m…I’m failing. I thought I knew how to do this. But I’m lost…I've squandered what our family built. And I've fought my war foolishly. If there is a way back, father. If there is…what is it? How do I do it? I can’t wait any longer. There’s no more time! Show me.
After forcing the Red Hood Gang’s hand and accelerating their plans Bruce figures out their end game. When leaving the cave Alfred wonders if Batman is up to the task and Bruce states that this requires Bruce Wayne. He stands in front of A.C.E. Chemicals where the media has gathered to hear what he has to say. And he asks Gotham, “What do you love about Gotham City?”
Before he confessed to his father asking for forgiveness, strength, and inspiration. Now he is confessing to a city that he turned his back on and wants to remind them what Gotham can be.
We come here, to Gotham, because it’s transformative, this place. We come here with our dreams and the city, it looks at us with it’s unblinking stone eye — an eye that sees all our faults, everything we’re afraid is true about ourselves — and it says, “Try. I dare you.”
And then Gotham stares you down, doesn't it? More than any other city in the world, it fights you, challenges you to give up, to leave, to fall down and die.
But you don’t. No. Because deep down you know — you know — that if you stand up to the challenge, if you walk through the fire, you will emerged changed.
Burned down to that self you knew was there all along, the one you came here to be. The hero.
The first arc of Zero Year ends with Batman face to face with the leader of the Red Hood Gang in A.C.E. Chemicals. The place is burning down. The cops don’t know who to go after but after saving Gordon’s life, Gordon orders the cops to take the gang down instead of going after Batman. Fans know the rest, Batman prevents the leader from escaping. They battle on a scaffold and it gives out. The Red Hood leader falls into a vat of chemicals and is presumed dead.
The identity to the Red Hood One remains a mystery. Was he the original leader or did someone kill the original and take their place or did the leader pawn off the helmet on some low level Hood and sneak away during the chaos? However, before Bruce can rest and reflect Edward Nygma returns and tells Gotham it’s time for the city to get smart.
The Red Hood Gang was a virus in the city. Instead of criminals making up the gang, they were Gotham civilians being blackmailed into service. At any time any of these sleeper agents could be activated. The Gang forced Bruce into becoming something greater than the sum of his training. Bruce had to acknowledge this was a new Gotham, something that he couldn't fight guerrilla style.
The Riddler presents a new type of challenge. There isn't a gang to fight or some hoodlum to punch in the face instead we find Batman two steps behind. In addition to the Riddler, GCPD has vamped up it’s pursuit of the Dark Knight because a vigilante showing up the department is a huge embarrassment. While evading the cops is more of an annoyance than a problem. The Riddler proves to be more than a match for this young Batman’s wits. Even Batman’s correct guesses turn out wrong because the Riddler has predicted Batman’s move. He leaves ambush after ambush with nothing more than a parting quip to Batman. One ambush leaves Batman vulnerable to capture from the GCPD and his only saving grace is the one cop who believes in Batman: Lieutenant Gordon.
At the end of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, a mask less Batman saves Gordon’s son from a sure death. When Bruce returns the baby to a grateful Gordon, his secret is out. Batman can no longer operate with someone knowing who is, especially a cop. However, Gordon tells Bruce, “I’m particularly blind without my glasses.” Snyder pays homage to this scene when Gordon saves Batman. Gordon tells Batman to remove his mask before it burns his eye out and tosses him his glasses as a way to earn his trust. On the way back to shore, Gordon tells Batman why he’s helping him and it starts with Bruce Wayne. Gordon recounts the time when Bruce skipped school and he was sent to pick him up and bring him to the station for his parents. On the way to the station Gordon and his partner make several stops while Gordon’s partner takes bribes and pay offs. Bruce asks Gordon why they were making so many stops and he tells Bruce that they’re making sure everyone in the neighbourhood is safe. Even then Gordon knew something more sinister was happening but he was hopeful. Turns out that hope would be shattered when he found out the truth. And for the first time he knew just how far the corruption had sunk the GCPD and there was nothing for him to do, not with a wife and two kids at home he had to protect at all costs. But with Bruce Wayne returning and Batman existing there’s a chance. Before Gordon can finish his story Batman sneaks off without taking up Gordon’s offer of help. Stubbornness is hard to dispel.
When people we care about and love go through hardships we want to not only support them but to empathize with them and understand what they’re going through. One steady current of Zero Year is Alfred and Bruce’s discussion of Bruce’s mission and what the motivation is. If the scenes were framed in any other context than Batman, the conversation would take place in a car ride or a dinner table, with a parent and child discussing the child’s future and what the parent thinks is best against what the child wants.
At first Alfred believes Bruce’s mission to be foolhardy and misguided and that instead of being a ghost he must make it a public crusade. It takes Bruce to become Batman before Alfred starts to come around. Bruce admits what they’re doing is madness but Alfred assures him it is the type of madness a city like Gotham rewards. After the defeat of the Red Hood Gang Bruce worries that the connection between him and Batman will be made but Alfred tells him not to worry about if he views Batman as an act in a grand play or movie. When people watch a play or a movie or read a book, they want to be transported and lose themselves in that world. People will be too preoccupied by the “performance” to worry about who is under the mask because deep down they don’t want to know. Finally, when Bruce refuses Gordon’s help Alfred believes he is punishing the citizens of Gotham when he goes out every night. It is a punishment to show the people that he can do what no one did for him the night he lost his parents. There wasn't anyone strong enough to stop it but now there is.
But if you do that, sir, if you let the past drive Batman, his scars, he becomes something dark, a demon of vengeance. Not a creature of justice or hope. And he will not last, nor will you.
Listen when I say — we are here for you now, Master Bruce. We see you out there and we want to help.
And with that Batman goes out again ignoring Alfred’s words only to fall into another of Riddler’s traps. A step too late, as always. Bruce Wayne couldn't do it. Batman is failing too. Despite the growth he’s shown he still is failing.
Yet, with every step back Batman refuses to stop. He won’t give up. He can’t. With the latest set back he knows he has one final chance to stop the Riddler. At the end of the second arc Riddler wins, he floods and “kills” the city.
Gotham is turned into a savage city under the Riddler’s control. The paths out of the city are blocked and rigged to explode — not unlike the plot point of The Dark Knight Rises. Riddler comes a screen in the middle of the city everyday before sunset to take on a challenger in a battle of wits. The game is simple, if you can give the Riddler a riddle he can’t solve he’ll return the power and control back to the city. Batman is thought to be dead and Gotham has no more heroes.
One of the main techniques Snyder employs throughout Zero Year is the use of flash forwards and flash backs. Sometimes both are used on the same page along with the present story. The flash backs are to a younger Bruce and he ages as the story progresses, from young Bruce with his parents to the fateful night to a teenage Bruce dealing with trauma. The flash forward sequences are just that — flashes, a tease to something greater in the story. As nice as it is to see little Bruce argue with his dad about how Zorro is old fashioned and corny to why he sneaks off to school, the larger pay-off is seeing a teenage Bruce deal with the trauma from his parent’s murders. Here we see a Bruce struggling to even fit into society. There is a powerful scene when he’s sitting in class and he’s whispering to himself, “You’re normal…You’re normal…You’re normal.” A criticism I hear of Batman is that he never moves past his trauma, how one single moment in his life defines the rest of his life. Of course if he did ever move past it then there’s no need for him to be Batman, right? More on this point later.
Bruce survives his latest setback and awakens in an apartment building and sees the city overgrown and wild. He enlists the aid of Gordon, Lucius Fox, and covert team of Navy Seals who have made their way into the city, to help him find the Riddler and take him down. They believe he is in the center of the city and attempt to jam his technology. However, it is a ruse by the Riddler to set off the Seal’s rip codes to signal an airstrike that will level the city. Batman escapes and he is cut off from his allies. He manages to save Lucius and tells him they cannot give up even though they only have one chance left to save the city. One guess and Batman takes off trusting Lucius to fix the jammer and rendezvous with Gordon and the Seals to prevent the airstrike.
On the way to the final showdown with the Riddler, Batman leaves what might be his final message to Alfred:
Alfred…Alfred, I know you can’t hear this, and I doubt you’ll ever hear it, but even so…even so, I just wanted to say…say that you were right about Batman. You’ve always been right. You were right when you said he had to mean something. And then you were right when you said he had to mean something good. And you were right to say that this time, he’d likely go down in failure.
I have failed against the Riddler, Alfred. Twice already. And I’ll probably fail again now. But what I want you to see…what I understand now, at the end, is that maybe there’s something in that. Maybe that’s what Batman is about. Not winning. But failing, and getting back up. Knowing he’ll fail, fail a thousand times, but still won’t give up.
And I know what you’d say to this. Fighting a battle you know you can’t win, a battle you know you’ll lose. It’s madness. But all I can hope…is that, like you said yourself. Maybe…
…Maybe it’s the kind of madness this city rewards. I don’t know. I hope we’ll get to argue about it soon.
I love you Alfred. Signing off.
I won’t spoil the final game the Riddler has Batman play in order to save the city but it is one he describes as, “No feats of physical ferocity, no gizmos or gadgets, just a war of the mind.” However, you know how the story ends, Batman wins with a little help from his friends. Gotham is saved but it still needs to rebuild from Zero.
Batman turns 75 this year, almost a century worth of stories and interpretations. He is an agent of vengeance, a detective, a warrior and a soldier. He has been a son, a father, and a lover. He’s had friends and countless enemies. He represents the best of us and every interpretation there is always a nugget of Batman in there no matter how much you might personally hate it. Snyder pays homage to not only Batman’s history but the history of comics with Bruce’s speech near the end of the last issue. Because Batman isn't the only comic book hero or story, there are countless others who go through the cycle of rebirth, reboots, and re-interpretations. We may always be wondering what the next major event is or when the next team-up on the big screen is and while “continuity” may “erase” certain stories they don’t kill them. They will always be there for us to enjoy because the thing about paper universes is that there are no rules except for the ones you make.
Yes, Zero Year takes inspiration from not only previous Batman stories and other devices and tropes but that doesn't mean all stories have been told and are just being recycled and repackaged. In Bruce’s closing speech to the city he says all that needs to be said about Batman’s past, present, and future.
Nothingness.
A void.
No meaning or value.
Just an end. A death. That’s zero, isn't it?
It was to Nygma. It’s what he wanted us to believe about Gotham. That it’s ending. That these are end-times. But look at it, the city. It isn't what it was twenty years go, even ten years ago. Not at all. That’s the wonderful and terrible thing about it, isn't it? It’s always changing, Gotham as we know it, you and I, it exists for a moment in time, it’s people, it’s neighbourhoods, the hopes and fears that power it, and then…poof! It’s gone. And a new city stands in it’s place.
Right now, this city, ruined, beautiful…it’s ours and ours alone. It’s fears — they’re ours, too. Superstorms. Cataclysm. Madmen with private ideologies who come at us with weapons of every magnitude, out of nowhere some morning. These are the fears that haunt our city.
But believe me when I say that we will face them together. Because right now, this is our Gotham. Not our fathers’, and not our sons’. Ours. This generation’s. And our fears are great, but so are our hopes. Our ambitions. Our resilience. We’re fighters.
And we’re a city standing at Zero. Standing at the beginning of a cycle of rebirth. It’s ours to build and shape and to be shaped by.
If the story ended there I don’t think anyone would've complained. The city is saved, Bruce learns valuable lessons in trusting not only himself but others as well. Gordon gets promoted and Lucius is in charge of the day to day operations of Wayne Enterprises. This is the Gotham we know and love. This is the Gotham as the status-quo. Yet, the story doesn't end there, after all what is Batman without some tragedy?
After Bruce’s speech Alfred informs Bruce that there is someone he would like him to meet. A girl. Someone from Bruce’s past who he dated briefly. This is Alfred’s last gasp of giving Bruce a normal life, one free of the cape and cowl. Bruce tells Alfred to bring her over but not before reiterating that he’ll never quit. Alfred explains that Bruce is young and things change. Bruce interrupts him and reveals one secret to Alfred. Bruce was tired of the trauma, so tired of it that he wanted to change who he was. He didn't want help or treatment, he wanted to be rebooted. Bruce went to Arkham to get shock therapy until he was no longer Bruce. At the last second he stopped the procedure but he knew he had to find a way to cope. He needed to, “…find the crazy thing that would keep me from going crazy, if that makes any sense.” Being Batman is what makes Bruce truly happy and while this doesn't deter Alfred from pointing out the things he has yet to experience, Bruce shuts him down.
The final flash forward is Alfred imagining if Bruce listened to him and had one drink with the girl and reconnected. Bruce would have a family and find not only happiness but peace as well. The imagined future fades and Alfred explains, “I’m so sorry, Miss, but I’m afraid…he’s spoken for.”
Zero Year is a year long coming of age tale of one of pop culture’s biggest icons. It takes a cocky kid who thinks he knows everything and breaks him down. Humbles him and makes him come back stronger over and over. Despite whatever set backs he’ll never stop because it’s the only thing he truly cares about. Superheroes are supposed to represent the best of us and are presented to us in the best light. They are their best self all of the time. They always have the right answer, know exactly what to do and say in every situation, and they inspire us to be better. Zero Year reminds us of the steps needed to get to that point and it is easy to forget that it takes time for our heroes to find who they are. This story couldn't have existed 50 years ago. The writers and artists of Batman had to tell their own stories, find their voices inside the character’s voice, and tinker and tinker. Some ideas work and others don’t but no bad idea is ever strong enough to kill a character. Scott Snyder and Greg Cappullo aren't the first team to take on Batman and tell great stories and they won’t be the last. Here’s to the next 75 years of great Batman stories.
