Batman: Zero Year

Today, DC Entertainment has announced that Batman: Zero Year will be the upcoming Batman event this year. Starting with issue #21 Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo will take us on an eleven issue journey revealing the early years of The Dark Knight and how he came to be. The series will likely resemble the four-issue Frank Miller and Dave Mazzucchelli Batman Year One Story. But can it measure up to it?

I think it can and i think it will be better. There was nothing wrong with year one but in my opinion i thought it translated much better in cartoon movie form then it did on comic book.

Not sure how I feel. I've always thought that Miller's Year One and Dark Knight Returns are the perfect depictions of how Batman should be at the start of his career and at the end, and I'm not sure there needs to be any expansion on it. I suppose there needs to be a canon origin for him for the reboot, but if it's truly a reboot that should have happened in issue 1, right? It's things like this that annoy me about the New 52 - DC were pretty non-committal about it. If it was really a reboot it would have started at the beginning as opposed to a forgettable re-branding and re-numbering.

My problem is that I think that eleven issues may be too much for the story. Batman Year One was only four issues. Sometimes less is more.

I don't understand the hype surrounding Snyder. Personally I find Peter Tomasi is writing the better Bat-story in Batman and Robin. I'm annoyed that his work and visions are being shook up by Morrison killing Damian, and Snyders events. I'm not looking forward to the next couple of months as it becomes Batman Team-Up/mourning, however I am grateful it won't be crossing into the 11 issue Zero Year arc.

justinbarnes wrote:My problem is that I think that eleven issues may be too much for the story. Batman Year One was only four issues. Sometimes less is more.

Totally agree. Things like this just go overboard. AvX last year had the same problem. Twelve incredibly sparse issues. I worry that there's going to be a ton of padding going on that'll unnecessarily drag out and over-complicate a classic story, just so that people will dish out the dough for eleven issues.

Carn Reynolds wrote:I don't understand the hype surrounding Snyder. Personally I find Peter Tomasi is writing the better Bat-story in Batman and Robin. I'm annoyed that his work and visions are being shook up by Morrison killing Damian, and Snyders events. I'm not looking forward to the next couple of months as it becomes Batman Team-Up/mourning, however I am grateful it won't be crossing into the 11 issue Zero Year arc.

"Batman and Robin" and "Batman" are definitely the two better batman titles out there right now. I like Snyder a lot but you raise a good point. This multiple title malarky makes it very hard for a single title to keep it's narrative cohesiveness. This bothers me especially in Teen Titans, a comic that stops and starts for the whims of it's other titles. Superboy has his own title, diluting his character development, plus he is always being pulled into Super-family stories like H'el on Earth, and of course Red Robin is involved in Death of the Family and other bat-things and Kid Flash had a story in DCU presents. These things just get ridiculous. It's very hard to follow the storylines of a single title without getting pulled into others and Batman is divided up between five for some reason, let alone all the team books he appears in.