Batman: Year One Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

Pete York said:

Now there's something for people in the hobby to be legitimately embarrassed about. 

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I'm not embarrassed by it, and what I've seen, I liked (this also applies to the Wonder Woman book as well.)

Year One was a story published during four issues of an ongoing comic book run. Not a graphic novel.
Anyway I always thought the first book named a graphic novel was The Death of Captain Marvel by Starlin.
Oddly I'm not even sure if I watched this movie, I just can't remember.

Originally Posted by Sky Captain /t/315803/batman-year-one-blu-ray-review#post_3957318
I'm not embarrassed by it, and what I've seen, I liked (this also applies to the Wonder Woman book as well.)

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Well, I walked away years ago over things like embarrassing depictions of women and when this flared up, I could only laugh. What, if anything, would you find embarrassing? On-camera penetration?

A while back, the clod running Marvel Comics had this to say: "Bad girls for fan boys, sometimes I call them date books. We have quite a few male readers who live in the basement of their parent's house in Queens. For them, an evening with Elektra is as good as it gets." That right there is dispensing with any pleasantries and coming right out with contempt for your customer. And yet, garbage like Catwoman showed that that's who they are writing super-hero comics for!

To the best of my knowledge, Will Eisner's "A Contract With God," published in 1978, was the first book ever identified as a graphic novel (the book used the term right on the cover), but even before that release were "His Name is Savage" and "Blackmark" from Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin, and of course in Europe were all the "Asterix" and "Tintin" books.

"Batman Year One" was indeed originally released as a four-issue mini-series within an ongoing comic, but was completely self-contained, outside the regular storyline of the continuing series, and treated as such by DC.

What do you mean by "treated as such", Sean? YEAR ONE was an in-continuity origin story in the Batman title, 4 of, at the time, 400 or so other issues of BATMAN. They could have easily made it a mini-series if they wanted, like DARK KNIGHT the year earlier or like Marvel did with Miller in THE MAN WITHOUT FEAR.

When I say graphic novel, I'm talking about the original format (like TonyD is, I believe). You seem to be talking about it in a conceptual sense? Like all stories with art are graphic novels? If YEAR ONE is a graphic novel, is YEAR TWO? YEAR THREE? Is every multi-issue arc a graphic novel? KNIGHTFALL, NO MAN'S LAND, DEATH IN THE FAMILY, etc., or to use Miller again, BORN AGAIN?

Originally Posted by Pete York /t/315803/batman-year-one-blu-ray-review#post_3959518


When I say graphic novel, I'm talking about the original format (like TonyD is, I believe). You seem to be talking about it in a conceptual sense? Like all stories with art are graphic novels? If YEAR ONE is a graphic novel, is YEAR TWO? YEAR THREE? Is every multi-issue arc a graphic novel? KNIGHTFALL, NO MAN'S LAND, DEATH IN THE FAMILY, etc., or to use Miller again, BORN AGAIN?

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Looking at the shelves in comic shops, I think DC/Marvel want every story arc to be a "graphic novel". It makes for shit books all around. You get monthly stapled pamphlets that don't make any sense collected at the 6-7 issue point in to "Graphic Novel" collections that don't read much better since the monthly serial isn't designed for any story telling that requires depth. Hence runs like "Year One" are even more special once collected. If I'm remembering right, "Year One" was designed to be the post-crisis equivalent to Supermans "Man Of Steel: mini-series that John Byrne did. It just happened to be brilliantly good so it got collected and well, everyone knows the rest, DC now publishes it as a deluxe hard cover "Graphic Novel" with remastered colouring that the artist completely disowns as a travesty to what they intended. So be the comic industry.

"Graphic Novel" has strayed to far from it's original intent to ever be recovered I think. It's a small loss, you wouldn't have comics in book stores without it, but it's become a bit of a nit pick. "Watchmen" is considered a great graphic novel despite being a limited series in it's original form, same with "Dark Knight Returns" which was a 4 issue prestige series.

Getting back to the review, I enjoyed the story when I rented it. Thought it was pretty solid. I never read Miller's books, though I've heard of them, and that, apparently, is the reason I enjoyed it. I do have one question though... how does the casting of a girl that does the voice of catwoman appeal to fanboys? Granted she may look nice in real life but since this is a cartoon, I find no relevance. Just curious as to the the motivation for writing that as I am not really familiar with her or anything she has done.

Dushku has as a cult following because of her appearance in Joss Whedon shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse. She's not known for being the strongest actor, trading more on her looks and her personality, so her inclusion as a voice actor seems like more of a "stunt cast" than the others (especially with the provocative depiction of the character others have complained about).

However, I think you could argue any name actors being cast to do voices is a "stunt" on some level. At the very least it's to give the production name recognition that I would argue isn't needed, especially with straight to video titles like "Year One." I can sort of see the point with feature films like Madagascar, but I find hearing Chris Rock's voice coming of a cartoon zebra annoying as well.

Russell G said:

"Graphic Novel" has strayed to far from it's original intent to ever be recovered I think. It's a small loss, you wouldn't have comics in book stores without it, but it's become a bit of a nit pick. "Watchmen" is considered a great graphic novel despite being a limited series in it's original form, same with "Dark Knight Returns" which was a 4 issue prestige series.

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This goes back to my original point, which is that the expansion of the term 'graphic novel' came about because a significant number of the people using it didn't want to be seen as advocating for 'comic books'. A classic case of re-branding out of embarrassment.

Pete York said:

What's the story on that? Because anyone touching David Mazzucchelli's art should probably go into another field.

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Here's a link to the article. It was outdated scans, not remastered colours. He's pissed about it though.

Elektra, that's another good one.

And thanks for the link. Mazzucchelli is right about the shiny paper, so annoying. Especially since the YEAR ONE collection he talks about, the one he worked on years ago, is printed on perfect, no-glare paper.