Batman: Zero Year

Artwork by Greg Capullo, Danny Mik and Fco Plascencia

Written by Scott Snyder

Lettering by Nick J. Napolitano

Edited by Mike Marts and Katie Kubert

Published by DC Comics

Available: Comics shops (print) / Amazon (hardcover pre-order) / DC (iOS + Android + Web + etc.)

Rebooting an origin story is always a risky proposition. There are stacks of pre-existing history to somehow live up to while ignoring, mountains of bad feelings and expectations to traverse. New fans need to be hooked and the old readers need to be convinced that everything is still the same even as their idols are broken down into compost. The risk doubles when the character is a particularly iconic one, someone on the level of Superman, Wonder Woman, or the Flash. But Superman was in flux for years, and underwent a major rewrite in the 1980s. Wonder Woman has already undergone more revisions than a term paper, and there are so many versions of the Flash that a new one was never going to seriously annoy even the most-devoted fans. It’s still a big task to hit the reset button on those characters, but it’s also almost a tradition. In Wonder Woman’s case, it was practically a rite of passage.

Batman is different. His origin didn’t undergo any real changes after DC Comics rebooted its narrative continuity in the 1980s, it was just updated and expanded by Frank Miller and David Mazzuccheli to become one of the finest stories the superhero genre has to offer. In addition to that noise, at the time DC's New 52 rolled back the continuity odometer once again in 2011, Grant Morrison and co. were almost finished with their epic reconstruction of Batman, and the franchise was in a better state than it had been in a while. Of all the iconic characters set for a new start, Batman was the biggest challenge by a country mile.

Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, and the rest of the team on Batman have responded with hands-down the best new origin of the New 52. “Secret City,” the first arc of the year-long “Zero Year,” revamps the Dark Knight while reaffirming him, adding new layers to the existing origin and remixing the fundamentals into something bigger, wilder, and more mythic.

It feels almost incorrect to call Zero Year a reboot. It’s more like a modernization, an update that draws from the best previous versions -- including Christopher Nolan’s movies and the Warner Bros. animated series -- without trying to recreate them. It re-examines everything we know, applying new twists to old plot points. The Red Hood gang is transformed into a snarling mouth of terror organization; the Joker’s possible beginning is reshaped into something more savage, but cleverly left ambiguous; the moment of Bruce Wayne’s inspiration is given odd sci-fi poetry; it’s been hinted that there’s a new twist to the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne; the Riddler is finally interesting.

By placing Batman in the context of our modern fears, Snyder and Capullo have redefined his role, made him more relevant because he challenges the things that make us feelirrelevant. Not just random, senseless crime or urban decay, but terrorism and catastrophe. In addition to being an avenger of the night and the world’s greatest detective, Batman is now the first line of defense against societal collapse, our best hope against the forces that strive to make us feel meaningless. A pitch-perfect reinvention for the hyper-accelerated, paranoid times we live in, “Zero Year” is a classic in the making.

- John Parker