Batman: Year One

Just a disclaimer, I'm not widely read in graphic novels. I liked the story of the movie Batman Begins better, personally. Perhaps I was a bit disappointed after hearing all the praise for this story. Perhaps I expected more than graphic novels typically deliver. The story felt abbreviated to me.

I do like how the story reflects a corrupt world that needs to be saved from itself. This, while it may look different on the face, is not unlike our world today. I also like the way the story depicts a difference between those devoted to evil and those who want to do good and fall to temptation. One character owns up to his sin rather than trying to hide it. Rather than having the apology make everything alright, there is a struggle to restore the relationship.

I see the development of Catwoman wanting to do the right thing, but getting caught up in anger and bitterness of everything but her cats. She seems to want to not just get rid of the evil, but to make it pay dearly before creating her own world.

I may be reading into this a fair bit, but this appears to be an interesting contrast on different approaches to dealing with evil in our world. From my Christian world view, I can point to a number of ways this Batman story illustrates my world view, as I have done in part I this review, though it is not my belief that it was written for this purpose, nor will I claim this is what is intended with the story.