Batman: Year One

I've never actually read all of Miller and Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One, but I know the gist of it. Bruce Wayne figuring out what it is that he needs beyond all his training. Gordon joining the most corrupt police force in the country and trying to continue to do things properly in the face of all the corruption, threats, and intimidation.

All of that's here, although it feels much more like Gordon's story than Batman's. I don't know if that's just how this adaptation handled it, or if that's how the actual comics are. But Wayne is already almost all the way to where he needs to be. Gordon is further off. He tried to do the right thing, report corruption once, and it got him run out of his previous position, in a situation where Gotham is the only police that'll take him.  So he has to decide whether he's going to do the right thing again, or start looking away. 

At least that's what it feels like it would be, but Gordon seems to know from the first time he sees Flass beat the shit out of a kid on a street corner what he's going to do. He's already taking notes on how the guy fights for the point when they inevitably have it out. So maybe, like Batman, he's not figuring out what he's going to do, but how. That just reporting things to Internal Affairs isn't going to cut it.

Although based on what we see of the Gotham police, it's hard to say they seem any more corrupt than a lot of police we have today. The cop who shoots Wayne during his fight with the pimp by claiming an unarmed man was "gonna do something." The SWAT team that just firebombs buildings without bothering to confirm who's inside, or is willing to go in guns blazing on a guy who has four kids as hostages. Cops using their badges as licenses to kill? Unheard of!

The Selina Kyle subplot feels only halfway finished. It gets as far as her being Catwoman, but she only manages to to go from having all her crimes attributed to Batman, to being called Batman's assistant, and having Batman throw a (gruff) hissy fit over her spoiling his reconnaissance. There's not a point where her actions get her considered as someone of note herself, or where she and Batman have a real confrontation as their costumed selves (there is the brief fight right before the cops shoot him, but neither of them have found their style yet.)

If it wanted to tie things together, instead of Gordon waiting to consult with Batman about this "Joker" person at the end, it could be Catwoman having stolen sufficiently big or important enough people actually take her seriously. As is, her thread feels as though it's just left dangling off to one side of the start of Gordon and Batman's relationship.