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mercedes 's review for:

Batman: Year One by Richmond Lewis, Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli, Todd Klein, Denny O'Neil
3.0

Yeahhh... not sure how I feel about this one. Warning for spoilers below! 
I loved the first issue—a solid 4 stars, got me invested into both the story and the characters and felt really solid. I was prepared to write-off all the complaints about this comic not holding up or not actually being that good. But then it continued, and... yeah. I have to agree.

The story itself isn't necessarily bad or mediocre, it's just little moments that ended up lessening my enjoyment considerably. That's not to say I hate it, or even dislike it—I just think it's average and falls victim to poor tropes. I do think, though, that for its time it's fairly decent, I just can't overlook the treatment and non-existent characterisation of Barbara, Gordon's wife. 

Right from the beginning, Gordon's apprehension about his wife being pregnant is brought into the story, and is a recurring point. How does Barbara feel about it? We don't know! She exists solely to be pregnant, get cheated on, and then get attacked. This was, honestly, one of my main problems with the story. Gordon cheating on his wife (while she is very, very pregnant), with a woman he notes was in high school not long ago, serves nothing to the plot. At all. We never see Barbara's reaction, or learn how she feels about it, and the only thing it results in is a comment about going to marriage counselling. It's utterly pointless other than driving home the fact Gordon is also a flawed human being.

Despite all that, this was still a somewhat enjoyable read and I can definitely see why people like it, it's just not for me. The art was simplistic but very nice to look at, and possibly some of my favourite art of Bruce Wayne. Another thing I will say, though, is that the cursive writing present in the Bruce parts of the story is unintelligible at times and that kinda ruined my experience also. I get what they were going for, but sometimes I don't wanna spend a few minutes trying to make out a sentence so I can follow the story.