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One of the Greatest Comic Books Ever Getting Adapted

By TK | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (10)

Batman_Year_One_1024x768.jpg

This is one of those stories that, in any other hands, I’d be dreading. But it sounds like it might end up just right.

Warner Home Video has announced plans to produce an animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s iconic, classic graphic novel Batman: Year One. Pretty much any comic book fan — particularly Batman readers — will tell you that Year One is not only one of the best Batman stories of all time, but it’s also one of the best comics of all time. It’s a gritty origin story that uses the well-known Batman history, but tells it in an absolutely compelling manner. Here’s DC Comics’ official synopsis:

A young Bruce Wayne has spent his adolescence and early adulthood, traveling the world so he could hone his body and mind into the perfect fighting and investigative machine. But now as he returns to Gotham City, he must find a way to focus his passion and bring justice to his city. Retracing Batman’s first attempts to fight injustice as a costumed vigilante, we watch as he chooses a guise of a giant bat, creates an early bond with a young Lieutenant James Gordon, inadvertently plays a role in the birth of Catwoman, and helps to bring down a corrupt political system that infests Gotham.

The story was also used (in parts) by Christopher Nolan in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and is notable for its excellent depiction of Jim Gordon’s history and relationship with Batman. Why then am I excited for this new adaptation? Well, for starters, with the exception of the tepid Green Lantern: First Flight, DC Universe Animated Original Movies has pretty much knocked all of their productions out of the park. Year One will be directed by Sam Liu, who directed the excellent Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths and Batman/Superman: Public Enemies. Both direct-to-video films were the sort of darker animated fare that’s made DC’s productions so successful, which makes this news promising. Additionally, despite their lack of mainstream popularity, animated films are frequently the best way to adapt some comic books.

No word on when it will be released — DC Animated has a pretty full production slate right now, with Batman: Under the Red Hood and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse scheduled for this year, and an as of yet untitled Green Lantern film set to release in 2011.

(Source: Slashfilm)









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Comments

Looking forward to this. And I kinda dug First Flight, though I'm by no means a Green Lantern expert, so I have no idea how badly they might have effed it up.

Posted by: Groundloop at June 9, 2010 10:03 AM

I have to ask: will Catwoman still be a prostitute?

Posted by: Todd at June 9, 2010 10:26 AM

That's a prostitute with a heart of gold, Todd.

Posted by: adam at June 9, 2010 1:09 PM

And once again Pajiba gets it wrong. I should cease to be surprised, but I'm not.

At the end of Year One it is made beyond explicitly clear that the corruption in Gotham City is far from gone, not just in the police department, but in the actual government as well, in fact it has never left.

Fucking retards.

Posted by: Fappy McFapper at June 9, 2010 6:44 PM

Fappy,

Read it again. The synopsis came from the DC Comics website, not me. Here's the link for you.

Fucking retard.

Posted by: TK at June 9, 2010 6:48 PM

Please, please, please make it look like honest-to-God feature film animation, and not cheap television stuff.

Posted by: Franzibald at June 9, 2010 11:48 PM

they better get new animators for this one, I liked the two that Liu did but the graphics for both 'Crisis' and 'Enemies' were horrendous.. almost japan anime like.

Get the people who worked with Bruce Timm on this.

Oh and PLEASE NO KEVIN CONROY. That voice has been done to death and since this is YEAR ONE.. no need for Bats to sound old.

Posted by: jimmy changa? at June 10, 2010 12:32 AM


A few years back on B:TAS, they had an episode called "Legends of the Dark Knight" consisting of several different views of Batman. Among other styles, they did a five minute clip from Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, both in his artistic style and almost word for word dialogue.

For the voice of this Batman, they got Michael Ironside. And he sounds perfect for the grizzled old Dark Knight. If they put this kind of effort into Year One, it should be something that can satisfy most comic fanboys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcvN4pu6O2k

Posted by: bleujayone at June 10, 2010 12:09 PM

No, thank you.

Like most of Frank Miller's early Batman work, Year One is hideously overrated. Which is not to say it's bad, but it was written by Frank Miller. And his distressing obsession with whores expresses itself in Batman, pre-Batman, going through a red light district looking for a fight to pick and the future Catwoman being a lady of the night. And that's just one eye-rolling turd that bubbled to the surface of Miller's mind when he was writing it.

Oh, and most of the scenes that aren't Miller-esque trash were already done, in both live-action and animated form, and done better than they were in the comic. So eh.

Posted by: Shadowen at June 10, 2010 10:08 PM

Year one eats golf balls. It's a great story about Gordon and very lukewarm one about Bruce Wayne and Batman. Batman Begins not only shat all over Tim Burton's bullshit high school musical production values but Year One's shoddy treatment of Bruce Wayne.

Make the Long Halloween. Of course they used from that heavily to make Begins but who gives a shit. It's still one of the better Batman mystery stories.

Posted by: cj at June 11, 2010 10:46 AM