Batman: Year One - Part 1

[history79]

The A.V. Club: So you actually consciously set out to change things in the comics industry?

Frank Miller: Well, I set out to remark upon them. And seeing how all these heroes had been castrated since the 1950s, and just how pointless they seemed to be... In this perfect world of comic books, which was what it was back then, why would people dress up in tights to fight crime?

The A.V. Club: Because there wasn't anything bad enough going on back then to justify that extremism?

Frank Miller: It was just a bunch of goofy villains. It was 1985 when I started working on this, and I thought, "What kind of world would be scary enough for Batman?" And I looked out my window.

Comments

[espanolbot]

Pretty sure Dennis O'Neil deserves more credit for making Batman more respectable than Miller, but that's just me.

O'Neil's Batman was progressively more mature in the traditional sense, while Miller's Batman (particularly in DKR) was more clownish in how seriously it wanted people to take it. Year One is largely better in that it was written early in his career and didn't become host to the usual Miller-isms (that was what Daredevil was for).