- Alfred Pennyworth now has a beard. He also has an artificial leg, amputated by Thomas Wayne during an unnamed war where they served together. Alfred is also now an ex-Royal Navy Marine. Alfred teaches Bruce Wayne the vast majority of the combat skills he knows as Batman.
- Dr. Thomas Wayne is running for mayor of Gotham City in the days before he and his wife are murdered. Despite being incredibly wealthy, he has a strong desire to see Bruce have a normal life.
- Martha Wayne is now Martha Arkham-Wayne. Her parents participated in a murder-suicide that was later blamed on poor mental health. She has a passion for mental health issues, something that has recently been mentioned in the just-concluded Batman storyline, "The Court of Owls". It is implied that the house she grew up in will become Arkham Asylum.
- Gotham City is said to have been planned by the Arkham family and funded by the Wayne family, making Bruce Wayne Gotham's prince more than ever. The city's streets are arranged in a spiral pattern, a subtle reference to the history of mental illness in the Arkham family.
- The Waynes never get to see the infamous movie because the power goes out before the film starts. Bruce insists they go to a different movie theater, where he runs into a random mugger, assumed to be Joe Chill. Bruce brags that his father is the richest man in Gotham, which gets the mugger's attention. The scene plays out like it always does.
- Thomas Wayne left in his will that should anything happen to him and Martha, Alfred would become Bruce's legal guardian. If Alfred denies the request, Bruce would become a foster child, making the future connection between Bruce and Dick Grayson much stronger.
- Bruce now gets the idea for becoming Batman from seeing a bat-themed samurai armor in his parents' mausoleum.
- The mayor of Gotham City that Thomas Wayne was running against, and is still mayor when Bruce becomes Batman some 15 years later, is Oswald Cobblepot, otherwise known as the Penguin.
- Bruce strongly believes that Cobblepot hired people to kill his parents, but it is eventually found out that while he did plan the theater's power to go out, the mugger was indeed a completely random person who did the dirty work without any blood on Cobblepot's hands.
- James Gordon is reduced to being a minor character who plays lapdog to the corruption in Gotham, unlike his characterization in Batman: Year One and Batman Begins. He changes his mind after his daughter is kidnapped by a serial killer hired by Cobblepot.
- Harvey Bullock has received the largest change, becoming a svelte, good-looking former cop from Hollywood who used to host a show about unsolved murders that would be solved during the show. He initially goes to Gotham to become a cop again for a challenge after his show is cancelled, but ends up liking the city and wishes to see Gotham become a better place.
- Lucius Fox is now younger than Bruce Wayne and is a techie working in Wayne R&D. Similar to the Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy, Fox develops equipment for Batman.
- Alfred kills Oswald Cobblepot with his infamous shotgun. In the original comics, Alfred was the only member of the Bat-family allowed to use firearms since he did not have special training.
- After being rescued by Batman, Barbara Gordon fantasizes about becoming Batgirl, drawing a costume for herself.
As a whole, the story works. The inclusion of more details about Martha Wayne is very notable, since in most adaptations she is a side character who usually doesn't even get a speaking role. In Batman Begins, she only has 1 scene of spoken dialogue, when Joe Chill is mugging the family, but it is only unintelligible wailing. The changes to Alfred are not as big as one might think, they mostly merge together the Alfred from the Nolanverse with aspects of Henri Ducard before he is revealed to be Ra's al Ghul.
Where the story doesn't work is Bruce Wayne's reasons for becoming Batman. He has an obsessive belief that the Penguin had his parents killed and is purely out for revenge. After Alfred kills the Penguin, Bruce decides to continue being Batman for the sake of Gotham, but it still doesn't sound like he has real noble goals. He does express the desire for a normal life like his father, but it sounds more phony.
The changes to Lucius Fox and Harvey Bullock seem unnecessary, but they do work in the story that Johns has told. Fox is relegated to a very minor character, but at least it is implied that he could become more important. Bullock is now characterized as something like a good-guy version of Arnold Flass from Year One.
Batman: Earth One was conceived prior to the New 52 relaunch, so you have to keep that fact in mind while reading it. Earth One seems to intentionally flip around details of Batman's first adventure for the sake of making things different, not for making things new; it really says a lot that Scott Snyder came up with the exact same idea of Martha Wayne being passionate about mental health issues, although for an entirely different reason.
Final Score: 3 Alfred shotgun blasts out of 5
It's definitely not a must-read for Batman fans. There are better Bat books out there that are more essential reading than this, a backstory for a character that doesn't have any other stories yet. Gary Frank's art is as distracting as ever, with a strange obsession for drawing people's teeth and gums. Geoff Johns also inserts his usual hammy dialogue of repeated arc words, which simply don't sound that serious in a Batman story. "I want a normal life" simply isn't Batman, nor is it Bruce Wayne. Batman has an obsession for justice that can never be fulfilled, but Johns' Batman seems to view Batman as temporary. Grant Morrison and Scott Snyder would probably give Johns a good tongue-lashing.
Really, the most interesting plot thread out of this are the changes to the Wayne parents, although the recent "Court of Owls" story implies much more significant details that could forever change how Bruce Wayne sees his parents.
No comments:
Post a Comment