I would’ve liked Pope to have at least hinted at Batman’s identity, but I’m fine that he didn’t. I also liked that his mask is similar to the original Bob Kane design while also looking like something a luchadore would wear, and the fact that the cops of the future look like hockey players with colourful uniforms instead of boring black kevlar. Pope also has Batman live up to his name, making him look animalistic in fight scenes, wearing sharp false teeth, and also on the cover where he looks almost rodent-like perched atop a pair of chimneys. It’s different, it’s fluid (which is an excellent quality to have when it comes to the action), and he somehow manages to make machinery feel organic! The Batmobile in this book is an awesome tricked-out motorcycle that, when not being used, hangs in such a way (dripping oil like sweat) as to look like a giant sleeping bat - it’s a really cool effect. Some people have complained about Pope’s art but I loved it. I get that the reader needed to be caught up to the point of the book, but what a clunky way of doing it. Exposition, exposition, exposition - it really puts the brakes on the story while also being really boring to read. It’s an overlong sequence where for nearly 40 interminable pages Batman sits in a room and talks with Robin and Oracle. At first it’s a fast-paced, exciting story of Batman on the run and then after about 100 pages, Pope decides to explain the plot by having the reader follow Batman figure out what’s going on, step by tedious step. As such, Pope’s narrative deftness makes the book feel that much easier to forget and become less involved with because we’re never given the chance to inhabit this world.Īlso, I found that the plot ended up becoming more of a hindrance than an enjoyable story. On the one hand that’s great because we don’t need someone there literally explaining the history of this Gotham, but on the other hand a hint as to the origins of this dystopian future would’ve been appreciated for a more satisfactory reading experience. ![]() So it’s quite a limited view of the future. How did things get to this point - Gotham as a police state? What event triggered such an extreme reaction? If this is Bruce Wayne as Batman, how is that possible - Wayne would be somewhere around 120-150 years old, so who is Batman? What happened to his fortune? What of the rogues like the Joker? What happened to the Justice League? We’re never told the answers to any of these questions. There’s the dystopian future angle, and the attention-grabbing title adding to the mystery of whether Batman is still Bruce Wayne (it couldn’t be - could it?), both of which I liked, but while this is an initially exciting story, as it goes on Paul Pope keeps readers at a distance from the characters and this world by revealing very little information about them. Year 100 is a very uneven book that I really wanted to like. ![]() In the course of finding the real killer, Batman discovers that there’s a doomsday weapon being sold on the black market by the (clearly corrupt) cops in charge. It’s also the first appearance he has made in public for years and people have forgotten his existence - is the mythological Batman real? He is nonetheless hunted by psychic cops, robot dogs, and other futuristic crime-fighting tools. A cop is killed and Batman is suspected as he was at the scene - an obvious frame job. Set in 2039 (100 years after Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27 in 1939), Gotham has become a police state and the overbearing authorities know everything about everyone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |