Review: Batman - Year 100

Batman: Year 100 TPB
Written and Drawn by Paul Pope
Published by DC Comics. $19.99 USD

Paul Pope is one of those creators I really want to succeed. My first exposure to his work was THB, his unfinished science fiction epic, and I think I'd probably still dig it if I read it again. Cool images, a real free and confident feel to the page. It was a work of great, idiosyncratic enthusiasm. Not a driven work, but one had the feeling Pope had at least a pretty good idea where he was going, and that the journey was the important thing. But something has happened over the years--he hasn't done anything very good. Oh, sure, there were a couple nice stories in his SOLO issue, though his Eisner-nominated Batman story was overrated. And now, after that and a prior, really awful Batman Black And White story, he gets his chance to really flesh out his take on the Caped Crusader.

Edited by Bob Shreck, the Joe Torre of comics editors, who assembles great talent and then lets them go to their work with no direction, Pope offers up a kind of 2006 dub mix of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, with Batman now well into his 100s with no explanation of how that could be. I call it a dub mix because it's like when '70s Jamaican producers would take just an element or two from a song and distort them and add lots of reverb and sound effects. Actually, that's a lousy metaphor, because the best dubs really do become their own new pieces of music. Pope takes the early portion of DKR Vol. 1 where the cops are freaking out because there's this guy stirring things up who may be Batman, and he just kind of keeps playing that bass pattern and twiddles some knobs and thinks he has a story. Hint: Batman vs. faceless cops = boring.

I'm not against the idea that this is the same Batman, nor that Pope chooses not to explain this. That's okay, though it would've been nice if the apparent advances in medicine or cloning that made this possible were reflected in other characters and aspects of the story. This is a very shallow world and one never gets the feeling Pope sees more than a few rooms of it. Why does James Gordon's grandsom have to be named Jim and look exactly like his grandfather? Why not? Why does Batman have another partner and how did he get hooked up with the boy and his family? Who knows. Why, after decades, is the only alteration to Batman's costume design and approach to striking fear in the hearts of criminals the addition of some novelty teeth? Pope says in a "making of" section at the back of the book that he didn't want to make the future so heavy with tech, which is fine as far as it goes, but let's at least put a little thought into it. For example, Gordon finds his grandfather's old laptop and tries to figure out his password to get into the file on Batman--wouldn't there be software by this time that could crack a 70 year old operation system? And for another example, Batman's DNA sample is sitting in a lab, so Batman blows up the lab to protect his identity--wouldn't DNA be instantly analyzed and copies of the results automatically sent to multiple servers to protect against a lab burning up or theft or whatever? It's a dumb story.

And don't get me wrong; I can deal with a dumb story, if it's enjoyable. The latter half of Frank Miller's career is made up of such things, so one would hope Pope had drawn inspiration from them. Instead, there is a claustrophic, joyless, aimless feel to the art and story that isn't relieved by the thoughtful coloring of Jose Villarrubia and the occasional cool pose. Sure, I like how much thought Pope put into the kinds of boots a superhero would really wear, but how about some thought to the relationships? How about coming up with a colorful villain, and not the aforementioned faceless cops and the jackass top cop who never causes Batman any problems but harrasses Gordon a bit?

I didn't know what to expect from this. Pope is unpredictable, and that's something I like about him. All I really expected was that the story would either really grab me, or turn me off strongly, but at least the art would make it worthwhile. And not only is there nothing appealing to look at, but Pope did the last thing I expected by being utterly dull. This is as bad a work as he's ever done--that kind of bad where the guy offers to pay you back if he sees you on the street. A real shame.