How Does Batman Year 2 Hold Up As A Sequel To Batman Year 1?

[Mace Dolex]

I enjoy Year Two more than Year One, the fact that Year Two has the bad stigma of it being labled a sequel gives it's bad reputation but on it's own it's a good story and Mike W. Barr is very underrated, another Batman story is his I love is the Batman Special 1984 called "The Player On The Other Side" very cool.

[exile001]

Mike W. Barr is very underrated, another Batman story is his I love is the Batman Special 1984 called "The Player On The Other Side" very cool.

That is not a hot take, my friend. EVERYONE loves the Wrath Special and most agree on Son of the Bat being a milestone.

[exile001]

Gregg Hurwitz's Dark Knight #0 issue was the official Joe Chill origin, and he also appeared in a Darkseid War Batman special by Tomasi, but actually, I would wager that Three Jokers is going to be the official conclusion to the Joe Chill story moving forward in canon. I actually kind of hope it is. I really liked what Geoff Johns did with him and Bruce. Feels "classic", like it deserves to be the "true" version. But that's just me.

1, Darkseid War and Tomasi in one issue? No wonder I skipped it.

2, Three Jokers is thankfully not in continuity.

Sorry to sound harsh, you like what you like mate, but Johns Batman (or anything after Blackest night) is NOT for me.

[godisawesome]

Year Two left me fairly cold when I read it, and I think we’ve got a decent collection of better stories for that part of the timeline nowadays - The Long Halloween first among them, of course but also a bunch of stuff from Doug Moench in Legends of the Dark Knight and some stories from Batman: Confidential and elsewhere.

For instance, I love Prey and Heat as a kind of one-two punch of Year One follow-ups on two major points - Gordon’s rise in the ranks while the city comes to accept Batman’s place as a protector, and Batman and Catwoman starting their reparté

[John Venus]

Whether as a sequel to Year One or as a story on it's own, Year Two was terrible. It was trying way too hard to ape the grim dark aesthetic that made Miller so successful but with none of the nuances or understanding of the character that went with it. No wonder Denny O'Neill retconned Year Two from continuity. I love the idea of a vigilante who existed before Batman did but the execution was lacking.

[Timothy Hunter]

I'd love to see Alan Scott and the Reaper interact in a comic set in a pre-Batman Gotham.

[bat39]

So, motivated by this thread, I finally got around to re-reading Year Two. And...well, I came away with a greater appreciation for this story than I had before. But it certainly is no masterpiece...or rather, it falls short of being the masterpiece it could have been.

There are definitely a lot of interesting ideas here that sadly don't get a lot more than a superficial exploration. A vigilante from a previous generation with a more lethal approach than Batman's. Bruce falling in love with a woman who has a tragic past similar to his (and whose father is virtually an older, darker version of him). Batman working with the Mob to take down a villain. Batman being desperate enough to turn to using a gun (and the gun that took his parents' lives and ''created'' him to boot!). Batman having to team-up with Joe Chill and seriously contemplating murdering him.

Except, while these are all interesting ideas to explore with an early Batman, they're all kind of just thrown together at the wall without much depth or even narrative consistency. Bruce decides to use a gun because he loses one fight to the Reaper? Bruce randomly falls in love with Rachel Caspian after meeting her once, to the point where he wants to quit being Batman? Batman decides his best bet to deal with the Reaper is to team up with the Mob (and to overtly break away from the GCPD and jeopardize his relationship with Gordon) and that he has no choice but to work with Joe Chill? The idea that Joe Chill is regarded by the Mob as virtually some kind of Deadshot or Deathstroke who's expected to help Batman take out the Reaper and then take out the Batman as well is also borderline ludicrous...if Barr was going down that path with Chill then there should have been some explanation for why the Waynes were murdered by the Mob's top hitman (or how a small-time mugger ended up becoming the Mob's top hitman).

I do feel that a lot of Year Two's ideas were explored much better in other stories. Rachel Caspian, for instance, is possibly an inspiration for Rachel Dawes in the Nolan movies, and her doomed love story with Bruce makes a lot more sense there. As did Andreau Beaumont's doomed love story with Bruce in Mask of the Phatasm. The Phantasm story was a far better and twister take on the Reaper story here. Even Batman's encounter with Joe Chill has been done better several times in the decades since. As has the idea of Batman making an unholy alliance.

Back to the topic of this thread...yeah, Year Two really doesn't feel like much of a sequel to Year One, beyond the name and the obvious fact that it's an early Batman story set sometime after he first starts out. If I had to wager a guess, I'd say it's actually set around two years into Batman's career (since in issue four Bruce mentions that it's been 20 years since the Wayne murders...and at the start of Year One it had been 18 years), so a little over 12-18 months after the end of Year One. I guess that gives us enough time for Gordon to rise from Captain to Commissioner, for his relationship with Batman to go public enough for the Batsignal to be established, and for Bruce to start building his civilian life as a philantrophist with his funding for Leslie's clinic and his plans for the Wayne Foundation. Chronology aside, it isn't really a continuation of either Year One's themes and ideas, nor its narrative threads.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

I liked Full Circle (Year 2's sequel right?) better than Year 2.

[Timothy Hunter]

I liked Full Circle (Year 2's sequel right?) better than Year 2.

I agree that it is the superior story, helped by the fact that it's all done by one artist. I think one of Year Two's greatest flaws is that it feels visually fractured because of the change in art team.

[bat39]

So I read Full Circle for the first time and it's definitely the superior story to Year Two. I'd argue that Full Circle actually elevates Year Two retroactively.

spoilers:

The idea of Joe Chill's son becoming the Reaper, and his grandchild playing a part in the story, was a stroke of genius and goes a long way to redeeming the otherwise nonsensical Joe Chill plot of Year Two. I loved the parallel drawn between Joe Chill/Thomas Wayne, Chill's son/Bruce and Chill's grandson/Dick. In a way, Bruce's summation at the end that the 'feud' between the Chills and the Waynes should end with Chill's grandson Joey, coupled with Bruce tossing Chill's gun into the river and fully accepting Robin as his partner, symbolically felt like the end of Batman's dark vigilante phase and the beginning of his more heroic era as one half of the classic Dynamic Duo. There's a dialogue exchange between Rachel Caspian and Bruce (later echoed between Batman and Rachel) that convinces me that Christopher Nolan and/or David Goyer definitely did read Year Two and Full Circle, and based Rachel Dawes to some extent on Rachel Caspian!

end of spoilers

[PurpleGlovez]

I'd love to see Alan Scott and the Reaper interact in a comic set in a pre-Batman Gotham.

Secret Origins #50, my friend.