1961, Gotham City, and Batman’s grandparents, Richard and Constance Wayne, have their baby daughter Helen kidnapped - by Batman?! There’s only one man with a name sillier than Batman who can solve the case: private investigator Slam Bradley!
DC continue their Year One line by giving their most famous city a needless origin story - sort of. A couple of locations that Batman fans will recognise - Crime Alley, Ace Chemicals - get given origins but this is really a Slam Bradley comic. He’s as old a character as Batman but nowhere near as well-known (Batman is basically Slam but more interesting) so it’s not called a Slam Bradley book because he just isn’t famous enough.
Tom King’s been writing arbitrarily 12-issue long books for a number of years now so it’s a refreshing surprise that Gotham City: Year One is “only” 6 issues long - though it’s quite verbose so it feels longer than it is! Is a Batman-flavoured retelling of the Lindbergh baby case any good? Eh - it wasn’t for me.
The premise is initially intriguing but becomes less so over the course of the book. Part of the problem is King contriving to put “Batman” and a Catwoman-type character into a story where they don’t really fit. It eventually devolves into the usual seediness you find in most noir/detective stories from the pulp era with some forced race politics sprinkled in and unconvincing background dramatics in the final act.
I just wasn’t all that concerned with finding out which unlikeable character killed which unlikeable character, etc. and the reveals aren’t that remarkable anyway. It’s amazing that Slam doesn’t have CTE in his old age given the number of shots to the chops he gets (the framing device of the story is the present day and an elderly Slam is telling his tale to Batman, for no reason).
Will any of the very minor retcons King introduces in this book stick? Maybe - maybe not. I don’t think anyone will be bothered one way or the other, especially the retcon about Slam’s character. It’s not like he has a fanbase that will have anything to say about it either way, and ultimately it’s irrelevant - it’s little more than a cosmetic change to the character.
Phil Hester’s art suits the noirish story well and I liked little details in the panels that hinted at the larger history of Gotham that many Batman fans will be familiar with - the owl statues everywhere, a nod to the Court of Owls’ subtle presence in Gotham, though nobody overtly acknowledges this.
Parts of the story’s first act are ok but the problem with trying to have a story with many twists throughout is that things get more and more convoluted and require lengthy, increasingly tedious, explanations. Ultimately King was unable to make the story’s conclusion in any way meaningful or exciting and the whole thing not only feels pointless but leaves an unpleasant taste too.
If you’re into noir/private dick stories from yesteryear, you might get something more out of this one but I found Gotham City: Year One to be a plodding and uninteresting read.
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