Miller's Gotham City is a corrupt and festering cesspool, much as he would later depict in his Sin City series. Two good men come to town to clean things up: Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon, a new detective on the Gotham police force fresh from his role in cleaning up another police department.

Wayne himself has returned to his hometown after a long absence, during which he trained himself to become a vigilante. Wayne's first foray into crimefighting nearly ends in disaster, but leads him ultimately to adopt the Batman motif to frighten criminals. Gordon becomes his unlikely ally as he strives to clean up Gotham's police department.

The writing remains more mature and gritty than the typical comic book fare of the time. Batman is not the invincible denizen of the dark we've come to know and love, but an awkward guy in a goofy costume who seems always to be within an inch of death. Gordon is no paragon of virtue either; the main subplot deals with his affair with another cop while his wife waits to give birth to his son.

The result is a gripping, gritty, and ultimately redeeming tale which once again reinvents the familiar figure of the Batman.

All of that changed when Dennis O'Neil took over the writing chores and returned the character to the dark roots laid out by the late, great, Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Dennis O'Neil brought Batman comics into and through puberty. Frank Miller brought them into adulthood.

Along with the brilliant "Dark Knight Returns," "Year One" bookends the saga of Bruce Wayne by re-interpreting and sometimes redefining the character's roots. In so doing, Frank Miller laid the foundation for the character that today populates the monthly titles. Although not as grim as "Dark Knight," "Year One" nonetheless hits closer to home and is, in my opinion, the best introduction to the character for anyone unfamiliar with it outside of film and TV.

The parallel struggles of Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon to "clean up a city that likes being dirty" are brilliantly rendered by Miller, possibly the finest comics writer EVER. Miller's Jim Gordon is a far cry from the incompetent beat cop shown in movies and TV. He is a passionate, crusading man, the sort of cop Bruce Wayne might have been in another reality.

Opinions have always been strong one way or the other about the art in "Year One." For my money, you couldn't ask for more. Mazzucchelli's pencils work wonders even beyond what he did in "Daredevil: Born Again," and the coloring is particularly striking in its subtlety, even more so when you consider the "beat you over the head" standards of late-'80s comics.

All in all, this is the definitive Batman origin story. That Miller, Mazzucchelli and Lewis also manage to turn it into one of the finest Batman stories ever told is evidenced by the lasting impact it had on all subsequent interpretations of the characters involved. An all-around winner.