Batman knows on how to put on a freakin’ show when he wants to. And he’s polite, too.
Whenever my brain randomly moves to thoughts of Batman, this is the series of panels that comes to mine. It’s a page from Batman #405, part of the Batman Year One storyline.
This 1987 arc contained Frank Miller’s great re-imagining of Bruce Wayne’s first outings as Batman. Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli make up one of comics’ best teams when they work together, able to use space and silence to stunning effect.
Part of the appeal of this page is in how quiet and polite the Dark Knight is here. Yes, the cape swirling in silhouette is a great moment. But my favourite panel is the silent one immediately afterwards, where the detail of that poor waiter’s uncontrollably shaking hand drives home just how scary even a novice Batman must be. Poor guy, he’s probably just some actor doing catering gigs in between auditions only to have the wall explode and a creature-of-the-night walk in and commandeer his bananas foster. And the way that Mazzucchelli controls the light sources, so that the terror of that final black panel hits home? Sheer genius.
So, yeah, that’s the Batman sequence I can’t get out of my head. What’s yours?
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