Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Batman Year 100: Batman versus the DHS

Cory Doctorow at 6:32 am Mon, Feb 26, 2007

— FEATURED —

Book Review

The Man Who Laughs: grotesque Victor Hugo potboiler was the basis for The Joker

Feature

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

Book Review

The Twelve-Fingered Boy - mesmerizing YA horror novel

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
This weekend, I read Paul Pope and Jose Villarubia's astounding "Batman Year 100" collection (another great find from the recommended table at LA's Secret Headquarters comic shop).

Batman Year 100 is set in 2039, 100 years after the 1939 debut of The Bat-Man. America has become a Soviet-like military society, where corrupt Department of Homeland Security officials reign supreme in a land of suspended habeas corpus and universal surveillance.

Batman is now a mere urban legend in Gotham City, but he is still alive and well, living in the cracks of totalitarian America. When he witnesses a Fed shock-trooper's murder, he becomes the target of a violent, determined investigation from the DHS brass, who are determined to destroy "the last mask" and perfect their vision of an America where they are the only authority.

Batman Year 100 is the most exciting and fresh re-imagining of the Batman stories since the original Frank Miller Dark Knight comics. The artwork is broody, abstract, haunting; the writing screams along at 100 mph. This Batman is the most complex, conflicted, and darkest Batman yet.

As a bonus, there's a great short alternate-universe Batman story stuck at the end, where Batman is imagined as the alter-ego of a Nazi-fighting Jew in 1939 Germany. Link

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek