Bruce Wayne inspired by a Hollywood legend? Find out which star inspired Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli for their comic book “Batman: Year One”.
It’s 1986, Frank Miller comes out The Dark Knight Returns, a comic book much appreciated by fans and completely redefining the character of Batman. In four volumes, Miller brings back old villains, offers a 55-year-old Bruce Wayne, invents a new Robin and offers a clash between the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel: Batman v Superman well before Zack Snyder’s film .
That same year, Miller was contacted to tell a new origin story of the billionaire-vigilante-vigilante of Gotham City. For the occasion, the author would abandon the drawing to entrust it to a certain David Mazzucchelli, whom he already knows for having signed with him the Daredevil: Born Again arc, which will probably inspire the Disney+ series currently in preparation.
DC Comics Excerpt from the cover of “Batman: Year One”
The project is called Batman: Year One and will present Bruce Wayne’s first year under the mask of The Batman and his meeting with Jim Gordon, a police officer recently transferred to Gotham.
To find what his Bruce Wayne will look like, who must have a certain worldly elegance, but also a deeply rooted darkness, David Mazzucchelli will take inspiration from an actor from the classic Hollywood period: a certain Gregory Peck!
Gregory Peck was an Oscar-winning actor in 1963 for his role in Of Silence and Shadows, classic among classics, but also Roman Holiday, The House of Doctor Edwardes or Those Boys Who Came from Brazil. Carefully choosing his roles, he gave the cinema some of his best performances and through the modernity of his acting, allowed films to cross the eras, such as The Last Shore, Les Nerfs à vive (which produced the remake of Scorsese) or The Human Target.
MGM
Gregory Peck in “The Crimson Flame”
This artistic choice, coupled with the minimalism of Mazzucchelli’s line, will contribute to the success of the comic. And who better than Gregory Peck and his perfect head to play a private detective, to stick to a revisited Bruce Wayne, to a Gotham with sharp hardness like a switchblade, and to the film noir atmosphere of this Batman: Year One ?
The comic has also been adapted into an animated film and it’s worth a watch!