Hello! I’m Batman Chronology Project site contributor Anthony Fallone. Over the last few months, I have been working on a personal passion project of mine that involves adapting the entire modern age/post-crisis story of Batman from its comic form into written prose. Obviously, this is a massive undertaking, but Collin’s modern age Batman timelines, as well as the work of fellow site contributors, Martín Lel and Jack James, have helped me immensely. My vision is to create a series of “books,” each centered around a different year in Bruce’s journey as Batman, commencing with “Batman: Year One.” Below is a sample chapter from my novelization of Year One, focusing on Bruce’s initial encounter with Basil Karlo/Clayface, aptly titled “The Terror.” This project is undoubtedly long-term and will likely take years to complete, but I feel as long as I have other people’s support and investment, I will have the motivation to continue. Please take a look and leave comments below. Thanks in advance!
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Wow, this is amazing. Best of hopes in your project!
This is so amazing. It’s a real honor to get special thanks for my contributions to the Chronology that led to this! I love the thick dialogue, oozing pulp like the Golden Age tale. I love the direct quotations, ie. “No expense is spared”. I love the smart modernisations that went beyond what The Batman Files did, fixing plot holes or inverisimilitudes, such as Julie starting off as an extra, or bothering to give Bruce a motivation as to why he doesn’t leave the case to the police. Every moment that humanized Bruce in ways the comics couldn’t were the real boon of this experiment, such as Bruce relaxing when Julie’s short dialogue in the movie was over, his legs hurting from dropping from the ceiling, or the water being cold. The glimpses of Bruce being an inexperienced crimefighter, when he pondered if he could save “at least one life” when Clayface set everything on fire, or his insecurities making him need to protect Julie. Finally, the gothic, chilling irony of Bruce calling Basil a madman for getting caught up in the theatrics of it all, only for him to walk down the stairs to his macabre cave, taking off a costume just as outrageous as Clayface’s.
This is good stuff! I will say, the prose was a bit dry when there was no dialogue going on, but hey, the same thing happens in the official Batman prose anthologies published by DC.
I AM curious as to the length of this. It’s a lot of pages for a story that only gets a flashback in the Modern Age. Certainly, it’s arguably a more important Clayface story than any that follow because it’s his debut, but I’m wondering if you plan to give every issue the same amount of detail. I counted them and there are around 900 Modern Age comics, so with 20 pages per issue via this excerpt, we’re looking at each of the 23 books having 700-800 pages. That’s intense! It’s worth mentioning some Years are extremely short, especially the Flashback years, compared to, say, Year 21, which will actually need compressing rather than decompressing if you want every volume to be similar.
I’m also curious if you plan on transcribing the exact dialogue for the actual Modern Age comics that don’t need a modernisation. It would certainly speed up the process, and I think it would still be interesting to read.
I can’t wait to spot the next update of this daring idea!
Thank you for the detailed feedback, Martín. It is very much appreciated. To answer your questions, if your calculations are correct, then each “book” may very well end up being 700-800 pages long. I plan on keeping everything digital rather than printing physical copies, not only due to legal reasons but also because physical books would simply be too big. I do not plan on writing out full stories for every reference in the Modern Age, though they might be mentioned in passing (Batman’s encounter with Carl Kruger, for example). The only reason I wrote a full story for the Clayface flashback is because the flashback is the length of an entire story, and it’s also a fairly important event (being Batman’s first encounter with Basil Karlo/Clayface and all). I do plan on transcribing the dialogue verbatim for the most part, except when I feel the dialogue is a bit too hokey and in need of a modernized update.
Cheers!
Good luck on the project man, I was even thinking of doing one myself (probably won’t) and I just saw this update, big work ahead of you
Thank you for wishing me luck. I am going to need all the luck I can get.
Incredible!! I can’t wait to see when Year One is finished (and imagining it all is blowing my mind!) Love the detail with Julie’s hair. Searched it up and it looks exactly how it did during Monster Men/Mad Monk, our only real non-flashback stories with her. It may seem small, but making other stories reflect each other does a lot for continuity. Makes it all feel like it’s in the same universe. Great job!
Awesome! Count on me if you need a translator to Portuguese, big market for it here in Brazil!