choose your own adventure

Lowering your jeans and gingerly settling onto the toilet, you spy a newspaper on the ground nearby. Picking it up, you realize it's a copy of your very favorite newspaper, the award-winning Portland Mercury! "What great luck!" you think to yourself. "Why, I think I'll read a book review." Cont'd below...

The new graphic novel from acclaimed illustrator Paul Pope, Batman: Year 100 kicks off with a frustrating bang: A fucked-up looking Bats is clumping along a rooftop, dripping puddles of blood, pursued by a pack of angry dogs. So you ask yourself, since Batman looks so eat up—is he actually 100 years old? Why is his costume so baggy, and unkempt? And what are a pack of dogs doing on a rooftop?

But here's why Pope is one of the most respected comic artists of the day. The reader can be frustrated with the narrative, yet still glued to each and every frame—due largely to Pope's mastery of detail and composition.

It turns out Batman isn't 100 years old after all. Instead, the title alludes to the year the story takes place, 2039—100 years after the original Batman made his appearance in 1939 Gotham. 2039's Gotham isn't a fun place to be either: The country is under martial rule, where a Federal police force patrols the skies in flying cars keeping close tabs on every registered citizen, except for one. (Guess who?) Sightings of this "Bat-Man of Gotham" have both the public and the government in an uproar—neither knows whether it's human or animal. The few pictures taken of him—grainy, in night vision green—look horrifyingly animalistic.

By the end of issue one, the reader only receives hints of what the four-issue mini-series will bring, but it's certainly intriguing enough to bring you back for more.

choose your own adventure

"What a greatbook review!" you think to yourself. "In fact, I think I'll go to the comic book shop now! That sounds way nicer than going on some stupid adventure for some crazy old gun nut anyway." Then again, you can't help but wonder how things might have worked out if you had made different choices....

THE END

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