Just got to reading this for the second time ever – which is an odd thing to say about a comic I own two different editions of (the collection and the IDW Artisan Edition).

Here’s the thing. Before this, in my naïveté, I only liked Born Again for the David Mazzuchelli art, and I’ll admit now that I was largely wrong to do so, even though Miller’s writing continues to not particularly speak to me (except for some his most outré moments in Sin City).

I reread it this time because I was gearing up to reread Batman: Year One and figured I should start with their previous vaunted collaboration, which had after all ended only the previous year. Also came the timely release of Mangasplaining’s Born Again episode. Just felt right.

I certainly respect Miller’s writing here a lot more now. The plot is pretty odd and ramshackle, if you consider this is supposed to be the end of his run (sure, he did Love and War, The Man Without Fear and two Elektra books after this). The secret identity thing (the book begins with Kingpin finding out that Matt Murdock is Daredevil) feels like the beginning of a story rather than a climax (one that Bendis picked up in his run, to his credit) and there are scraps of five different stories here that don’t quite add up to anything in themselves, but bulk out the run. I don’t mind, though, because this is almost refreshing compared to today’s intensely structured but materially arid stories – despite its pace, it feels like this story breathes and is doing things not constrained by its plot. And Miller’s care for the words he’s using – the dialogue, the captions, the textured narration – is palpable. This still reads sophisticated, and I can only imagine what it read like in 1986.

Mazzuchelli remains the hero of this book. No other artist, not Miller himself, nor anyone else working at that time, would have made it quite this book. The compositions, the texture, the occasional but incredibly deft use of pure cartooning, the pacing. It’s all fantastic.

But reading it the second time, two things become clear – 1) Mazzuchelli is still being formed here. He’s great, but he’s in the process of becoming the man who’ll do Batman: Year One. 2) Miller’s writing plays a much bigger part in the art being good than I had originally given him credit for. Miller is building things here. His density – occasionally fitting three scenes to a single page – his use of crosscutting, his pulling together of threads over time, it all makes Mazzuchelli step up his game.

You can see this happen through the series, as Chip notes in the Mangasplaining episode. Issues 1-3 are fun comics, but they’re nothing spectacular, other than watching Mazzuchelli be good. But then Issue 4 is an explosion – it’s fucking breathtaking. Everything that’s happened in the first three issues comes together, and Miller and Mazzuchelli together produce a thunderstorm of a comic. To the extent that the rest is epilogue. Issues 5-8 are great, because Mazzuchelli is now Mazzuchelli in a way he wasn’t in issues 1-3, and there are wonderful sequences like Ben Urich on the park bench in the snow, and the beat where Matt realises who Maggie the nun is. But there’s nothing quite as spectacular, as show-stopping, as issue 4 again.

Anyone who likes good comics always knew why Miller took Mazzuchelli along with him when it came to doing Batman: Year One after this, but this reading clarified what Mazzuchelli got out of continuing to work with Miller. I don’t think there was another mainstream writer around that time who could combine that kind of sophistication with an understanding of how an artist might like to work and be ready to give such an artist the latitude to strut their stuff.

Will be rereading Batman: Year One soon (which I own in four different versions – the Deluxe edition, the two versions included in the Absolute edition, and the recently released majestic Artist’s Edition – and, again, have only read once, though in this case I look through the art all the time), and will report.