Title:
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Writer:
Frank Miller
Art
Work: Frank Miller with Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley
Publisher:
DC Comics
The world of Batman for me captures everything I
love about fictional novels. A good
novel has to be able to take you away from the real world and transport you to
the world of the pages in the novel. It
must be exciting, believable, have continuity, and most of all it must be
original for it to capture my attention.
I hate it when I read about characters I can’t relate to, or a story
that is predictable and banal. For me
it’s all about respect. When I decide to
choose a novel to read, I am assuming that the writer or artist has put their
soul into a piece they want to share with the world. So I show them respect by becoming a sort of
hermit to the outside world, which allows me to focus my full attention into
the story they have created. I usually
wear a hat or a hoody because it physically allows me to concentrate on the
words with my foveal vision, while ignoring everything else that’s in my
peripheral vision such as who’s sitting next to me on the subway. If it’s a long novel I also like to get a
note pad and write down notes as I’m reading in order to understand the story
better. Being this engaged with a novel
I can then dissect and consume the story at my own pace since I have never been
an academic person.
The beauty of the
world of Batman is that its characters have been well established and yet still
allow for various types of interpretations from writer to writer. One man can see Batman as an honest and
righteous do-gooder, while another can picture him as a tormented
vigilante. The latter is how Frank
Miller decided to interpret his vision of Batman in his epic graphic novel, the
Dark Knight Returns. Written in the mid
80’s when the Cold War was still going on with the threat of nuclear war and
the presence of the growing pessimistic media, you can tell Miller was
definitely influenced by his time. For
him, the old boy scout super hero was no longer believable because the world
had changed. I like to interpret this as
going from good and bad or white and black, to a world that was grey where good
and bad were mixed together. This grey
world needed a hero that would scare off the worst villains, who were capable
of murder and rape. This world demanded
a giant rambunctious and dangerous Batman that would risk his life in order to
defeat his enemies. This is the hero
that Miller unleashed onto Gotham City to fight its new evils.
The first thing I
noticed that was unique about this graphic novel was how the art and drawings
were presented. Each panel was narrow
and crammed full of writing, while the illustrations were plain and simple. This was difficult to get used to at first because
most graphic novels have so many intricate illustrations that the words barely
need to get read to know what is happening.
As I read on though, I found that I started to rely less on the drawings
and more on the story that was written, making the narrative much more smooth
and rich. I became really impressed by
the flow of continuity that Frank Miller had created. Another thing I enjoyed about this novel was
the multiple stories that were involved from the mutant gang, the Joker,
Commissioner Yindel, and even Superman.
What also surprised me about this novel was Bruce Wayne’s age; he’s an
old man. Not that it took away from the
story having a much more physically vulnerable Batman, instead I viewed it as
Miller trying to demonstrate the heart of Bruce Wayne. His ‘never give up’ attitude was really
inspiring and made me love Batman even more.
By the time I was done reading this graphic novel I came to appreciate
what Frank Miller has done for the world of comic book superheroes; allow them
to be interpreted in different ways from different people, thus allowing and
endless amount of stories to flourish.
Wiki
link:
DC
Comics:
http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/graphic_novels/?gn=1279
