SEEKERS OF THE BAT

Today, we have a couple of promotional shots for the Absolute edition of Frank Miller’s seminal work ‘The Dark Knight Returns’. In a dystopian future that has rejected its superheroes, a 55 year old Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to continue his crusade against crime. To do so, the resurrected Batman has to forcibly take control of a gang of murderers, survive the return of the Joker, and single handedly take down Superman, who is now nothing more than a government weapon.

This book pioneered the ‘dark and gritty’ Batman which echoes through the years down to Christian Bale’s performance in the Christopher Nolan films. Although it takes place outside of the established canon (recognized as Earth 31), it remains to this day one of the most influential Batman stories ever told.

As this group of hapless ninjas finds out, Batman is at the top of the food chain. Also we see the phrase ‘the Goddamn Batman’, made infamous by the Frank Miller / Jim Lee super project ‘All Star Batman and Robin’.

This scene from the infamous All-Star Batman and Robin run shows Batman tending to a severely beaten Catwoman. The horror of the situation is that the realization that the Joker now has a weakness in the young Batman to exploit.

One common trope in the comics is that Batman’s inner monologue is often depicted as being hand written.  Before computers were ubiquitous, Batman kept meticulous handwritten logs and journals of his cases, and so the convention of using his ‘diary’ entries as narration has continued to the present day. For all his machismo, his journals often reveal an introspective, tortured emotion under the stoic, confident exterior .

Frank Miller set the gold standard for a dark and gritty Batman (and superheroes in general) with his groundbreaking work: The Dark Knight Returns.  The plot involved an aged Bruce Wayne coming out of retirement for a final battle.