Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ten years after the last appearance of Batman, Gotham is overrun by crime.
Ten years after the last appearance of Batman, Commissioner James Gordon is retiring.
Ten years after the last appearance of Batman, the world is on the brink of nuclear war.
Ten years after the last appearance of Batman, Bruce Wayne has had enough!
Ten years after the last appearance of Batman, The Dark Knight Returns!

The first time I read The Dark Knight Returns, I was an impressionable lad of twenty. Now, two decades later, I've revisited it.

The Dark Knight Returns is still a powerful book. Bruce Wayne crawls out of a bottle, shaves off his mustache, and puts on the cowl to fight crime once again, heading toward inevitable showdowns with Joker and Superman once he restores order to the streets of Gotham.

The art shows the evolution of Frank Miller's style from his Daredevil days, bridging the gap between that style and the style he'd be known for on Sin City years later. The writing is why the book was influential at the time, though, and is still influential decades later. This is the birth of the chronically pissed off, over-planning Batman of today. It also paved the way for Batman: Year One, the Tim Burton Batman movie, and even Batman Beyond to some degree. Broken down Batman in this volume isn't that far removed from broken down Batman in Batman Beyond.

I'm a sucker for tales of the aging hero trying to fix things while he still can and that's pretty much what this story is. However, this book has not aged nearly as well as Watchmen or even Miller's own Batman: Year One. It screams 1980s on almost every page. I also forgot how damn wordy it is.

For good or for bad, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is an influential Batman book and an important piece of Batman lore. However, I don't think it holds up nearly as well as Batman: Year One or Batman: The Killing Joke. 3.75 out of 5 stars.

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