Batman is a hero all the way from the beginning of Golden Age comics. He is a rich bachelor who solves mysteries clad in spandex, usually depicted with the boy wonder, Robin. In the Golden Age, he was known for his straightforward stories as both rich playboy Bruce Wayne and then as his alter ego of Batman and the overlap between.
Fast-forwarding to the Modern Age, we get a new type of hero. Within this time frame, we get the development of the “anti-hero.” Morally gray, sometimes violent, and psychologically vulnerable, these new heroes seemed to overtake the comic world. With this, Frank Miller’s story The Dark Knight Returns became the iconic precedent for this character trend and trope.
Miller managed to take the stream-lined story of Batman that had been continuous from his creation to a new, complex level. He took the notion of comics and flipped them fully on their heads.
Originally, good guys were defenders of the American way and of upholding justice while villains were the corrupters. Now, in a turn of events, this story leaves you questioning whether the heroes were the heroes and if the villains were truly the bad guys and not more victims.
For the Dark Knight Returns, the psychological complexity is an integral part of the story, showing the train of thought and the off-kilter state of being that Bruce Wayne finds himself in.
The story starts off with Bruce Wayne, older and retired, having hung up the cape and tights. However, the effects of being such a powerful person has never left his side, could never be put down.
The thrill of fighting baddies and being in dangerous situations is like an addiction to him. In the first pages of the comic, it opens with Bruce in a drag race. The situation turns dangerous and exciting and he is thrilled, even thinking that he could die. But it wasn’t a good way to die – an exciting way to die, so he bails out last minute. Later, the mutants encounter him as a possible murder victim, but they decide against it because he was “too into it.”
Another scene that grapples with this emotional complexity within Bruce is the scene where he comes back as Batman, unretiring and deciding the don the hero garb. Miller does an excellent job in showing Batman’s unwillingness to give but falling to temptation after going berserk.
With shadows overlaying on him as if prison bars, he is trapped within his own mind as he fights with himself on rejecting being Batman. His mind is entrapped with the death of his parents, and in an attempt to distract himself, he turns on the TV, taking a shower, then to checking his phone messages. None of it seems to work, the bat breaks through the window, through the cell bars.
In the aftermath, he bursts onto the streets and goes on a tirade of fighting crime and causing hell. With these actions, in an asylum, his old nemesis joker sees it on the TV. Many of the villains had retired or decided to seek help, but now with the rise of Batman, they too decide to come back out of retirement.
If Batman had never come back, would they? It’s this kind of complexity that is so captivating about the Dark Knight Returns.
There’s a lot to unpack in these stories, more than what I could type before my hands fall off, but it’s a good read that leaves you thinking and divided in how to think and who to root for.
