Wrath of the Bat: "The Dark Knight Returns" Revisited

Batman returns with a vengeance in "The Dark Knight Returns".

After hearing actor Harry Lennix quote Batman's epic words to Superman from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns to announce that the two titans would meet in the next Superman film, I figured it was time to return to the futuristic dystopian Gotham and see if it had changed since my last reading.  The four issue series released in 1986, is undoubtedly a masterpiece, usually mentioned in the same breath as Watchmen and Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.  It presented a startlingly dark vision of an older Batman in an era of anti-heroes and renegades.  For those unfamiliar with the story, it depicts a fifty-five year old Bruce Wayne who for ten years has retired from crime fighting in order to lead a "normal" life.  However, he finds that simply hanging up his cape is not enough; the shroud of the bat still haunts him as does his parent's murder, and like a dark passenger, compels him to go back out there.  This older Bruce is a bitter, restless soul who's still addicted to crime-fighting.  At the start of the series, Gotham is in the grip of a savage heat wave and gang related crime is making headlines across the city.  In addition, Batman's longtime ally Commissioner Gordon, in his seventies but as battle ready as ever, is close to a mandatory retirement.  Since he hasn't been seen in ten years, most young people in Gotham believe Batman to be just an urban bogeyman while others debate publicly on air the pros and cons of his one man war on crime. 
As more and more attacks against innocent people crop up, most the work of a gang known as the Mutants, it's not long before Bruce gives into the beast, puts on his cape and cowl and hits the streets once again with an arsenal of badass weapons and a mammoth tank of a Batmobile.  Soon mutant attacks are being thwarted and whispers of the Batman's return begin to circulate.  At the same time, Harvey Dent a.k.a Two Face is released from Arkham Asylum after 12 years of therapy with both his looks and supposedly his sanity restored.  Batman's other chief foe, the Joker has been comatose in Arkham for 10 years, but when Batman resurfaces, news of his exploits kick-start the Joker back to life in an excellent scene in which the vegetative Clown comes to and with a big grin spread across his face, simply utters, "Batman...darling".  It's not long before the Joker too is back on the streets, serving up more madness to draw Batman to him.  In DKR, Batman and Joker are shown in many ways to be equal sides of the same coin; two men who've made insane choices and are dependent on each other for a worthy challenge. 

Batman delivering a beat-down to his former friend Clark.

I've heard that when DKR was released it sent shock waves through the DC world because of the portrayal of a nastier, more vicious Batman who uses guns at times.  Apparently Frank Miller was called up by former Batman writers who told him that he'd ruined the character by showing him to be almost Fascist in his crusade.  Miller himself said that he wanted to show this older Batman as a really nasty curmudgeon, as a dirty harry type that nobody likes.  I see how this makes sense since Batman has always been a very dark and haunted character whose motivations are slightly twisted and insane.  These are the things that make him so compelling.  Ultimately he's here to help but his world view is quite bleak; unlike Superman, he doesn't have hope that things will get better but instead just fights to establish some order out of the chaos that fills so much of Gotham life, the same senseless chaos that stole his parents from him.  In many ways he's fighting to put himself back together, to make himself whole again like humpty dumpty after the fall and without the Batman persona, he knows of no other way to do that.  In this way he reminds me of Dexter Morgan, who watched his mother murdered when he was three and therefore develops the urge to kill people in order to feel whole again and retain order.  Batman may not be cutting people up, but the urge to put himself back together and regain control of his life mirrors Dexter.  Bruce Wayne is anything but a well adjusted person, but you'd have to be a bit crazy to take the law into his own hands.  Bruce's addiction to Batman was explored quite well in the Dark Knight trilogy, particularly in The Dark Knight Rises.  Whatever he does, he's a slave to the urge, personified by the Bat, forever compelling him to take action.
Frank Miller is also credited with destroying the Superman/Batman friendship that had been established up until that point.  In DKR, Superman is the epitome of the big blue boy-scout, working as a government puppet for President Reagan.  When Batman's exploits go to far, Superman is sent to stop him rocking the boat.  Although their past partnership is implied, they have radically different world views.  Miller states that given their different outlooks, these two guys would not like each other.  Bruce confronts Superman wearing special armor and with some help from Oliver Queen, formerly Green Arrow and a special Kryptonite arrow, Batman takes Superman to school in an epic beatdown.  At the time, this had to be a shocking moment in comics history.  It's easy to see how this gun-wielding older Batman with a death wish would have been a shock to past writers of the character.  A big draw of the book is the huge of amount of Batman's inner monologue which gives us direct access to his thoughts.  Of course in comics we usually always get the character's inner monologue, but reading the thoughts an older, more cynical Batman is a rare glimpse into the fractured psychology of the character.  The art of the book has a gritty, unpolished, almost film noir style that I think captures the dark essence of the story.  I've yet to see the animated film versions of DKR although I've got them in my Netflix queue.  Miller also wrote a sequel called The Dark Knight Strikes Again, which I haven't gotten a chance to read yet although I'm looking forward to seeing the story continue.  Overall, The Dark Knight Returns is worthy of the title "Masterpiece."   It's an in depth character study of arguably the most intriguing and complex superhero around and the futuristic world it takes place in is frightening grounded.  Miller's vision of an older Dark Knight is probably closest to how it'd actually be if a man took it upon himself to wage a one man war on crime for deeply personal and slightly twisted reasons.