Frank Miller wrote Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in the June of 1986 which became the first real adult comic book for many people and a gateway into the world of art and literature as it delivers art in disguise of a comic book. Batman: The dark knight returns and single-handedly changed the notions of superhero comic books and their plotlines by introducing a dark and gritty superhero against the most egregious villains which is more appealing to the adult audience. Miller took risks with the artwork that paid off tenfold becoming a commercial success and even later converted into animated movies.
Before we proceed to the analysis of the text, let us first understand the history of graphic novels.
The “Graphic novel” term was coined in 1963, by historian Richard Kyle and was popularised by Will Eisner by using it for the branding of their work, A Contract with God, published in 1978.
The earliest instances of what can be categorically called “graphic novels” were known as album-type comic books, which were collections of tales that were first published as serial works and then brought together to be marketed as full sets. With the introduction of mass book commerce in the 1970s and early 1980s, the true graphic novel began to emerge. This development encouraged self-publishing and the publication of works catering to their own interests to the lengths of their choosing, allowing for the mass production of larger works and the independence of comic book writers and graphic novel artists. The target audience for such comics was initially kids and teen audience, it was all created in a way to please and entertain them, even sometimes as a fable as well but when frank miller entered into the business he didn’t just expand the target audience from the genre from kids to adult but also incorporated social and political commentary as well.
Miller is famous for combining film noir and manga influences in his creations,
during an interview when he was asked about how he got the idea of creating such dark narratives, he famously said “I realized when I started Sin City that I found American and English comics be too wordy, too constipated, and Japanese comics to be too empty. So I was attempting to do a hybrid”. This is most visible within Batman:DRK, as the home of Batman; the Gotham city we get to witness just after turning a few pages is clearly soaked in dystopia, the ‘we are damned’ synecdochic placard in the hand of a person standing on the road and the low-key lit, unsaturated colours of the panel showing city are two big evidence of it for us which are presented to the reader as soon as he enters in the world of this book. This city plumbed the dark obsessive and brutally tortured psyche of Batman and found a counterpart to that troubled mind in the rotting, doomed city of Gotham. Batman is vanished in the last 10 years and lack of upkeep and unbridled development have transformed the city into a smoggy, dingy dystopia barely fit for human habitation, the crime rate is increasing day by day and criminals have no fear of any law or institution. Frank Miller’s Gotham City reflects the 1980s fear of rising crime and industrial blight parallel to new york city. The vivid representation of the very city by Miller pulls it closer to reality and force reader more to resonate and relate with the city and also through the very humanly depiction of Batman throughout the narrative from instances such as showing the ageing Batman struggling to fight in hand to hand combat with the mutant leader, showing concern and care for the Carrie Kelly aka Robin as she is just a teen kid from the very first meeting of them and passing on his legacy at the final page to the Sons of Batman as he knew he is getting older& incapable of facing massive threats with every passing day.
The Gotham city can’t be described by its infrastructure, but by the events, people, and minds of its inhabitants. The reader can clearly witness the tussle for power and authority in the storyline, as the story progresses it becomes a tale of ideologies and how our perception of right and wrong, justice and retribution all ultimately decide our role in society. Even after getting plastic surgery, Harvey Dent doesn’t remove his bandages from his face but wears them as a metaphor that he indeed has two faces, he wants to terrorise the city. Resembling the dual nature of the city itself which is double-faced. The mutant leader portrays himself as he is the law of the city in the dialogue where he addresses Batman and the police Commissioner Gordon, Joker thinks of himself as the alter ego of Batman and always works only to cause trouble to Batman and his declining reputation, he only comes alive when the news of Batman sighting flashes on tv in Arkham asylum, we can witness a beaming ear to ear smile on his face at that time because joker only exists when batman exists, Batman gives reason and motivation to the joker to act and cause chaos, his only purpose is the failure of Batman which can be understood by the fact that he was dormant for years and locked in Arkham Asylum in almost a comatose state. The city is so much in chaos that the chaos is becoming the new order in the city, this forces Batman to return to his role of the caped crusader, and the city itself is pushing Batman to take off the mask of Bruce Wayne and return home. Gotham City is almost the synonym of the superhero who serves it, the city is so deep into crime and corruption that it needed an extralegal solution to perform its daily functions, batman represents the collapse of the legal system as no city with fully functional civic institutions can give birth to a vigilante hero like him.
THE DKR deals with multiple power structures within its narrative, in Altuser’s words they are of both kinds; the Repressive State Apparatuses and the Ideological State Apparatuses, which are constantly asserting their force on the city with all of their potential at all times. All the villains and in fact, the heroes can be labelled as RSAs as they are using brute force in Arkham City to establish what they are aiming for, along with governmental power monopolization with the help of Superman, which interestingly reflects the contemporary time’s US Government and its controversial power politics in the leadership of Ronald Regan and Gotham media are clearly the ISA her, in fact, they are giving tv appearance to the villains as well to establish direct one on one communication with masses, serving all kinds of ideologies directly into the dinner plate of the Gotham people and letting them decide what they favour. The police department itself is torn between the different ideologies as the current commissioner, Gordon supports Batman and its Vigilante justice but the newly appointed commissioner, Ellen Yindel wants to put Batman behind the bars for his extrajudicial actions. Even on the ground force, we witness the same during the first sighting of Batman where he chases down the robber and cripples them, the senior officer just wants to stay back and let Batman do his work while the junior officer jumps into the action to settle the scenario within the legal parameters.
During the plot, we witness different stances on Batman’s role as a hero or a psychopathic vigilante who just wants to take over the law and doesn’t believe in due process, which is evident by the very first sighting of him in the comic, he doesn’t hand over the criminals to the police department. Still, he uses the force against them by himself to neutralize them, again when the mutant gang kidnaps the baby and again when he confronts Harvey Dent and this keeps on repeating throughout the plot. Dr Bartholomew Wolper, a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum is one of the most prominent critics who bash Batman’s vigilantism on the other hand we also have Lana Lang, who is one of Batman’s most prominent supporters and is in favour of Batman’s deeds. There is a Peppi Spandeck, a devout Catholic who doesn’t approve of Batman, while Arnold Crimp is a character wrongly influenced by Batman who murders three people. As stated above the story becomes a tale of ideologies, a tussle between the perception of right and wrong, justice and retribution, as the same people who were once used to be the Mutant gang later becomes Sons of Batman and the very fact that vigilante justice is competing with the due process.
As a result of Frank Miller’s creative vision, Batman has been reimagined and created in a way that is entirely opposite to how it had been portrayed in the campy 1960s TV series. A noir hero who is standing in an appropriately gothic city, a city of graveyards and gargoyles, alleys and asylums, who is facing the most egregious villains with no morals but he has his own flaws and battles within, he operates in nights defying the laws of the city with his extra-legal ways to tackle the villains which establishes him as an anti-hero who is ageing but still full of bravery and desire to seek the truth with the strong moral system. Although he lacks any superpower like Superman but he falls perfectly into Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch or superior man,
Batman makes a significant psychological impact on Bruce Wayne’s psyche in the first three books of The Dark Knight Returns. For instance, Alfred finds Brucesleepwalking in the Batcave, and they are both shocked to learn that Bruce has unintentionally shaved his moustache. It is also evident that Bruce was unintentionally watching The Mask of Zorro, the movie he saw with his parents on the night they were killed while watching late-night television. His mind is overtaken by the horrifying pictures of his parents’ murder. The anger grows even more potent when he switches channels. Finally, he witnesses Batman screaming out to him “The time has come. You know it in your soul. For I am your soul…You cannot escape me. You are puny, you are small – You are nothing – A hollow shell, a rusty trap that cannot hold me – Smoldering, I burn you – burning you, I flare, hot and bright and fierce and beautiful – You cannot stop me – not with wine or vows of the weight of age”. This shows that Miller didn’t just give Bruce Wayne a costume to call him Batman but he forged a mask for Batman as Bruce Wayne, a beast that Bruce has to control. It is abundantly evident that Batman is the antithesis of Superman. When the Dark Knight beats Superman in the decisive battle of The Dark Knight Returns Book Four.
“You sold us out, Clark,” he says. “You gave them – the power – that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you. My parents…taught me a different lesson…lying on this street shaking in deep shock…dying for no reason at all – they showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to”. Miller’s Dark Knight arc’s exploration of this trauma is fascinating. Eventually, rage and wrath are turned from street criminality onto social (and global) injustice. Battling criminals with raw force may have been a useful way for Batman to deal with trauma when he was younger, but it is less so now that he is older. He is, at least for a crimefighter, a little fat, clearly slower, and not in his best physical shape. Batman makes age-related remarks frequently. He must rest his breath while evading the police, he is constantly hit by gunshots, and he experiences heart palpitations all the time. Also, he is fighting with the multiple conflicting ideologies within himself as when he meets Harvey Dent aka Two faces he says “he sees the reflection of self”, he is most impacted by the Joker’s deed, and the thought bubbles of Batman and Joker appear grey in the third book of The Dark Knight Returns, which may indicate that Batman and Joker have become synonymous. Batman still has his moral compass and has convinced himself that he will not kill Joker but the Joker himself snapped his own neck and dies and just after that panel he is seen yelling at the Joker to stop smiling now when he is already dead, this explains the psychological impact Joker made on him and pushed him till the verge of going insane.