Gotham is in a heat wave, and it has been ten years since the last sighting of the Batman. The car is enveloped in flame, but he escapes. Bruce Wayne is close to being a broken man but something is keeping him sane: the need to see change and the belief that he can orchestrate some of that change. The story of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns opens with Bruce Wayne, the famous million heir of Gotham, in a car race that ends in crash.
Where is a hero to save Gotham? It is 10 years since the last recorded sighting of the Batman. Lastly it's a great story: Gotham City is a hell on earth, street gangs roam but there are no heroes. Secondly the artwork is fantastic-detailed, sometimes claustrophobic, psychotic. Firstly it does keep the core elements of the Batman myth intact, with Robin, Alfred the butler, Commissioner Gordon, and the old roster of villains, present yet brilliantly subverted. The Dark Knight is a success on every level. Batman is a character known well beyond the confines of the comic world (as are his retinue) and so reinventing him, while keeping his limiting core essentials intact, was a huge task.Miller went far beyond the call of duty. The great Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, the arguably peerless Watchmen) argued that only someone of Miller's stature could have done this.
Batman represented all that was wrong in comics and Miller set himself a tough task taking on the camp crusader and turning this laughable, innocuous children's cartoon character into a hero for our times. If any comic has a claim to have truly reinvigorated the genre, then The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller-known also for his excellent Sin City series and his superb rendering of the blind superhero Daredevil-is probably the top contender.
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