The Dark Knight returns
"Together with inker Klaus Janson and colorist Lynn Varley, writer/artist Frank Miller completely reinvents the legend of Batman in his saga of a near-future Gotham City gone to rot, ten years after the Dark Knight's retirement. This masterpiece of modern comics storytelling, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, brings to vivid life a dark world and an even darker man. The Dark Knight returns in a blaze of fury, taking on a whole new generation of criminals and matching their level of violence. He is soon joined by a new Robin--a girl named Carrie Kelley, who proves to be just as invaluable as her predecessors. But can Batman and Robin deal with the threat posed by their deadliest enemies, after years of incarceration have made them into perfect psychopaths? And more important, can anyone survive the coming fallout from an undeclared war between the superpowers -- or the clash of what were once the world's greatest heroes? Celebrate thirty years of one of the most influential stories ever told in the comics medium with the undisputed classic BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, now with a new cover and introduction"
Stats for nerds
4recommend
13mentions
11people
2008–2026years
38% recommend62% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I'm sort of in the same boat with Frank Miller. I really liked The Dark Knight Returns because I thought it was a great deconstruction that showed the dark side of vigilantism and power fantasies visual references to Birth of a Nation and all that.
I was pretty of disappointed when I found out that Miller actually wasn't ironic. Thankfully there's plenty other comic writers I still enjoy.
- I liked Dark Knight Returns quite a bit and I've read it a few times but every time I get to the part with the woman with swastikas tattooed on her boobs I can't help but wonder what the point of that was.
Strikes Back was bad. Then Holy Terror came out and it was a xenophobic caricature. Since then I haven't had much interest in anything he's done. I did see a comment from him that seems to indicate he's walked back some of his extremist views but I've moved on.
- For much of grad school, "The Hitchhikers Guide" served that purpose. Same with some of the later Harry Potter books. And Bill Bryson's "A Brief History of Nearly Everything".
I also re-read the comics "Kingdom Come" and "The Dark Knight Returns" on a regular basis.
- Yes, thank you. His modern interpretation is, I think, fascinating. While I think Kingdom Come is the best treatment of this theme, I actually think Frank Miller got it perfectly in Dark Knight Returns:
"Twenty million die by fire... if I am weak..."
- Yes, it's supposedly inspired by Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, which are both excellent books. However, the letter shapes of those two books are closer to each other than they are to Comic Sans. It seems the font creator relied more on his intuition of how comic letters should look than on observation. There's a good comparison of the three fonts here:
- And I’m reminded of The Dark Knight Returns (1986) graphic novel. There are grotesque parodies of talking head news anchors and even a caricature of then-president Ronald Regan. Situation all fracked up.
