Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynne Varley recreated superhero comics with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, for DC Comics back in 1986, and it is still teaching lessons. Former Batman writer Scott Snyder who is teaching his own comic book lessons on Substack, writes on Twitter, "On Dark Knight Returns: I once had a writing teacher who told us, "the entirety of your story should be RIGHT THERE in your first sentence." I didn't believe this (and I don't still, though I do think the core of the book should be there by the end of the first scenes) BUT… Look at DKR:"
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns page 1 by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynne Varley
""I've got the home stretch all to myself when the readings stop making sense — I switch to manual." That's the whole f-cking book. Right there."
"Bruce is retired, has the home stretch all to himself, but Gotham isn't what he expected, nothing makes sense, so… he takes control. And becomes Batman again… AND, if you want to go up a thousand feet, this page is actually a bigger encapsulation of the whole story. Bruce takes control, wants to win, and in doing so, he ends up staring into the eye of the sun. In DC, who is the sun? Superman. This happens 3/4 of the way down the page"
"Which is when Bruce faces Superman in the macro sense, toward the end of the story. It would be a good death, but not good enough… And so he lives on." Indeed Scott, and just as at the end of the series, he bails out of his own funeral, at the last second.
Dark Knight Returns, still being taken apart and analysed in 2024. And Batman will be out of public domain in eleven years' time, before you all get to have your go with whatever is in those first episodes from Detective Comics #27 onwards.
Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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