Sep 18th 1-2-3: The Timeless Tale - The Dark Knight Returns
Greetings, and welcome back ! As I have been working through all of the works of Hideo Kojima, I decided to switch it up a little bit.
Where I had initially planned to rail straight through all of the Metal Gear games, and their respective ‘BTS’ stories, I have decided to give you all a little break to talk about some other great pieces of art; and also to give myself more time for research!
So in today’s entry, I’ll be briefly covering a comic that has shaped a lot surrounding how I personally approach story telling, and playing with expectations.
So what’s the story behind Frank Miller’s, The Dark Knight Returns ?
1: The Story Behind The Story ( 4 minute read )
Frank Miller was born on January 27th, in 1957, within Olney, Maryland, U.S, though he spent most of his childhood growing up in Montpelier, Vermont.
Out of seven children that were born to his carpenter/electrician father, and his nurse mother, Frank was the fifth to be born.
He was a huge fan of the comics and cartoons of his time, more specifically he loved Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons, and was also an avid reader of both Marvel and DC comics.
All his childhood he dreamed of one day working within the comics industry, so he drew and wrote his very first comic and showed it to his mother declaring that this was what he would do for the rest of his life; and in the coming years he did just that.
He was reading, writing, and drawing a lot!
He even sent a letter to Marvel Comics that would later become published within one of their current running titles of that time!
After he had already received lessons, constructive criticism, and a recommendation from comic legend Neal Adams, then his first published comic was released.
Little did he know this would be the first step towards his destiny to bring a failing hero up from being a nobody, telling a timeless tale by way of bending the versatility of an already established icon, and flipping the entire comic industry on its head while doing so.
From a Childs Dream, to a Man’s Reality
After that, Frank did plenty of small, often times, uncredited work throughout the industry that slowly built up to one particular day where he was offered the chance to work on The Spectacular Spider-Man.
He was a consistent fill-in, cover artist who was working on one of the Marvel roster greats. But it wasn’t this Marvel roster great that held opportunity for Miller.
It was a rather unpopular blind hero that guest starred with Spider-Man, it was Daredevil.
Frank is cited saying that he saw potential in ‘a blind protagonist in a purely visual medium’, and he showed his interest in running Daredevil for himself to his then staffer Jo Duffy; then from Jo Duffy to editor-in-chief Jim Shooter.
When Jim agreed, Miller was officially the new penciller for Daredevil.
Now before I delve too deep into Miller’s Daredevil and get too ‘off track’ from the real topic of this entry, the most important thing to know about Miller’s Daredevil is that it introduced some really iconic characters and was incredibly popular for many reasons; it was his real big break into the upper echelon of the comics industry.
It was what lead him to the Caped Crusader.
Miller’s success with turning the publics perception on a then ‘low grade hero’ such as Daredevil caught the eye of more than just the public; it caught the eye of the executives at DC Comics who were in the market for a young, skilled, and creatively hungry individual to take a stab at Batman.
So when Miller was offered the chance of a lifetime, he obviously took it.
From Daredevil, to The Dark Knight
When Frank first began writing out what would become The Dark Knight Returns, he was quickly struck with the fact that due to Bruce Wayne’s age canonically, he was soon going to be older than Batman in real life; and that got him thinking.
As the writing continued, the fact regarding Batman's age also continued to weigh on him throughout the early writing process.
Then Miller hit a moment where he decided to take things into his own hands, and fix this issue by making Bruce Wayne older than him; and then the story really began to fall into place with a “Batman was at the impossibly old age of 50.”
A Batman story set in the future with an old Bruce. With most of the rogues gallery either in prison, a mental institution, dead, or fully repentant of their actions. A new Gotham City with the same old grime, crime, and political unrest was in place; with it a new gang was running the streets called the Mutant Gang.
He had most of the pieces in place, but he needed two more things.
The catalyst for Batman’s resurgence, and a Robin to go with him.
Now since he had decided to have this story take place sometime after the death of Bruce’s second Robin (Jason Todd), Miller had to figure out who would play this important role for this new direction he was taking Batman.
Frank has always believed that Robin ought to be the "Light" to Batman's "Dark", and when he was discussing his plans for The Dark Knight Returns with comic artist John Byrne, Byrne responded by recommending that Miller ought to make this Robin a young girl and even quickly sketched out what would later become Carrie Kelley’s Robin.
Thus, he now had his Robin.
When it came to Bruce’s catalyst, he decided to lean into the mythos of Gotham by illustrating to the reader how Gotham almost innately breeds its particular degenerate crime to illustrate how Gotham will always need a ‘Dark Knight’ to strike fear into all who require the hammer of justice to bring them to their knees.
He decided to tell a story about an older, wiser, but in a lot of ways much more cynical Bruce Wayne who is realizing these facts of Gotham alongside the reader.
A story about this Older Bruce creating his final contingency plan for the future of Gotham, a future after he is long gone.
The Dark Knight Returns was an instant classic.
It flipped the whole comic scene on its head, alongside other titles of this relative time such as Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’, Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale’, or even DC’s ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez.
It was a wild time for comics in general, but in regards to The Dark Knight Returns, it was a landmark time for Frank Miller.
It took him from a wide eyed and bushy tailed child full of creativity and imagination, rightfully influenced and inspired by these heroic mythos, to a man who would later write his own chapters within these mythos, inspiring and influencing the children of tomorrow as he himself was inspired as a child of yesterday.
I think this quote from Peter Stone, of 13th Dimension, a ‘comic-centric’ news site, puts the impact of Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ simply yet accurately.
I can only imagine this was like when Neal Adams’ first Batman came out. It devastated everyone who read it. Frank did exactly what Neal had done: He had changed Batman forever.
The Dark Knight Returns shook the perceptions of readers back in the mid-80s when it was released, shook my perceptions in my teenage years in the mid-2010s, and continues to do so almost 15 years after that.
Throughout these almost forty years since its initially release it's still being discovered by new readers, and growing their love and appreciation for the medium as well a Batman as a whole; and its influence in story telling in comics is clearly felt to this day.
The Dark Knight Returns is truly timeless tale.
2: Creative Insights From Us
I. Frank stuck with what he was passionate about, but more importantly he was willing to work in whatever aspect he could, and over the years that amounted towards him getting an offer for a job that would put him cheek to cheek with a great opportunity. I believe there is plenty to learn from this archetype of a career path in a field that you are passionate about.
II. By carefully considering who the character he was working on was and, truly understanding in his heart, all the moving pieces that make up that character. Frank was able to deliberately add, subtract, and straight up subvert the expectations of who the reader believed that character to be; while still maintaining the suspension of belief surrounding the actual identity of the character. Batman and Daredevil were distinctly Batman and Daredevil, but they were also different; they were Frank Miller’s Batman and Daredevil.
3: Inspirational Quotes From Frank Miller
I. “My stuff always represents what I’m going through,” Miller says today. “Whenever I look at any of my work I can feel what my mindset was and I remember who I was with at the time.”
II. When asked why TDKR is ‘timeless’ Frank had this to say,
“Who doesn’t need a guy who’s tougher than the bad guys to rescue us when we’re in danger? The desire for a strong father figure, to go after the bad guys who are stronger than we we are, is irresistible, and always will be.”
III. “Superman is wonderfully simple: Exploding planet, superpowers, good guy. In Batman’s case, it’s a kid whose parents are murdered when he’s very young, and he has a lot of money, so he decides to dedicate his life and his fortune to making the world make sense.”
Thank you so much for reading!