His stint on DAREDEVIL, first as penciler and then ultimately writer/artist had redefined that character and his world, in a way that, even now, decades later, contemporary creative teams tend to return to his material as the wellspring of their own stories. This book, and the 1989 film that took some of its cues from it, was really the point at which that pendulum shifted on a more permanent basis and the Dark Knight overwhelmed the Man of Steel in popularity.Īpart from maybe John Byrne, there was no hotter or more popular creator in comic books in 1986 than Frank Miller. In Jules Feiffer terms, I was a Superman kid rather than a Batman kid–in those days most kids tended to lean in Superman’s direction. If I was going to become a super hero, I was going to need an edge, an accident to give me super-powers or a magic ring or something. I was simply too doughy and bad at anything physical. Some of that is simply the function of wish-fulfillment: I knew, even as a young kid, that I had no chance of ever being Batman. I would have been 19 years old in 1986 when this first issue of BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS came out, and while I had been a comic book reader for more than a decade at that point, and enjoyed a bevy of Batman stories over the years, the character never completely grabbed me.

What I can bring to the table is some personal perspective.

This is, I think, one of the most discussed comic book stories of all time, so I don’t know that I’m going to have a whole lot that’s new to add to the conversation.

Alan moore the dark knight