Batman: The Dark Knight

by Frank Miller with Klaus Janson and

Lynn Varley

Published monthly by DC Comics;

$2.95

THE CITY sits terrified, smothered under the heat like a hostage; a city of victims. It's a filthy zoo where the animals have two legs and the media is the kids outside, squealing and giggling at the vicious capering of the beasts: "Woman explodes in subway station, film at eleven." The people are numb and helpless, the police impotent, the scum of the earth triumphant. The city desperately needs a hero, a savior--but the Batman vanished years ago.

After defeating the Penguin, the Joker, and the Riddler, Batman fell to his most powerful, insidious enemy: Lorenzo Semple Jr., the Television Script Writer. Semple was responsible for the TV series Batman, which demoted the Caped Crusader to Campy Clown. Fans of the printed page Batman protested the desecration of their hero, but the cries of outrage were lost amid the nation's giggles.

And for many years ther was a grim silence, as Adam West and Burt Ward went on to open shopping malls and Batman Comic fans grimly hid their books behind issues of Spiderman. There was no hope in Gotham.

And then came Frank Miller, the savior of saviors.

Miller showed up at the doorstep of Marvel Comics in New York in 1979, a twenty-one-year-old kid carrying nothing but his portfolio and a vague smell of the Vermont woods. He was put to work drawing Daredevil, a relatively minor Marvel book chronicling the glitzy adventures of a blind superhero.

By 1980, Miller had taken over the writing as well, and Daredevil gradually became a phenomenon in the insular comic industry. He rejected the constant parade of outrageous costumed villains with apocalyptic visions and pitted Daredevil against an array of criminals, killers, and thieves whose wrongs were small, banal, realistic.

Matt Murdock (the blind lawyer who uses his secret "radar sense" to prowl the rooftops as DD) became a real character, a pathological vigilante with a conscience. Miller was questioning the superhero, the great convention of the comic book form: the citizen, gifted by fate, who selflessly puts on longjohns to fight evil. At least the villains use their laser-beam eyes for material gain--what do the heroes get out of it?

NOTHING MILLER produced after he left Daredevil in 1982 has acheived quite the same effect on the industry and its readers, even Ronin, his first original project for DC Comics. Any iconoclast is lost without a background of tradition to work with and assumptions to question. Thus comes Batman: The Dark Knight, his latest and best work, where he introduces one of the great heros of comics to his own brand of urban reality.

It's 10 years after Batman's retirement, and the world has gone to hell without him. Bruce Wayne, nearing 50, is bored and angry; he drinks, he curses, he gets grayer. The cowl was hung up for good when Robin came to some unspecified violent end in the service of his mentor. But the city is under seige by the brutal gang called the "Mutants," who "do murders" for kicks, and Commisioner Gordon, four weeks from 70, is being forced into retirement by petty bureauacrats.

There is only so much an excrimefighter can take. The utility belt clips in place, the cowl covers the gray hair: the Dark Knight Returns, striking terror into the hearts of--everyone.