December 10, 2004 - In the course in "Comics as Literature" that I teach at New York University, I intend to deal with a different list of works each semester. But I have decided that in each semester three of the slots will go to works by Frank Miller, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. In The New Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Stories (which I began reviewing in last week's column), editor Bob Callahan likewise includes examples of the works of all three. Indeed, he picks selections from three of the towering works in recent comics history: the first half of the first issue of Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, an issue of Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, and an issue of Gaiman's Sandman. In previous installments of this column, I've extensively written about Miller's recent sequel to Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again (see "Comics in Context" #30, 31, 33) and Gaiman's recent eleventh volume of the Sandman canon, Sandman: Endless Nights (see "Comics in Context" #17). I'm grateful that reviewing the Smithsonian's new collection of contemporary comics presents me with this opportunity to write about the original Dark Knight and Sandman, and Watchmen as well, all of which I've been dealing with at NYU this fall. Also, with the immense popularity of Pixar's The Incredibles (see "Comics in Context" #62, 63), it's a pleasure to take a look at two classic works – Dark Knight and Watchmen – from which that movie derived its theme of the middle-aged superhero returning to action in a time when a conformist society has branded superheroes as outlaws.

THE BAT WITHIN

When The Dark Knight Returns opens, Bruce Wayne has been retired from his role as Batman for exactly ten years. The text contradicts itself as to how old he is at this point. We are told that it is forty years since the eight-year-old Bruce Wayne witnessed the murder of his parents: that would make him forty-eight. A television commentator speculates that Batman would be pushing sixty. In the final issue of the series a television reporter states that Wayne was fifty-five.

One might assume that Dark Knight depicts a possible future for Bruce Wayne, but Ronald Reagan is portrayed as the President, and the parents of teenager Carrie Kelly, who becomes the new Robin, clearly grew up in the Sixties. So Dark Knight Returns appears to be set in the period when it was first published, the mid-1980s. (Miller's recent sequel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, states that it takes place two years after the original series. Computer technology has advanced, and events in the new series echo the 9/11 attacks, but the sequel is not tied to any specific point in real history.)

It would seem, then, that Miller has allowed Bruce Wayne to age, not from the point of the character's first published appearance in 1939, but from the period at which Baby Boomers like himself would have first encountered Batman's adventures.

We first see the Bruce Wayne in Dark Knight Returns pursuing his current hobby: driving in auto races. This suggests that he still has an urge for adventure, but also to a possible death wish. Wayne's car catches fire, and he tells himself, "This would be a good death. . .but not good enough." A TV commentator significantly states it would have been "a flaming coffin for Bruce Wayne" had he not bailed out in time.

The auto racing might signal that, having abandoned his life's mission as Batman, Wayne is pursuing a self-destructive course in life. Without Batman, Wayne's life appears empty of purpose. Steve Englehart portrayed Bruce Wayne not in his traditional pose as useless playboy, but as an active corporate leader who, as Englehart put it, ruled Gotham City by day as the Batman did at night. But in the opening of Dark Knight Returns, this Bruce Wayne seems to have nothing to do in life besides racing cars.

In this opening sequence Miller introduces his device of tiny panels representing TV screens, whose commentators and interviewees, like the chorus of ancient Greek plays, provide a running commentary on the events of the story. In the late 1930s and early 1940s Batman and other superheroes were "mystery men," operating in the shadows. In contrast, the Batman of Dark Knight Returns exists in a media-saturated age, in which his existence cannot be kept secret. Miller's depiction of a world under constant scrutiny by the news media seems even more relevant today, in the age of the Internet and 24/7 cable news networks.

Next, as Miller displays a Gotham City landscape, he shows us TV weathermen commenting on the heat wave afflicting the city "with no relief in sight." This is a metaphor with precedents going back to Shakespeare. The weather symbolizes the state of the city, as, in Batman's absence, criminal violence mounts. The heat wave also symbolizes the psychological state of the story's hero. As the story will show, Bruce Wayne is like a human pressure cooker, consciously repressing his urge to become Batman again to battle this new crime wave. The internal pressure in his psyche is continuing to build.

The heat wave also suggests that the city and Wayne are also running a fever: they are both sick.