Many students cannot remember the 1980s. When thinking of the decade, especially for those who weren’t born yet, thoughts of silly action movies, pop songs on MTV, arcade games and bad hairstyles come to mind. Of course, there was more to the 1980s than wine and cheap perfume. Richard McGee, owner of a comic book store near D.H. Hill, said it may be easy to overlook the fact that across the United States, a sense of fear found its place at the forefront of many college students’ minds. Few comic books capture the sense of fear and foreboding so prevalent in the 1980s quite as perfectly as Watchmen by Alan Moore and in particular The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
These two comic books have had such a great influence that many who do not consider themselves well-versed in comic book history have at least heard a little about The Dark Knight Returns. McGee said that it continues to sell in respectable numbers even after more than 25 years. Few comic books can boast about such a lasting impact.
Building upon the legacy of The Dark Knight Returns, DC Comics released the first part of an animated adaptation of the comic book Sept. 25. However, the question remains whether newer comic fans have been able to receive the animated feature and the comic on which it was based with as much reverence as seasoned comic book readers can.
“The Dark Knight Returns really spoke to the time, to a more adult comic book fan,” McGee said. “[During the 1980s] there was a real sense of ‘we are very close to nuclear war,’ ‘we are very close to the end of the world as we know it,’ and people woke up with that thought every day and with the feeling that your life was not in your hands.”
In response to these feelings, McGee said college campuses were filled with activism and political rallies. McGee, who attended a university “down the street” during the early 1980s, said he remembered shanty-towns rising up from communal areas around campuses to raise awareness of problems around the world such as the apartheid conditions in South Africa. Students would also protest growing nuclear arsenals.
In this environment, The Dark Knight Returns really took off, McGee said. The apocalyptic setting of the comic resonated with politically-aware students around the U.S. and these students helped to change the direction of comics.
In the comic, a 55-year-old Bruce Wayne has grown bitter and retired from fighting crime as a caped crusader. However, as a dystopian Gotham City turns even more dark and twisted, Wayne finds himself drawn back into his crusade against evil.
Featuring an aging Ronald Reagan, corrupt cops, a retired Catwoman who manages prostitutes who dress up as characters such as Wonder Woman, a Superman reduced to a government stooge and a United States still involved in the Cold War, many students of the 1980s found they could relate to the Wayne Miller created, McGee said. This Wayne was a lone wolf, fighting against a world filled with evil.
“People have a lot of different terms for it, but during the ‘Iron Age’ or ‘Dark Age’ you had simultaneously very popular characters such as The Punisher, which was notable because he killed people,” McGee said, “and at the same time, you had a lot of comics that were very dark. Some were simply cynical but some were extremely pessimistic. The two big comics in the 1985-’86 era were Frank Miller’s deconstruction of Batman in a sort of apocalyptic future, The Dark Knight Returns, and Alan Moore’s Watchmen. And those both had huge impacts on how things were done.”
Introducing possibilities such as a female Robin and common themes that many Batman comic books have explored since such as, “Why the Batman doesn’t just kill Joker,” The Dark Knight Returns marks a turning in the evolution of Batman.
“[The Dark Knight Returns is] a redemption story … and people can talk about how dark it is all they want but it is a story about not giving up and about redemption,” McGee said. “It’s a very violent piece of work though, much more violent than most comics were in those days. When it came out, no one was expecting it to be a hit but it sold out so fast. It was the first comic that I can remember, although it isn’t the first one that did, ever going to second printings and then third printings of the first two issues because people kept coming to it.”
The story ranks in many commentators’ top ten Batman stories ever written. McGee said that it remains in his.
Read Technician’s review of the animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Part 1 online. The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 is scheduled to for release Jan. 29.
