Dark Knight Returns

Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.

This is one of the first graphic novels I read. I read it in High School, about ten years ago. Today I read it for the first time since then. It was interesting seeing how much denser it is than most comics nowadays. It took me over three hours, which is about double what it would take to read the same number of Walking Dead pages. A lot of the pages are full of panels, there are very few splash pages, no double splashes and almost every panel has writing in it. I love to see narration during fighting sequences (something not done much since) and this book has great narration from Batman whenever he is fighting. It is so cool to see what he thinks and I also enjoy that the narration is sometimes repetitive, such as "Lucky old man". Being repetitive makes sense, because that is how we talk and think.

The first time I read this book I really enjoyed the fight between Batman and Superman. This time, I feel like I enjoyed many other things. I like how it uses news channels to give us the information about what shape the world is in. I like how crazy the Joker is, I like how each issue has a different menace, but it all seems natural, as part of a bigger story. I like how there is constant debate over whether Batman is a good thing.

The beginning of this comic is very strange, as the mutants are weird villains, however, by the second issue I got into the comic, once the new Robin was introduced and the subplots were starting to form.

This is a great comic, worthy of the praise it gets.