A Bat Out of Hell

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.

The world has changed in 10 years and so has Bats. No more Mister Quiet Nobility: he snaps bones with a grin and snarls with happy rage as he maims the scum of Gotham. "He never used to make noise," whimpers one doomed wrongdoer. "Welcome to Hell," replies the Caped Crusader.

This Batman does not joke. This Batman does not have bat-devices for every conceivable need--he carries pain killers and ampules of nerve gas. He is vicious, self-destructive, haunted by the memory of the murder of his parents--the source of his vengeful inspiration.

And this Batman is not welcomed by a grateful populace. "Think of the noise that came from what Bernie Goetz did," Miller told Los Angeles Times, "and imagine if there was a very powerful, terrifying figure doing that on a regular basis." Television screens stream across the pages of The Dark Knight, constantly reporting--and creating--the public reaction to Batman's sensationally violent exploits.

The "Council of Mothers" wants him arrested, a pop-psychiatrist explains his dangerous effect on the maladjusted in a televised debate with Lois Lane, "managing editor of the Daily Planet." And man-on-the-street interviews: "Batman? Yeah, I think he's okay. Hope he goes after the homos next."

The Dark Knight, printed in a 45-page format on heavy paper, is intended to be a cross-over work, to break out of the adolescent market and into the big-time of popular adult fiction. It might even, in a medium stretch of the imagination, be called literature.

The clever, literate, elliptical writing is the best in comics today. The art is a departure from the flat, lurid drawing associated with comics ever since Roy Lichtenstein made his fortune with it; Miller uses shadows and suggestions to conceal the absurd aspects of his medium--we all saw how silly a man really looks in a Batman suit--and inventive panel arrangement to exploit its strengths. Klaus Janson's inking adds depth to the art, and the coloring, by Lynn Varley, is subtle and effective.

A good comic book is like all the best shots from an impossibly exciting film, arranged in a way that leads the eye from text to scene to text again. Perhaps comics are doomed forever to the same fantastic subject matter, as it is essentially an unrealistic form. Life is never as well designed as in the comics, the shadows never fall in the right place for dramatic effect, and you never have the chance to narrate your own exploits in polished prose.

But Frank Miller is a master of this peculiar form and has achieved greatness. The Dark Knight is a meditation on comics themselves and the heros that populate them. Is Batman a sociopath? Is Superman a facsist? It may revolutionize the industry.

And if you don't like thinking about such things, it's also a rip-snortin' adventure; I suspect the Joker is coming back in the next issue and I can't wait. Holy Breakthrough, Batman, I think it's art.