"NARRATOR". Upon the 20th anniversary of the publication of The Dark Knight Returns...
...DC Comics celebrated the book with the release of the Absolute edition.
In the opening pages was an introduction written by the author himself...
...Frank Miller.
MILLER: When I first, um, came into the field of comic books...
...I was a kid from Vermont. I was 17 years old.
I moved to New York City. The very generous Neal Adams...
...was happy to tell me I didn't have a prayer of getting anywhere in comics.
But I kept coming back and so he finally got me my first job.
Editor after editor would tell me the same thing:
"Why are you doing this?"
We'll be out of business in five years.
"There will be no comic books."
That was the conventional wisdom of the time.
[TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING]
USLAN: I think Frank's reference to comics being irrelevant...
...was because, well, they were irrelevant to adults.
They were probably irrelevant to society as a whole.
O'NEIL: In one of the low points, comics seemed to be...
...a roller-coaster.
And there have been, at least twice since I've been doing this...
...when, you know, I was betting they wouldn't survive another 10 years.
GOODMAN: They weren't a venue for deep-layered literary conversation...
...for rich characters.
At most, they were sort of looked at as, uh, an argument between...
...whether they were just sort of colorful icons...
...or capturing something important about adolescent angst.
But that was kind of the extent of it.
Even with Batman, a lot of comics and a lot of comic book, uh, stories...
...were very, uh, unrealistic and fantasy, almost bordering on sci-fi.
TIMM: They'd been gradually getting a little bit more sophisticated.
Comic book fans from, like, the '50s and '60s and even the '70s...
...had all graduated or grown up and they've kind of brought their comics with them.
Competition was coming along, you know...
...as movies began to be able to do better special effects.
That was some new competition out there.
And the comics were not evolving and growing.
[THUNDER RUMBLING]
TIMM: So Denny O'Neil as a writer, Neal Adams as artist...
...helped introduce the world back to the original dark and serious Batman...
...to help overcome it.
Well, that was great into the '70s.
And that did help open the door to older readers.
MORRISON: We'd seen a great floundering of talent in comics in the '70s.
We'd seen characters being taken into directions no one could have imagined...
...and dealing with subject matter that had been impossible prior to that time.
But suddenly after around 1978 or even after the bicentennial in America...
...there was a big shift towards much more escapist material.
And, unfortunately, in the comics that meant...
...for a kind of bland recycling of the cliches that had existed prior to this...
...you know, fantastic invasion of the counter-culture in the '70s.
And between 1979 and '82, I didn't look at any comics at all.
CARLIN: Obviously, the comic book companies did not want that to happen.
And at Marvel Comics in the early '80s, there was kind of a resurgence.
And, uh, Frank was a big part of that.
So they got their act together...
...and DC then was suddenly finding that they needed to be competitive again.
USLAN: The first huge change took place for me in 1978...
...when probably the greatest graphic storyteller in the history of comics...
...Will Eisner, introduced the graphic novel.
His first graphic novel, A Contract with God...
...shattered all of our visions...
...of what a comic book was and what a comic book could be.
MORRISON: I've always likened it to the auteur era in Hollywood...
...where you had Scorsese and Altman and Coppola and those people coming through.
And the type of cinema they did was very much like...
...this anti-establishment vein of comic books that was going on at the same time.
MILLER: It left a way for people like me and Alan Moore to play to that audience.
To, um, do stories...
...that were beyond the understanding of an 8-year-old.
To me and to many other artists...
...it gave us the sense that what we could do would be permanent...
...and not ephemeral.
Not a monthly, um, pamphlet...
...that would come and go and be forgot.
And I remember reading that and saying, "This is what I want to do."
I want to have a shelf of work that exists forever."
"NARRATOR". Jenette Kahn, a New York publisher of a popular children's magazine...
...was tapped as the next leader of DC Comics.
Because of her dynamic energy and her ability to see the world of comics...
...as a place where incredible growth can transpire...
...she was willing to take the risk and lure the best talent possible...
...to help stabilize the fledgling business.
KAHN: I always believed that we would never succeed as a comic company.
Never grow, never reach the heights that we were finally able to...
...unless we took risk.
And, uh, it was one of my maxims at DC...
...that perhaps you've heard from other people, but unless we were writing off...
...a certain amount of material every year, we weren't doing our job.
Because when you risk, you're going to also risk failure, and that comes with the territory.
You just hope that you have enough successes to far outweigh those failures you had.
But you need failure. If you don't have those failures...
...then you really aren't taking the risks that will propel you into new territory.
She and Dick Giordano who she was working with...
...were very interested in the idea of new formats in expanding comics out.
KAHN: I always believed that comics were an art form...
...an art form clearly tied with commerce...
...but that, uh, they weren't just as they were as I had known them growing up...
...a disposable medium for kids.
Part of the inspiration was that I had looked with a great deal of envy...
...at the French albums that were being published.
They were published on beautiful paper, incredible art.
And seemed to be, uh, incredibly smart.
They could tell any kind of story.
They could tell very sophisticated adult stories that touched on serious subject matter...
...at the same time that they entertained.
I thought that there were a lot of things in those comics that we could adopt...
...if we could only figure out the economics.
"NARRATOR". Jenette Kahn knew that DC Comics was ready to produce...
...a more sophisticated book...
...a mature storyline for a hungry audience.
This was the approach Marvel took with Daredevil in hiring Frank Miller.
DC Comics wanted a piece of that action.
Frank Miller had been doing, um, some really interesting stuff over at Marvel with Daredevil.
Urn, it kind of started off kind of as a standard superhero comic strip with interesting visuals.
But over time it got a bit darker and more mature.
I had been doing Daredevil, you know, prior to Frank coming on board.
When Frank came on he was, uh, you know, this kid, this skinny kid from Vermont...
...who, uh, really nobody, uh, had any high expectations for.
We went through a lot of changes through those three years.
You know, Frank started out, uh, penciling and not writing.
O'NEIL: He was in that place that guys get when they are absorbing everything.
Those that I think eventually hit the ball out of the park...
...look at everything and look at it closely.
And then spend a lot of time sitting at the drawing board.
JANSON: That evolution, uh, garnered and created...
...a great deal of trust between the two of us.
I'm very proud of the work we've done on Daredevil.
"NARRATOR". The DC executives kept their finger on the pulse of the comics industry.
They learned of the success of Frank Miller at Marvel.
Miller was the perfect combined example of writer and artist...
...that Jenette knew she had to entice over to the DC side.
Although comic book writers and artists migrate back and forth from DC to Marvel...
...the intentional luring of a client was something yet to be seen.
But desperate times called for a new perspective.
If DC was to survive, it needed to find the perfect writer-and-artist team...
...that could catapult the company forward.
KAHN: He was absolutely pushing the envelope.
But I felt we needed an injection of that at DC. And I asked Frank to lunch.
In those days there was a Warner dining room in New York...
...and we went to lunch and I said to Frank:
"Tell me what you most of all would want to do in comics.
Whatever it is, I will try to make it happen."
Jenette and I, um, had several conversations...
...but one of them was particularly long.
It might have been as long as three hours.
Um, and she and Joe Orlando...
...um, who was one of the editors at the time...
...um, had asked me what I wanted most.
And I said "freedom."
I also made an issue of copyright.
Had Frank tried to do that 10 years earlier...
...I'm not sure the door would've been open for him.
But at that point, comics were undergoing...
...a kind of content of revolution.
Creators had no share in their creations.
And there were no royalties, there were no reprint payments.
You didn't even get your artwork back.
And all of these seemed like just terrible inequities.
So the very first thing I wanted to do when I came to DC was to change that landscape...
...and to assure creators, and assure them in writing...
...that they would, in fact, have a share in all the things that they created.
Janette was...
...a captivating conversationalist.
And they were willing to take a chance on giving me complete freedom.
And, um, I used it to my best advantage.
KAHN: Frank said, "Well, I have this idea about a ronin."
And I actually am a huge aficionado and devotee of samurai movies.
So I said, "Oh, a ronin, of course. What a great idea."
So we're talking about the ronin and he's laying it out for me...
...and he said, "I want to do this on really high-end, beautiful paper, glossy stock."
I don't want to do traditional color separations. I want Lynn Varley to do the painting."
And I said, "Let me see. Let me see if this is possible."
I came back from the lunch and I talked to Paul Levitz...
...who, uh, was one of my tremendous allies at DC.
And also we talked to Bob Rozakis and he said, "Let's try to figure this out."
O'NEIL: Frank was clearly on his way up.
And I think he had enough ambition to see where the main chances were.
I would love to have a pint of his blood put into my arm...
...so I could have just a pint's worth of, uh, that kind of realism...
...about, you know, how the business works...
...and how you keep from starving.
NARRATOR: Ronin would become Frank Miller's first creator-owned project for DC Comics.
It was his entrance into the world of DC...
...and a new era where he would be given artistic freedom.
CARLIN: Ronin, which was like this really crazy, science-fiction extravaganza thing...
...it was definitely a lot more mature, more adult.
"NARRATOR". It was a striking read for the fans...
...and something that felt like a novel.
I had done a 13-issue run on Daredevil.
Which, really, is structurally a novel.
It's an unplanned one.
But when I did Ronin...
...I was deliberately after a novel structure.
"NARRATOR". This was a raw comic book without pages of advertisements...
...presented in a way that only fans could have dreamed of at the time.
MILLER: Later, Dick Giordano, um, God rest him...
...he approached me and he said:
"Do you want to take a crack at Batman?"
[TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING]
Well, at first I was scared shitless...
...because Batman struck me as one of the icons.
One of the sort of the triad of really big characters.
There's Superman, there's Batman, there's Wonder Woman.
And I thought, "What can I offer?"
What can I possibly offer...
"...that Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams didn't already do?"
I was walking through the hallways at DC...
...and Dick Giordano just asked me, "Frank is working on a Batman project...
...and he wants to know if you'd like to ink it."
Which, obviously, jumped at. I mean, there was really, you know, no hesitation.
No deep thinking involved.
CARLIN: DC was really... They were pulling out all the stops.
And I wouldn't say it was "anything goes" kind of universe...
...but it was an "anything goes" kind of universe...
...if you were a certain level of creator.
And Frank, clearly, was top of the field at the time.
KAHN: I believed in Frank.
And I believed that he needed the freedom.
If we'd tried to curtail him, if we'd over-edited him...
...uh, we would not get the kind of discovery that we thought we would get with Frank.
MORRISON: That was the genius of it, to be given a character that iconic.
And for management to understand that he was the right creator...
...and for Frank to understand these are the right people for me to do this, to comics.
Because if you can transform Batman in everyone's head...
...then you can transform everything.
MILLER: Right behind you, um, there's everything from Joe Kubert to Milton Caniff...
...on my shelf there.
And, um, to me, it's a treasure library.
And the idea of comic books being something temporary...
...uh, is part of what held us back.
USLAN: Frank took a hard look at superheroes.
And if you're going to do that...
...and try to convince the world they could be real...
...and get into the grittiness...
...and get into the psychological motivations of what they do...
...how they do it, how they could possibly operate in a real world...
...you better first be talking about somebody who has no super-powers.
And Batman fits that bill to a
When I sat down to start Dark Knight...
...one of the things that had bothered me most...
...was how insular and closed in the world of comics was.
It had nothing to do with the rest of the world.
And I was wondering what would make Batman...
...genuinely relevant.
And I looked out the window.
It was the Reagan era, um...
...the city was in near chaos.
And I thought that's what we need...
...is a gigantic father figure to straighten things out.
KAHN: Some of the stories that affect us most of all...
...are the ones that have some rooting in reality.
And certainly those that shine a light...
...on us as human beings and on our society...
...on our mores and on our foibles.
O'NEIL: Nothing should be off-limits.
There shouldn't be any topic that a comic book can't treat...
...because it's a comic book.
So Frank walked into a situation...
...where he had the freedom to explore those things...
...and I sure as hell wasn't gonna get in his way.
JANSON: It was Frank's ability to take, you know, something...
...and comment on it, uh, sociologically...
Um, even if it was in a negative way or was spotlighted in a negative way.
...And yet still engender a certain amount of, uh, sympathy and compassion...
...for the characters that had to live through that period of time.
O'NEIL: In some ways as much in awe of it as everybody else.
And another artist, writer, could have come into that same situation...
...and not accomplished what Frank did.
You have to have the talent, you have to have the devotion...
...and the determination.
"NARRATOR". Like a cultural anthropologist...
...Frank Miller showed us a gritty side to the world of Batman...
...and how extreme criminal situations require extreme heroic action.
MILLER: Think of Batman as a large jewel.
You can throw it against the wall, you can throw it against the floor...
...you throw it against the ceiling, it's not gonna break.
Every way you wanna treat Batman is gonna work.
From that old Adam West TV show...
...through to Neal Adams' takes, through to mine...
...and through many others...
...he always works.
Since I have, um, an innate love of mythology...
...I was just drawn very naturally to make him a mythic figure.
USLAN: You might say that superheroes, the initial feeling was...
...well, they're really too juvenile and too silly to be dealt with...
...in the format of a graphic novel.
We just need something heady, something of thematic importance.
And superheroes certainly just wouldn't fill that bill.
But there's no denying if you're talking about the comic book...
...that the heart and soul of the comic book is the superhero.
Better or worse, like it or not, it is.
And that meant it was up to Frank, as well as Alan Moore in Watchmen...
...to tackle that subject matter, to find a way to deconstruct the superhero...
...and present it in a way that put it in a very, very different light.
MORRISON: One of the great things that it did was to be a complete work.
Because before that, most Batman stories had been part of an ongoing canon.
You know, you couldn't really tell the final story.
But for Frank Miller to say, "Let's do the ultimate, definitive Batman story..."
"...that will be read forever, so we'll ha... Every beat will..." You know, and it's...
Even today, you can see people have learned that trick now...
...about taking the character...
...and make sure we get every single ounce of juice out of that character.
"NARRATOR". A comic book that reads like a novel...
...is precisely what became the Frank Miller signature trademark.
But it was the work of The Dark Knight Returns...
...that launched this technique into the world of a pure, mythological status.
GOODMAN: When Dark Knight Returns came out, uh...
...I was already kind of at an early adulthood age...
...where comic books were kind of a thing of the past.
But I was hearing from friends that you have to look at this book.
And this is something that isn't just... That our age group can be reading this.
Even then, it was something inspirational for us.
This is really grown-up writing. This is something as complex, uh...
...as a real literally work.
It had all these different layers that you could be reading it on.
It's about, you know, interesting characters...
...and Bruce Wayne and Batman handled as a real character.
There wasn't a focus in comic books before this...
...in really treating these individuals as real people.
Um, and this book really changed everything after that, this and Watchmen.
MORRISON: It was easy to tell straight away that there was structure to this book...
...which felt unusual and gave it weight and depth.
And then you got the multiple voices and the multiple screens...
...and the multiple readings of the text.
Which, again, is definitely from Watchmen...
...which I kind of think only gives you the one reading, just "This is the clockwork."
You are in the clockwork, everything works.
The more you study it, the more beautifully and perfectly you see that it works.
But it's all to this end.
With Dark Knight, it's a lot more interpretation.
And as I say, there's a lot of voices.
"NARRATOR". One of the many novel writer techniques...
...is the inclusion of multiple points of view from which a story is told.
Often these narrators take a major role...
...and are dynamically changed throughout the chapters.
The Dark Knight Returns is no stranger to this type of writing...
...as we hear from Batman, Superman, Carrie Kelly...
...and Commissioner Gordon throughout the book.
I do think that Frank is himself a writer.
He would have been a novelist if he couldn't draw at all.
And maybe that would have been his way to get into film-making.
So I do think that he needed to feel the story as an actual story...
...for his own sake first.
GOODMAN: You can feel in Miller's take on Batman...
...the kind of DNA of the noir detective.
JANSON: Frank was very influenced by Dirty Harry...
...and detective and cops stories.
GOODMAN: The noir detective is somebody who claims the moral right...
...to do things that other people don't have the permission to do...
...and would stop other people from doing in the same story.
CARLIN: That's what Frank tends to like, the film noir stuff.
It's all tough guys, but they're still human...
...and they have weaknesses, and they have vulnerabilities.
And clearly the Batman in Dark Knight Returns is a guy who's got a lot of vulnerabilities.
GOODMAN: Also, of course, that the city as a dark, gritty character...
...the city as a morally corrupt world.
These are all things that Frank Miller loves...
...and come from the noir detective genre.
JANSON: There's absolutely no doubt...
...that one of the things that Frank and I really agreed upon...
...in both Daredevil and Dark Knight...
...was the use of the city, whether it was New York or Gotham...
...as a second or third character.
I think that probably was Will Eisner's influence.
I know that both of us were influenced by Will Eisner.
USLAN: Part of the advantage of this, I thought...
...was to give the whole superhero thing and the whole Batman thing...
...the perspective of a real in-the-street human being.
MILLER: Whoever Batman was...
...lived inside Bruce Wayne.
And...
But it was not Bruce Wayne.
It was a different creature that was bigger.
And the entire premise of Dark Knight sprang from that.
CARLIN: My interpretation of reading the book, it's like he's almost resentful...
...that he has to admit that he finally has some vulnerabilities.
Because he's not better than everybody else.
And he finds he needs to have help when he thought he didn't need to have help.
He finds that maybe stepping out of the spotlight as Batman...
...was the worst thing he could have ever done.
He had been retired and dissolute for 1O years...
...but because he was more than a man, it was his comeback.
USLAN: Bruce Wayne's big challenge is always losing his humanity...
...as he gets deeper and deeper into the world of Batman...
...which is a very, very dark world.
And sometimes there just is no room left for Bruce Wayne.
And it's Commissioner Gordon and, in this particular story, Carrie...
...that serve as anchors on that humanity.
NARRATOR: Carrie Kelley gave Bruce a way out.
Someone he could confide in as well as train.
A female was now in the role of Robin.
She was every bit as powerful as her predecessors.
And some say a female Robin was long overdue.
MILLER: It was funny because when I first started Dark Knight...
...there was gonna be no Robin.
I always thought the character was a nuisance.
And then I was on a cross-country plane flight with John Byrne.
And he said, "Do Robin, but make her a girl."
And I thought, "What if she is this plucky character...
...who doesn't belong in our world either?"
NARRATOR". Because of the treatments...
...Frank Miller created one of the more indelible characters...
...to tear through the pages of a Batman comic.
MORRISON: So I think we were all primed for it at the time...
...and we wanted to see these kind of radical reinventions.
And the idea of a female Robin was kind of long overdue.
It was a surprise it had never been done.
And in the '50s and '60s, we were trying to steer away from...
...you know, the potentially negative connotations...
...of Batman's living arrangements because of the Wertham trials.
So they had the opportunity then to introduce Batgirls and Batwomen...
...but there was never a female Robin.
"NARRATOR". Carrie Kelley was the obvious answer to a character...
...that was becoming outmoded.
As Robin, we had a new counterpoint to Batman...
...and one that put a fresh spin on the dynamic duo.
MILLER: There had to be a light, I guess, to show off the darkness.
Because he's all gray and black.
And, uh, she's all red and, you know, yellow and so on.
And, uh, also, I wanted to feature his age...
...by having someone who was so much younger.
It would make him as old he was.
As the series progressed, she became a richer and richer character.
And I really did fall in love.
"NARRATOR". The villains are equally as developed...
...similar to the style we are accustomed to in any great novel.
The four books taken as a series...
...show Batman having to sort of work his way through an escalation of villains.
MILLER: So much of writing heroic fiction...
...involves defining the heroes through other people.
And Batman is best, uh, described by his villains.
"NARRATOR". The villains were carefully selected.
Each had a unique menacing psychosis...
...all revealing shades of Batman's personality.
MILLER: I deliberately went from one to the next...
...so that...
You would see it first with Harvey Dent, you know, with Two-Face...
...that Batman was two people.
And then with the Joker.
That the Joker was his nemesis.
The Greeks would have a character...
...who was...
Who had hubris...
...who would then be menaced by Nemesis.
"NARRATOR". Although today, we take the Joker for granted...
...as Batman's greatest villain...
...there was a time when Miller's choice in making the character symbiotic to Batman...
...was seen as a decisively bold move.
Miller showed us just how connected the Joker was to Batman.
One could not survive without the other.
USLAN: Have you ever read a Civil War story or seen a Civil War movie...
...in which you have one soldier from the South...
...one soldier from the North killing each other on a battlefield...
...both Americans, dying in each other's arms?
I've seen those images, and they have always resonated with me.
I see the same image with Batman and the Joker.
USLAN: There is this real deep-seated...
I don't wanna say camaraderie. It's not camaraderie.
But I think they both have experienced the same hell.
JANSON: I just, you know, loved, uh, taking the Joker...
...to such an extreme place.
Um, and again, it's to Frank's credit and his writing that, uh, we were able to do that.
You know, there's no doubt, he's not a clown.
He's crazy. He's nuts. Uh, he's a psychopath.
Um, and that really is a lot different than the Joker that had been portrayed...
...you know, prior to Dark Knight.
The Joker is a demon.
But he has no reason to exist without there being a Batman.
And so as soon as Batman appears, the Joker reawakens like Lazarus.
"NARRATOR". Having the Joker become reliant upon Batman...
...opened up a new interpretation for the villain...
...and expanded on the work of Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson.
Here was a Joker that harkened back to the homicidal character in his early days...
...but with a deeper twist.
This Joker never wanted to be separated from Batman...
...even in death.
USLAN: I've always believed that the battle between Batman and the Joker is eternal.
I think they, or some form of Batman and the Joker...
...have been engaged in this personal one-on-one warfare...
...since the beginning of time, and will be doing this dance forever.
In many ways... This is the first time I've really thought of it in this way.
I've read Dark Knight a lot and I've thought about it a lot...
...but I really started to think about the structure and how it works...
...and the villains that he chose. Because it's not really...
He doesn't fight Killer Croc and the Penguin. It's very deliberate.
In the first book, he fights Two-Face.
And there's constant images of Batman coming face-to-face with the bat.
So that character's clearly used to set up everything that will happen in the book.
And then you have the Mutant Leader who kind of is set up once as Batman...
...and the second book is kind of Batman versus society, almost.
You know, and we're seeing as they start to understand that he's back...
...and he's up against the cops, and he's up against the government...
...and he's up against the media.
And so the Mutant Leader really represents all of that, I think, you know.
It... The fight takes place as a spectacle.
It's kind of like a wrestling match.
It becomes, like, it's Batman against the... Basically the entertainment monolith.
Batman against the people and subjugating the Mutant Leader...
...as monstrous, angry social force...
...and suddenly, okay, Batman has now tamed the city.
Now, in the third one, he's up against madness and the Joker...
...and set in, you know, candy colors and fairgrounds...
...and it accelerates to absolute horror.
And finally, he's up against, not only as a citizen...
...a nuclear winter is going on and he has to fight Superman.
And this is him against the elements, it's Batman ascending to myth.
"NARRATOR". Miller achieved the impossible.
He transformed Superman into the real enemy of the state...
...where he became part of the problem.
It was an unexpected emotion for the fans...
...to find themselves angry with Superman.
GOODMAN: When you think about this book back in its historical context...
...the idea of vilifying Superman was crazy.
And it was a new idea.
We're still hearing the ripplings of this argument...
...that "Oh, Batman's a better character than Superman"...
...or, you know, "Batman's, uh, the more interesting, the tougher character"...
...or the one with this sort of moral right that Superman doesn't have.
And that's all because of Miller convincing us of that argument in this book.
NARRATOR: Miller made Superman the lackey of President Reagan...
...and unpopular position for the comic book audience at large.
But this was the genius of Miller.
Always poking and prodding at society...
...challenging our allegiances.
MILLER: See, it always struck me as completely silly...
...that World's Finest Comics would have Batman and Superman as pals.
I mean, why would these two people like each other?
They're complete opposites.
I mean, that's like...
You just don't expect a crabby terrorist...
...to like a good soldier.
And so they don't really end up liking each other...
...so much as forming an alliance.
MORRISON: The portrayal of Superman is really contentious...
...but it worked so well within this doctrine of the book.
And it kind of is the ultimate...
Here's the new superhero taking on the old superhero.
Superman set against pastoral scenes and, you know, images of the American flag.
The first introduction of Superman is done as a dissolve...
...from the stars and stripes into the S on Superman's shield...
...so you get the feeling that we're in no doubt...
...that he's equating Superman and America at this moment...
...a particularly conservative, mummified version of America.
GOODMAN: Miller is satirizing our image of the flag as the symbol of power...
...the symbol of nationalism.
The fact that the president literally wears the flag as his suit...
...is making fun of it and is saying, "Okay, this is just a facade."
I think Frank was going for the symbolism...
...of only "the American way" of Superman's trademark slogan.
I think the "truth and justice" part he wasn't caring about.
And I think he was using Superman to say:
"You know, the American way isn't always the way."
TIMM: I don't think he's saying...
...that Superman is de facto a bad guy or a wimp or a patsy.
I think Superman literally is supposed to represent America.
And America is, in its idealized form, a great, great thing.
But it's not perfect.
MILLER: I was a confused young man.
And to me, the American flag seemed to represent a variety of possibilities...
...most of which I did not respect all that much.
What Miller is attacking, the illegitimacy of false authorities at every turn...
...and that Superman, um, is answering to a false authority.
Superman is appeasing his own conscience by saying:
"Well, I have permission to do what I do."
Superman kills more people than Joker in this story, certainly.
Implied in the fact that he is the war machine of the president.
Um, but he gets to sleep at night because he's been given permission to do it.
In his unwillingness to self-examine, Superman is weakened...
...and Superman's authority is weakened.
And Batman, of the two, is the only one willing to make the tough decisions...
...the only one willing to cross the line and do the difficult things.
And so he kind of becomes the one true authority.
So again, it was part of the whole revitalization he was going for, I think.
That Batman, the ultimate human, had to beat this figure into submission.
MILLER: Batman up against a very good man...
Um, and, you know, obviously a very powerful man.
...To me completed the circle for who Batman was.
That he was anti-establishment.
He was not, um, an obedient citizen.
And his idea of dealing with crime and with corruption...
...was to, um, attack it with full force.
And ignore the law.
Ultimately, the two had to have their showdown.
Also ever since I was a little kid...
...I wanted to see Batman kick the shit out of Superman.
It's just one of those things I always wanted to see.
"NARRATOR". Perhaps the final jab at America and its culture...
...came in the way Miller used the media throughout The Dark Knight Returns.
GOODMAN: It was really interesting and unusual to be as contemporary as it was.
Um, you weren't used to opening up a comic book and seeing a picture of Ronald Reagan...
...clearly Ronald Reagan, clearly the current president...
...um, and lampooning him.
MILLER: I regard being a cartoonist as being kind of like an assassin.
Only all he fires is rubber darts.
And he fires them in different directions and he's willing to hit anybody.
He's not gonna hurt them...
...they'll just have those stupid things stuck to their heads.
O'NEIL: You know, if we're gonna do this work honestly...
...and not be a hack, your own feelings are going to creep into it.
Sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly.
As I went about doing Batman...
...what I wanted to do was to show him as a grand and glorious figure.
Wagnerian.
The best way to do that was to contrast him...
...with the utter silliness of the world that surrounded me.
I'm a news junkie.
And to me, the world is run by amateurs and is a pretty funny place.
And so to have this Wagnerian hero...
...all of a sudden in the midst of it...
...would cause these petty, paltry reactions...
...that frankly I thought were funny.
"NARRATOR". Panel after panel, page after page...
...he showed us the reporters, pundits and talk show hosts that permeated our society.
Here it was, right in our faces...
...in a giant soup of buffoonery mixed with paranoia...
...all for entertainment value.
Frank's pen artistically depicted just how far off the deep end we have gone.
MILLER: And a lot of Dark Knight, was done with me laughing out loud.
I mean, a psychologist wearing a button saying, "Hey, I'm okay."
That kind of thing is just a touch beyond what we're already seeing.
We're all just used to that now.
You at home are watching a talking head right now. And it's just normal.
For those reasons...
...it's up there with Wall Street and American Psycho...
...as this mythic document of the '80s.
NARRATOR: Each reading of The Dark Knight Returns...
...gave us something unique...
...something we could deeply glean from the writing and the social commentary...
...to the artistic choices used to help express the folly and conflict...
...of the greatest of DC champions, both in Batman and Superman.
It was a hard-hitting and seminal work...
...but in order to have maximum impact...
...the way it reached the public needed to be equally potent.
If Frank Miller had to deal with the format of the pamphlet weekly comic book...
...with approximately 20 to 24 pages of new material in an issue...
...interrupted left and right by advertisements...
...it wouldn't have had the impact.
It wouldn't have worked.
A new format had to be invented.
O'NEIL: A Prestige edition...
...is a 48-to-72-page story, or part of a story...
...that's printed on coated stock, it's slick.
Uh, The New Yorker as opposed to your daily newspaper.
JANSON: I think that was exactly the point, was to make it stand out on the news-stand...
...and give it some, uh, specialty, some singularity...
...something to make it stand apart from the regular comics.
Just the appearance of it sent a signal that, uh...
...at the very least you wanna pick this up and page through it.
You wanna check it out.
JANSON: You know, I know that Frank was very heavily invested...
...in making sure that it did, uh, stand apart from the monthly books.
Urn, but I also know that, uh, you know, Jenette was involved in this...
...and that Dick Giordano, who, uh, I have a great deal of affection for...
I remember him using phrases like, uh, "We have to push the envelope."
We have to try something different.
"We have to, uh, move the, uh, dial a little bit further."
KAHN: As with Watchmen, too, I think we just would run up and down the hall saying:
"Look at this, look at this." Heh.
Uh, you know, also waiting for a long time for the pages to come in.
But when they did come, always say, "Oh, my God, this is so special.
Look what we're doing right now."
O'NEIL: What is this anyway? Is this a comic book or something new?
Miller structured these books...
...in an unusually, uh, rigid format.
MILLER: I came up with The Dark Knight format...
...um, so that each one would be square-bound and 48 pages long...
...and I made the pages...
...really rather incredibly dense with material...
...because I wanted to keep people tied to the narrative.
Immediately it creates a kind of imposed pace to your reading it.
A kind of a beat, beat, beat, uh, to the reading of it.
JANSON: The pacing is absolutely, um, integral to the emotion.
The emotional reaction, um, is really predicated on...
...you know, the content of the story...
...and the ability to pace it correctly so that it has some power and some effect.
It's a very deliberate choice on Frank's part to lay out and design the book in that manner.
Right down to the specific shot.
"NARRATOR". Like a director making choices on where to put the camera on a film set...
...so did Frank Miller make his own choices...
...on what the comic-book panel would showcase from scene to scene.
USLAN: Frank was directing a movie.
I really think that's how you have to look at it.
So it's not traditional comic book.
It is graphic novel and graphic novel and cinema go together.
And depending on the graphic artist, to one extreme or another...
...um, here, I truly believe he was writing and directing a movie.
So that you had scenes that were intercut...
...you had cutaways...
...uh, you had more than one set of action going on at a particular time.
GOODMAN: Then once you have that cinematic pace and rhythm...
...you have the opportunity to break it for impact.
You have the opportunity to suddenly create, like, a splash page...
...of the first time we see Batman in his costume...
...as he descends from the sky in the storm.
Um, and, you know, you can hear the music, you can hear the soundtrack...
...because it's so cinematic.
And all of a sudden now, we're hitting the big hero shot.
Um, uh, you can quicken the pace, you can slow the pace.
Uh, so it gave all sorts of opportunities to break that mold.
And all of a sudden, when something doesn't fit...
...you know, when, uh, the word of somebody screaming...
...or a "crack" of a bone breaking breaks through those panels...
...now all of a sudden, that has more impact and really grabs you...
...and you know, gets you in the gut.
"NARRATOR". But this ingenuity only partly came from instinct.
Long-standing inspiration also played a key role.
Frank Miller's style became the embodiment of everything he had ever learned.
MILLER: When I first moved to New York...
...I found comic-book artists to be among the most generous people...
...I've ever met in my life.
And I got to meet a lot of the old guys.
Almost all of whom are dead now.
And they taught me techniques and gave me examples of work...
...that went far back to sometimes the '30s.
I'm lucky to have learned them well enough to use them.
That's one of the reasons why I don't draw on a computer yet.
And believe it or not...
...it takes about a year and a half to learn how to use, um, a ruler and a brush together.
But once you know how to do it, you got gold on your hands...
...because your staircases become warm.
And there's just enough wrong with them for you to believe them.
As far as the penciling goes...
...well, this little old Ticonderoga works just fine.
I don't like mechanical pencils because they bother my hand.
And, uh, things like using rubber cement or liquid frisket...
...all these techniques are ones that I learned from masters.
Urn, and I intend to keep using them.
USLAN: I've also seen the influence of manga and anime in his work as well.
Um, he is someone who has just taken in so much...
...from everyone from Will Eisner to great directors and then made it his own.
"NARRATOR". Inspired by the best, it is clear that Frank Miller's artistic sense is extraordinary.
But in the world of comics...
...extraordinary can transcend to master-work with the right team.
One key member was inker Klaus Janson.
JANSON: With Frank's pencils...
Frank's, uh, pencils ranged from, uh, being elegant to crude...
...depending on the image that was being drawn.
Obviously you're not going to draw a love scene in a crude manner...
...but you will draw, for instance...
...an action scene of somebody being thrown through a window...
...uh, in a more brutal hand motion.
"NARRATOR". Inking, as its namesake implies...
...is the usage of ink applied to the penciled image.
The contrast heightens the emotion of the sequence...
...as our eyes are guided from character to character.
I know that when I'm drawing, the hand will respond to the emotion in the scene that I feel.
Um, so it's important that the inker is aware and can look at the work...
...and see the differences and try to pick up on that.
MILLER: In the course of drawing Batman...
...as much as he is transformed across the series, um...
Because he starts out as kind of a Neal Adams Batman.
And he ends up being more like the Incredible Hulk or something.
Um, as much change as there was...
...there was less than my hands were guiding me to...
...because I would pull it back, or I would find a way to amplify it.
Um, and I felt that, um...
...by the midpoint of the series, I'd really found my Batman.
JANSON: It's a funny process, um...
...which, uh, remains I think a mystery to most civilians, if I could use that phrase.
It's akin to what, uh, I know about, say, acting.
Uh, you memorize the lines, but then you forget them...
...and you get on set and you get into the scene...
...and the lines will then have more meaning.
And I think it's very similar, being an inker.
In a sense, you memorize the lines and then you forget about it.
MILLER: Klaus, um, you know, as he had on Daredevil...
...he smoothed out my rough edges a lot...
...and was able to bring his facility, which I didn't have at the time...
...um, to bear.
JANSON: I always look at the pages, uh, very, very diligently.
I really try to analyze what the penciler is trying to do.
Um, I try to figure out what the weaknesses are and hopefully fill those in...
...because I think that's part of my job as a...
That's part of the definition of being, I think, an effective, good inker.
Um, but I also try to... I push it just a little bit further.
One of my, uh, favorite things to contribute is adding texture, uh...
...and the ability to, uh, contribute to the storytelling through texture.
Whether it's Zip-A-Tone using dot patterns or spatter using, you know, a brush technique.
Or using cross-hatching. Texture is anything.
You know, shrubbery, grass. Anything that is a gray is basically a texture.
Texture is something that I can contribute to almost, uh, any pencil job...
...and improve the relationship of black to white...
...the ability to form shapes...
...um, the ability to guide the eye through the panel on to the next panel...
...and through the entire page.
Um, it's always about storytelling.
It's always about helping the reader, uh, guide their eye through the page...
...making them look at what you want them to look at.
We really created a third entity.
It was neither Frank's work nor my work. It was a third person.
He's a terrific guy and he was a superb partner.
"NARRATOR". But as with any master-work, the labor of its creation...
...can lead to conflict.
MILLER: In Dark Knight, we began to drift apart, just creatively, um...
...because I was into all the European stuff...
...and the Japanese stuff and all of that...
...and he was still very much in the tradition of DC.
You know, there's one issue where I redid a bunch of it...
...because I wanted a certain look.
There was a point, uh...
There was a point in the, uh, project that, uh...
...Frank was unhappy with the work that I was handing in.
My policy has always been and remains to this very day...
...that if a penciler is not happy with my work...
...I will re-ink it, uh, free.
And, uh, Frank took it upon himself...
...to not avail himself to that offer, uh...
...which is his right...
...and took it upon himself to re-ink, uh, a couple of pages...
...that he was unhappy with.
MILLER: I had clone layouts, particularly for the end of the book...
...that I ended up throwing away.
Um... And because I wanted to go for the quieter ending that I went for.
JANSON: ls Frank tough to work with? Is he demanding?
Does he know what he wants? Sure.
Um, do I know that going into it? Sure.
Uh, do we have an understanding of each other? I think so.
If you're going to work with somebody who's, you know, good...
...or under the best of circumstances better than you...
...uh, you have to rise to the challenge.
And there's no guarantee, by the way, that you'll actually be able to do that...
...but you know that in accepting that challenge...
...uh, that you will do work that is at least better than the work that you normally do.
It's part of that whole process of working with people who do challenge you, like Frank...
...and who do inspire you like Frank.
Uh, and perhaps I even learned that, you know, from working with people like Frank.
Now that he's drawing his own work, it's wonderful to see...
...because he's... Because he's... It's...
You know, when you work with a partner...
...there's nothing better than to seeing him fly alone...
...and he's become quite good at it.
"NARRATOR". Also contributing to this master-work...
...was colorist Lynn Varley. ..
...whose unique style brought something new and unsuspecting to the readers.
CARLIN: Lynn was at the time one of the best colorists going in the business...
...and there is a real limitation...
...to the regular comic book separation system that was being used back then.
The process at the time was called "blue line," which was that the black artwork...
The black-and-white artwork was shot on paper, on heavy stock paper...
...in blue, in non-reproducible blue. In a blue that would not reproduce.
And then Lynn, uh, would color over it.
"NARRATOR". Lynn incorporated the use of gouache...
...an opaque watercolor that provided both the signature muted tone...
...and expanded the color palette of comics to new levels.
CARLIN: I think Lynn came up with the gouache, uh...
...and just the whole look.
It's a little bit of a muted palette except for when you get to Robin...
...and when you get to, you know, Batman's oval.
It's like... It's a real standout when you get to those things...
."because, uh, the city is kind of dingy-looking.
The application of liquid, whether it was gouache or watercolor...
...but the fact that it was wet would distort the paper...
...no matter how heavy the paper stock was.
You had to put a black plate on top of it which was shot on acetate...
...but the black plate almost never matched the blue line...
...because the blue line was distorted.
So it was a rather involved and a tedious, time-consuming approach to the work.
But it's a measure, I think, of the amount of dedication...
...that everyone had on the project, uh...
...and Lynn's interest in pursuing, you know, this particular approach to color.
"NARRATOR". Tying in with its glossy page prestige format...
...gouache stood out as something fresh.
It was the perfect storm of commerce and art...
...demonstrating to an industry what was possible.
O'NEIL: Lynn didn't have to worry about...
...the limited 122-shade color palette...
...that had been the great iron lock on comic book creativity for years...
...because it's all the presses would accommodate.
JANSON: I think that it was her and everyone's feeling on the project...
...to try to, um, stretch as much as we could individually...
...and achieve something that was bigger, better...
...than the usual, uh, work, uh...
...that a monthly comic might, you know, produce or look like.
MORRISON: With every page it's like this young guy showing you the possibilities.
"Look at all this," you know?
So there's a kind of enthusiasm in every page of it.
"Here's what we can do. Here's what we can do. I'm gonna prove it to you."
This was, to a great degree, his baby. Um...
So he... It was a moment where everything really fell together and came together...
...in a, uh, very, very effective and powerful way.
GOODMAN: I don't know which one was, uh, Frank's intention...
...to be first and foremost.
What's clear is that this story is many things.
Um, it can be read on many different levels.
It can be read as social commentary.
It can be read as a very intimate personal story...
...about one man struggling with his inner demons.
One man searching for his own relevance...
...in a world that has kind of passed him by.
There are so many different, uh, layers you can look at, this story.
So many different lenses you can look at it through.
And you can go back and discover another, and discover another with repeated readings.
That's part of what's really made it, uh, have staying power...
...and still, uh, be a valid literary work after 25 years.
For me, I hadn't read Dark Knight again for a long time.
I reread it when I was writing my book and wanted to sort of, uh, have it fresh again.
And I was really impressed again...
...because, you know, you figure out a lot more yourself in the intervening time...
...and suddenly you realize there's so much going on here...
...than even I figured out when I was 26 or whatever.
That really appealed to me and I've been trying to bring that into my own comics.
KAHN: Without question, Dark Knight has influenced generations of comics...
...and other, uh, iterations of Batman...
...like Grant Morrison's just extraordinary Arkham Asylum.
I think we've gotten to the point where comics are considered literature at their very best.
Clearly, not all comics are great literature, but some of them are.
USLAN: What Frank did in Dark Knight Returns...
...uh, was show that the Batman, and the mythos and the world, and Gotham City...
...were much more serious than the Adam West TV show...
...or the Saturday morning Batman cartoons.
Uh, it was a real reflection of...
...and a real, uh, examination of...
...vigilantism, and evil, and good...
...and what the need and value of these heroes really could be.
TIMM: Frank's version of Batman was so popular...
...that was the way they went with the movie franchise...
...and, um, so then suddenly, you know, everybody in pop culture...
...suddenly has a whole new idea of what Batman is.
You know, the movie came out and it was a huge success...
...and then following right on the heels of that, you know, we got the Batman animated series.
And then, "Hey, thank you, Frank." Ha, ha. Because now I have a job.
I've been employed here at Warner Brothers for 20-some odd years thanks to that.
What I have had the privilege of doing...
...is watching something go from pulp disreputability...
...to universal recognition as a valid art form.
I got to see that several times.
Probably the first and most significant time...
...was the work I did with Frank.
JANSON: I experienced Dark Knight and Watchmen...
...sort of from the other side.
Urn, so I don't have the experience of, uh, say for instance...
...discovering, um, you know, the first Beatle album...
...or David Bowie, or, you know, certain directors.
Um, but I think that the public was ready for, uh, this particular medium...
...to grow up a little bit.
They are, uh...
...valid pieces of work, um...
...that have the power to sustain.
KAHN: There, something felt really right...
...and we had a tremendous will to see it happen.
And that didn't mean we didn't run numbers.
We did a lot of due diligence...
...but in the end the final decision informed by that due diligence was:
"This could be amazing."
And it was.
NARRATOR: Before The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen...
...the social voice of comics dealt primarily with issues plaguing young adults.
In 1986, these two seminal publications...
...broke the barriers and created a new genetic makeup to the comics we love.
The work of the greats like Frank Miller...
...is forever galvanized in comics and pop-culture retellings of Batman.
We simply would not have our modern hero had it not been for one man's determination...
...to find his artistic freedom and voice in Gotham's protector.
Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns...
...is the cornerstone to modern Batman stories.
In there, deep in the mind of Frank Miller, is the proof of legend.
MILLER: This business is doing comic books.
One of the things I love about my job...
...is that you are essentially making it up as you go along.
This is, in a way, a community property...
...and so one of us will read a comic book that comes out...
...and go, "I got an idea how to use that or how to get there."
And it's perfectly legit.
It's not like somebody's stealing a plot from Sin City or something.
It's Batman.
I mean, I know I'm doing something that is contributing to a collective work.
The Dark Knight Returns gave me, more than ever, freedom.
And that's what, like I told you about my conversation with Jenette Kahn...
...it's what I've always been after.