Batman Noir: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson

Batman Noir: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson, DC Comics

It is a story that has been reprinted countless times, in paperback and lavish hardcovers. It had a huge ripple effect when it first came out nearly thirty years ago. DC have done a couple of these other Batman Noir books, taking some of their library and publishing them in black and white. Miller and Janson’s The Dark Knight continues to be one of DC’s biggest perennial sellers in their graphic novel backlist and it was only a matter of time before they gave it the Batman Noir treatment. For those people reading this review who haven’t encountered this before, it’s a fairly simple tale.

Gotham is a city without Batman, dominated by a gang of vicious mutants, who force Bruce Wayne to come out of retirement to save the city. Miller’s bombastic writing has dated but there are still moments of genuine power and impact, like the scene when we witness Batman on horseback leading the Sons of Batman or fighting against an elderly demented Joker with a female Robin to assist him.

There is an elegant graphic simplicity to seeing Miller and Janson’s art without colours and the slightly oversized hardcover format gives it a little more room to breath. Despite the fact that Miller has never really matched what he and Janson created here, The Dark Knight is still a high watermark in both Miller’s career and in comics, with a European influence that we hadn’t seen before in US superhero comics. Nearly thirty years after its first publication, it still has the power to move and engage with its readers and publishing it in black and white, without denigrating the magnificent job that colourist Lynn Varley did, lends it an extra weight and dramatic heft.

DC Comics

Batman Noir: The Dark Knight Returns HC