Book #51

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
by Frank Miller

And by the way, even though it doesn't need justification, this comic book counts as a book on the list because I spent several days before this trying to read Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart, the sequel to Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold. I liked the first book, because the main characters, the girl and her wolf friend, were excellent, the political intrigue was well done, and I liked the interaction between the wolf perspective and the human perspective. Unfortunately, Lindskold decided to do away with all of those things in the second book: she focuses on the other characters instead of Firekeeper and Blind Seer (and she made Elation ten times more obnoxious), the political intrigue is reduced mainly to a wedding and the attempts to make the kingdoms stable, and the plot was boring in the extreme. I stopped reading it after a week or so, and I flipped through to the end: no great loss. It ends with an anti-climax after 700 or so pages; the bad guy gets defeated long before that, and the last several chapters are all about the attempt to save a young girl who was only introduced in this book and who I just don't care about. Oh, they save her, by the way. Now nobody has to read it. So after I put it down and crossed that fantasy series off my list, I went for something fast and fun. The Dark Knight.

This was a birthday present from Dad. I asked for it because if I want to have a collection of the top graphic novels -- and I do -- then I needed this one, right from the start. I read it once before, in high school, and I loved it then, and now that I've read it again, I still love it.

It's a brilliant set of stories, particularly because it gives such a dark side of the classic Batman stories. Bruce Wayne is very nearly evil in these, so driven by his obsession with fighting crime that he is close to suicidal, and even closer to homicidal; but the best part is that as nasty as he is, his enemies are even nastier. The Joker breaks out of Arkham Asylum in one segment, and immediately slaughters as many people as he can; Batman catches him and comes close to killing him, but doesn't do it -- no, the Joker kills himself in order to frame Batman for murder. One incredibly chilling scene, that one is.

But now that I'm rereading it again at my current age, and with my current awareness, the most interesting part for me was the final chapter, when Batman fights Superman and wins: because while I remembered the fight, and it was just as cool the second time around, what I hadn't caught when I read the book way back when was what Batman says about Superman: he accuses Clark of giving his power away to "Them," of selling us out, of being weak and pathetic -- he says he follows any order given by anyone with a badge. I loved it: Superman is the Man, and Batman is the revolution. It was outstanding.