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Journalism of Courage
In many ways, Christopher Nolan8217;s film Batman Begins was anticipated by Frank Miller8217;s troika of graphic novels featuring the Gotham vigilante 8212; Batman: The Dark Night Returns 1986, Batman: The Dark Night Strikes Again 2001 and, in between, Batman: Year One 8217;87. This summer, to coincide with the release of Nolan8217;s revisionist take on the Batman saga, the books have been reissued.
Dark Night Returns and Dark Night Strikes Back were written and illustrated by Miller, inspired heavily by the Japanese genre of comicbook art. Batman: Year One looked different, literally 8212; being written by Frank Miller but drawn by David Mazzuccheli.
Together, these graphic novels are a sort of epilogue and prologue to the conventional Batman adventures. The Dark Night pair focuses on a retired Batman, coming back to get a grip on the grim, postmodern dystopia that Gotham has become.
The first of the two was written at the height of the Reagan era; it even featured a president who resembled Ronald Reagan. It was a time of Cold War paranoia, liberal fears over a takeover of America by rightwing control freaks.
It8217;s eerie. Reagan is dead, the Cold War is gone. Crises such as 8216;8216;the Corto Maltese affair8217;8217; 8212; a superpower versus superpower nuclear showdown centred on a fictional South American country, which is the political backdrop of Dark Night Returns 8212; seem ancient history.
Yet in the strange time warp that seems to trap the best graphic novels, the debate, the politics seem so contemporary. Close your eyes and the allusions could be to Bush and his war.
Dark Night Returns was a multi-textured tale. At its most basic level, it pitted robust, old-fashioned notions of good and evil 8212; as represented by Batman and his ally, police commissioner Jim Gordon 8212; against the moral relativism of telegenic liberals.
At the 8216;8216;Arkham Home for the Emotionally Troubled8217;8217; 8212; there in the new film too 8212; a pop psychologist 8216;8216;repairs8217;8217; criminals for release. He pronounces Batman a 8216;8216;menace to society8217;8217;, explaining declining crime rates after his comeback with this mumbo jumbo: 8216;8216;Picture the public psyche as a vast, moist membrane8230; Through the media, Batman has struck this membrane a vicious blow and it has recoiled. Hence your misleading statistics.8217;8217;
Dark Night Strikes Again is an epic war: Bruce takes on Clark. Batman and his betrayed brethren 8212; including a semi-communist Red? Green Arrow 8212; seek revenge on Superman, the Hero who sold out, became a troubleshooter for the establishment. It8217;s one striking image, a tour de force of graphic art, depicts the coupling of Superman and Wonderwoman 8212; and introduces us to their half-Kryptonian, half-Amazonian love child.
Year One is a chronicle of the first year of Batman8217;s life in Gotham, beginning on the January day when Bruce Wayne, 25, returns to the city where his parents were murdered, after 12 years abroad. Nolan has acknowledged it as an inspiration.
Some scenes from the film are straight lifts from the book 8212; Batman using an ultrasonic tone to summon a storm of bats to escape a police siege; the final moment where Gordon, now promoted, waits for Batman to talk about some joker called The Joker 8212; who has 8216;8216;threatened to poison the Gotham reservoir8217;8217;
Miller8217;s three graphic novels are probably better books than Nolan8217;s film is good cinema. They are truer to the Batman ethic. The film introduces the supernatural 8212; in the form of an immortal League of Shadows that lives in the Himalayas and wants to destroy Gotham 8212; to the Batman story.
In real life 8212; real comicbook life 8212; Batman was the most human, the most vulnerable of the Superheroes: the one with fears, with nightmares, with the guilt of his parent8217;s death, with a white collar upbringing that kept him from using a gun.
Somewhere in Miller8217;s three novels lie a plethora of Batman films. Pity Nolan8217;s wasn8217;t the first one.
