Rating: 
Summary: A work of genius
Review: I liked this.Everyone who infulenced TDKR should be fetted as a living god. Every page is a new insight, a new twist to the story. Best of all all it still stands up after so many years. This book reknidled my interest in comic books and after purchasing it last year my shelves shelves groan under the asorted weights of Lone Wolf and Cub, Sandman, Luther Arkwright, Alan Moore's work et al. What makes this comic book so good? The artwork is still great, the full pager of Batman on horse back took my breath away, quite literally, I stopped breathing. The social commentary provided by the TV inserts is satircally inventive. The cold war paranoia (Also prevalent in the contempory Watchman) while no longer so releveant is still chilling. The end is tear jerking. And it is emitably re-readable. Finally a quick selectional of the more common words associated with this work to reinforce it's greatness: powerful, seminal, important, landmark, intelligent, new heights.
Rating:
Summary: ... Brilliant!
Review: This is damn good book!Better than all Batman Graphic novels and books i have ever read.Only Batman:Year One is good as this.In this book,Batman IS NOT a super-hero,but human being.Millers writing and drawing is at his best,Varleys colors are very good too.Sorry,but I can't write now-I must read it once more.
Rating:
Summary: Dark Knight is an epic tale
Review: There many critical aspects to epic story telling. A hero who is just beyond the reach of mortal men, so that we might dare to try. Villains that make our blood boil, and finally a story to bring them together. This is the story of Batman's final adventure, and it is truly epic. Other reviewers mention the political/social commentary within the story and these observations are there to be sure. However, at its foundation is the story of one man's relentless quest for justice and his final clash with a world that has forgotten its heroes.
Rating:
Summary: Best Batman Story
Review: The Dark Knight Returns is the best Batman story because of the epic scope it potrays. Batman, in Miller's view is the real superman. He is a Neitschean hero who is too big to be judged by normal standards of morality so those who comment on hom in the novel look foolish. This bigness is why Jim Gordon allowed him to operate as he did in his prime and why Ellen Yindel does not try to stop him whenn he tries to bring order to Gotham after the Soviets launch their nuclear weapon.Gotham is transformed by Miller into a truly gothic city for the first time; the movies and subsequent Batman comics are merely copying what he did in this book and the creepiness of the villians only serves to reinforce the epic scale of the book as does the conflict with Superman.This is one of the best superhero coics ever, but I am dubious about the upcoming sequel.
Rating:
Summary: The Dark Knight Returns: The pinnicle of the Batman legend!
Review: In the year 2000, Wizard comics voted and announced which were among the greatest comics book stories ever told. "The Dark Knight Returns" was listed as #2. ("Watchmen" was voted #1). While "Watchmen" was a brilliant, orignal novel written by Alan Moore, who also wrote "Batman: The Killing Joke" (please see my review on that classic), I personally believe that "The Dark Knight is the greatest comic book story ever told. It shows how the Batman/Bruce Wayne relationship has evolved, as has the world. Back when this comic book was written in the 1980's, No one believe how dark the world would have become as Frank Miller had portrayed in this novel. But in this new century, Miller had come close to how the world has become, where violence in the city has run amok, as it has in the world. Batman returns from retirement to battle crime "in its many macabre forms" even though he is not wanted. The world has become different in this book because the world does not want to be reminded that superheroes still exist. James Gordon is forced into retirement to make way for a new Gothman City, where the Batman is outlawed. Only the shadow of Superman working as a agent for the government still exist. Batman is force to deal in this new world where he is no long consider a hero, but a menance. This story has no happy ending for Two-Face, who still fights his inner demons even though he has a new face. ( a personal loss for Bruce Wayne). When the Batman retired, the Joker remained almost comatose until ten years later when Batman returned. As worlds collide in the brink of nuclear war, the battle between Batman and the Joker ends when The Joker does the most hideous thing to the Batman, something Batman could never do. But this is nothing compared to the final battle between Batman and Superman. Only one is left standing, while the other must live with the concequences. The end of this story has its beginnng and endings for Batman...and Bruce Wayne. During this story, we also see that Bruce Wayne has become bitter and angry when he retired from being a superhero to live a mundane life and becomes a new person when he becomes what he was always meant to be...Batman. While I cannot tell the whole story, this novel brings Batman to full circle and makes Batman what he should always be...a hero.
Rating: 
Summary: pointless violence
Review: Miller's works might not be deliberately designed to inspire boys to go on a vigilante killing spree, but since they have no other themes than making violent attacks on criminals look cool to teenagers one wonders what else they could be for. This is one of his worst offenses. Don't show this stuff to your children, and get professional help if you enjoy it yourself.
Rating:
Summary: B-Batman! Darling!
Review: I read this years and years ago and keep coming back to it. When I moved from NZ to Hawai`i into an uncertain future it was one of the few books I carried with me. This novel packs much much more of a punch than Tim Burton's film although clearly he was indebted to it from the get go. For those of you who are looking for an endorsement, here it is: If you buy no other graphic novel in your lives, buy this one. It's a true work of art (literally). And in my book it's among the best pieces of modern American literature. In a world crippled by selfishness, materialism and image (in the novel and out here in the real world), Frank Miller's Dark Knight reaches out headbutts you in the face. This is a truly heroic tale. Made all the more heroic by the Batman's advancing age, self-doubt and loss of influence with the movers and shakers. We all read what we want into our heroes, but for my money, one of the greatest aspects of this novel is the tension between Bats and "the big blue school boy" (Superman). In this vision of the DC universe, one is a somewhat more than willing tool of the US government and the other is a vigilante idealist. Does he make us uncomfortable? Definitely. Is he a poster boy for the militia-heads? I don't think so. Bats is part of the dark side of the human psyche. The line between obsession and criminality that we all see and shut ourselves off from in our suburban, Starbucks-infested, SUV-driving world. But guess what people? He's inside you already. The plot deals with some of the great themes of the human condition; despair, revenge, the search for redemption. I won't give the plot away, but for my money, Miller's dialog and character development are at least as important as the story-line: another feature which sets The Dark Knight Returns head and shoulders above other works with greater literary pretensions. In keeping with this three-dimensionality, many of the secondary characters are wonderfully rendered also. Green Arrow, Harvey Dent and Commisioner Gordon are all nicely presented, The Joker is top-notch: psychotically charismatic and vicious at the same time. Alfred has some great deadpan lines, and Carrie Kelly/Robin is beautifully realized too ("Spud!"). I would have liked to see some more people of color in the novel (not just as scenery), but you can't have everything. The Ellen Yindel character was also a nice touch although clearly secondary and under-utilized. The one character that was poorly done by was Selena Kyle. Michelle Pfeiffer evened the score in the filmic world and I guess Miller made amends in another graphic novel, still, it was a cheap and unnecessary shot. This is a novel for our times. Even more so after the last election. It's too bad we don't have the resources of Bruce Wayne to deal with the world we live in. But at the very least we have Miller's representation of Batman. I'm not sure I would like him in real life, but I sure ... respect him.
Rating:
Summary: Essential graphic novel
Review: We can endlessly debate whether it was this book or the equally phenomenal "Watchmen" to redefine "mature readers comics" in the Eighties. Personally, I don't care and I love them both, even if today both Bats and the Watchmen feel slightly outdated. Not really for their looks, but for the use of a writing style which was still in its infancy, and thus resorted to very basic tricks. Basically, everything's grimmer than grim, ..., every hero is no more. Simple fare, really. Yet the result is wonderful, and subsequent "improvements" really didn't much better than this. So buy it before the inevitable imminent armageddon, and move it, or some superhero will break your spine for laziness.
Rating:
Summary: Still the most interesting reworking of a superhero
Review: This remains, I think, the best and most interesting reworking of a superhero that anyone has done-not only of Batman, but of Superman and many minor characters as well. Dark Knight is invariably described as an "alternative future", or something along those lines, but I think it is perhaps better looked at as an "alternative present". It was written near the end of the Reagan years, and features a president who is a remarkable ringer for the gipper, not to mention celebrities who bear a striking resemblance to Dave Letterman and Dr. Ruth. It is an apocalypse story, to be sure, but it is an apocalypse set in a dark mirror of our own times-or what were our own times, almost 15 years ago now. Batman, like many other heroes, has been in his mid 30s or so for over a half century now (notwithstanding DC's rather silly periodic efforts to rationalize its continuum). What Miller did was to rip him out of that eternal youth, and simultaneously to rip him from an America which was a bright four-color reflection of our own, and place him in one which instead echoed our darkest nightmares about who we are. It is a fantastic book, although I think ultimately not as good as Alan Moore's Watchmen. Unfortunately, the lesson which the comic publishing industry seems to have taken from the runaway success of these two series was not that readers crave intelligent, sophisticated literary comics, but rather that violence sells. I would say that their overall impact on the industry may therefore have been negative, but the truth is that most comics were so awful and banal before that the injection of mindless violence and pointless grittyness couldn't really make them any worse--just less suitable for children. Here and in Watchmen, of course, there is nothing mindless about the violence at all--it is a critical element of a complex literary tapestry of myth, icon, and hero. (There are other good comics in the superhero genre, but they are distressingly few and far between.) PS Frank Miller is supposed to have said that Gotham is New York at night, and Metropolis is New York by day. How much truer that is to comic mythology than the silliness that all three cities exist in the DC universe!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I can't stress enough how great this story is. It's an epic, an odysey, its something I wish the world would see. It's nothing short of absolute brilliance. Every line, every pause, every word is perfectly placed, constructing a masterpiece worth far more than any comic book I've ever seen. If they could make a movie, I wish they would, but they would never get the rights. It's a shame, but at least you can have the book.
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