During the post Modern graphic novel period there many titles that got the audience attention, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. However, what make Batman stand up from other graphic novels of that time is that Batman was the first of the superhero comics to reinvent itself and target a new, more mature, audience.
Batman was first published in 1940 and like most of the comic superheroes of that time was targeted to a more young audience, therefore the topics of the comic were mostly innocent and did not relate to the reality of the times. There were always a bad and a good character and no room for any kind of ambiguity.
But all change after the end of the cold war. The audience no longer wanted comics that did not reflect the reality of the world and the sells of comics dropped significantly. That is when Batman: The Dark Knight Returns makes it appearance in 1896 by the hand of Frank Miller but instead of a comic was more like a graphic novel. Under frank’s style, Batman became more darker and mysterious than before with more adult and complex themes.
As a comic lover, I have always had a special place in my heart for Batman. In contrast with other superheroes like Superman, Batman was more fierce and sarcastic and were times in which i was not so sure if Batman was one of the good boys or one of the bad boys. Also, Batman was a regular person (if you consider a billionaire, fitness fit person normal). He did not have any super power besides his own intelligence and human gadgets.
I know a lot of people do not like superhero comics, because of this clean, nationalized (American) appearance they portrait. But if you ask me, i would advise you to give Batman a try because I do not think you would regret it.
As many other people. what call my attention the most at the time of reading is the title since it can encourages you to read the book/comiC/whatever or forget about it and this is not the exception. When I saw the title I wanted to read it immediately. If we give a second thought about the reinvention of Batman, we can think that represents the reinvention of the society as well. After a terrible episode as the Cold War, people were not interested in things that did not represent what was happening in that time.
ResponderEliminarMoreover, I would say that the ambiguity of Batman's personality that you talk about also was a reflection of the society. After all people had to went through it was difficult to discriminate who was the good people now.
I must tell you, I really loved your post, Batman is one of my favorite superheroes and The Dark Knight Returns is one of the best stories about him along with "Year one", "The long Halloween" and "The killing joke"
ResponderEliminarAs you said, when the character was first published, the stories were more kid-friendly, so it could be targeted for anyone, if I'm not mistaken, that period was known as the Golden Age of comicbooks.But then, there was a change, the comics started to became more "mature" and the stories started to reflect the reality of the world, especially during the Silver Age and the Bronze Age in which we started to see topics such as death, alcoholism and drug abuse in comicbooks, something that we would have never seen during the Golden Age and in Batman we clearly see all those topics.
In the end, the changes that comics and graphic novels have passed through time is something that really should be looked more carefully, and we need to realize that even superhero comics can show, reflect and criticize important issues about today's world.