All language subtitles for 0_English

"NARRATOR". Upon the 20th anniversary of the
publication of The Dark Knight Returns...

...DC Comics celebrated the book
with the release of the Absolute edition.

In the opening pages was an introduction
written by the author himself...

...Frank Miller.

MILLER: When I first, um,
came into the field of comic books...

...I was a kid from Vermont.
I was 17 years old.

I moved to New York City.
The very generous Neal Adams...

...was happy to tell me I didn't have a
prayer of getting anywhere in comics.

But I kept coming back
and so he finally got me my first job.

Editor after editor
would tell me the same thing:

"Why are you doing this?"

We'll be out of business in five years.

"There will be no comic books."

That was the conventional
wisdom of the time.

[TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING]

USLAN: I think Frank's reference
to comics being irrelevant...

...was because, well,
they were irrelevant to adults.

They were probably
irrelevant to society as a whole.

O'NEIL: In one of the low points,
comics seemed to be...

...a roller-coaster.

And there have been, at least twice
since I've been doing this...

...when, you know, I was betting
they wouldn't survive another 10 years.

GOODMAN: They weren't a venue
for deep-layered literary conversation...

...for rich characters.

At most, they were sort of looked at
as, uh, an argument between...

...whether they were just
sort of colorful icons...

...or capturing something important
about adolescent angst.

But that was kind of the extent of it.

Even with Batman, a lot of comics
and a lot of comic book, uh, stories...

...were very, uh, unrealistic and fantasy,
almost bordering on sci-fi.

TIMM: They'd been gradually getting
a little bit more sophisticated.

Comic book fans from, like, the
'50s and '60s and even the '70s...

...had all graduated or grown up and they've
kind of brought their comics with them.

Competition was coming along, you know...

...as movies began to be able
to do better special effects.

That was some new competition out there.

And the comics were not evolving
and growing.

[THUNDER RUMBLING]

TIMM: So Denny O'Neil as a writer,
Neal Adams as artist...

...helped introduce the world back to
the original dark and serious Batman...

...to help overcome it.

Well, that was great into the '70s.

And that did help
open the door to older readers.

MORRISON: We'd seen a great floundering
of talent in comics in the '70s.

We'd seen characters being taken into
directions no one could have imagined...

...and dealing with subject matter that
had been impossible prior to that time.

But suddenly after around 1978 or even
after the bicentennial in America...

...there was a big shift towards
much more escapist material.

And, unfortunately,
in the comics that meant...

...for a kind of bland recycling of the
cliches that had existed prior to this...

...you know, fantastic invasion of
the counter-culture in the '70s.

And between 1979 and '82,
I didn't look at any comics at all.

CARLIN: Obviously, the comic book companies
did not want that to happen.

And at Marvel Comics in the early '80s,
there was kind of a resurgence.

And, uh, Frank was a big part of that.

So they got their act together...

...and DC then was suddenly finding
that they needed to be competitive again.

USLAN: The first huge change
took place for me in 1978...

...when probably the greatest graphic
storyteller in the history of comics...

...Will Eisner, introduced
the graphic novel.

His first graphic novel,
A Contract with God...

...shattered all of our visions...

...of what a comic book was
and what a comic book could be.

MORRISON: I've always likened it
to the auteur era in Hollywood...

...where you had Scorsese and Altman and
Coppola and those people coming through.

And the type of cinema they did
was very much like...

...this anti-establishment vein of comic
books that was going on at the same time.

MILLER: It left a way for people like me
and Alan Moore to play to that audience.

To, um, do stories...

...that were beyond the understanding
of an 8-year-old.

To me and to many other artists...

...it gave us the sense that what
we could do would be permanent...

...and not ephemeral.

Not a monthly, um, pamphlet...

...that would come and go and be forgot.

And I remember reading that
and saying, "This is what I want to do."

I want to have a shelf of work
that exists forever."

"NARRATOR". Jenette Kahn, a New York publisher
of a popular children's magazine...

...was tapped as the next leader
of DC Comics.

Because of her dynamic energy and her
ability to see the world of comics...

...as a place where incredible growth
can transpire...

...she was willing to take the risk
and lure the best talent possible...

...to help stabilize the
fledgling business.

KAHN: I always believed that we would
never succeed as a comic company.

Never grow, never reach the heights
that we were finally able to...

...unless we took risk.

And, uh, it was one of my maxims at DC...

...that perhaps you've heard from other
people, but unless we were writing off...

...a certain amount of material every year,
we weren't doing our job.

Because when you risk, you're going to also risk
failure, and that comes with the territory.

You just hope that you have enough successes
to far outweigh those failures you had.

But you need failure.
If you don't have those failures...

...then you really aren't taking the risks
that will propel you into new territory.

She and Dick Giordano
who she was working with...

...were very interested in the idea
of new formats in expanding comics out.

KAHN: I always believed
that comics were an art form...

...an art form clearly
tied with commerce...

...but that, uh, they weren't just as they
were as I had known them growing up...

...a disposable medium for kids.

Part of the inspiration was that
I had looked with a great deal of envy...

...at the French albums
that were being published.

They were published on beautiful paper,
incredible art.

And seemed to be, uh, incredibly smart.

They could tell any kind of story.

They could tell very sophisticated adult stories
that touched on serious subject matter...

...at the same time
that they entertained.

I thought that there were a lot of things
in those comics that we could adopt...

...if we could only
figure out the economics.

"NARRATOR". Jenette Kahn knew
that DC Comics was ready to produce...

...a more sophisticated book...

...a mature storyline
for a hungry audience.

This was the approach Marvel took
with Daredevil in hiring Frank Miller.

DC Comics wanted a piece of that action.

Frank Miller had been doing, um, some really
interesting stuff over at Marvel with Daredevil.

Urn, it kind of started off kind of as a standard
superhero comic strip with interesting visuals.

But over time it got a bit darker
and more mature.

I had been doing Daredevil,
you know, prior to Frank coming on board.

When Frank came on he was, uh, you know,
this kid, this skinny kid from Vermont...

...who, uh, really nobody, uh,
had any high expectations for.

We went through a lot of changes
through those three years.

You know, Frank started out, uh,
penciling and not writing.

O'NEIL: He was in that place that guys get
when they are absorbing everything.

Those that I think
eventually hit the ball out of the park...

...look at everything
and look at it closely.

And then spend a lot of time
sitting at the drawing board.

JANSON:
That evolution, uh, garnered and created...

...a great deal of trust
between the two of us.

I'm very proud
of the work we've done on Daredevil.

"NARRATOR". The DC executives kept their
finger on the pulse of the comics industry.

They learned of the success
of Frank Miller at Marvel.

Miller was the perfect combined example
of writer and artist...

...that Jenette knew she had to entice
over to the DC side.

Although comic book writers and artists
migrate back and forth from DC to Marvel...

...the intentional luring of a client
was something yet to be seen.

But desperate times
called for a new perspective.

If DC was to survive, it needed to find
the perfect writer-and-artist team...

...that could catapult the company forward.

KAHN:
He was absolutely pushing the envelope.

But I felt we needed an injection of
that at DC. And I asked Frank to lunch.

In those days there was
a Warner dining room in New York...

...and we went to lunch
and I said to Frank:

"Tell me what you most of all
would want to do in comics.

Whatever it is,
I will try to make it happen."

Jenette and I, um,
had several conversations...

...but one of them was particularly long.

It might have been as long as three hours.

Um, and she and Joe Orlando...

...um, who was one of the editors
at the time...

...um, had asked me what I wanted most.

And I said "freedom."

I also made an issue of copyright.

Had Frank tried to do
that 10 years earlier...

...I'm not sure the door
would've been open for him.

But at that point,
comics were undergoing...

...a kind of content of revolution.

Creators had no share in their creations.

And there were no royalties,
there were no reprint payments.

You didn't even get your artwork back.

And all of these seemed like
just terrible inequities.

So the very first thing I wanted to do when I
came to DC was to change that landscape...

...and to assure creators,
and assure them in writing...

...that they would, in fact, have a share
in all the things that they created.

Janette was...

...a captivating conversationalist.

And they were willing to take a chance
on giving me complete freedom.

And, um, I used it to my best advantage.

KAHN: Frank said,
"Well, I have this idea about a ronin."

And I actually am a huge aficionado
and devotee of samurai movies.

So I said, "Oh, a ronin, of course.
What a great idea."

So we're talking about the ronin
and he's laying it out for me...

...and he said, "I want to do this on really
high-end, beautiful paper, glossy stock."

I don't want to do traditional color separations.
I want Lynn Varley to do the painting."

And I said, "Let me see.
Let me see if this is possible."

I came back from the lunch
and I talked to Paul Levitz...

...who, uh, was one of my
tremendous allies at DC.

And also we talked to Bob Rozakis and he
said, "Let's try to figure this out."

O'NEIL:
Frank was clearly on his way up.

And I think he had enough ambition
to see where the main chances were.

I would love to have a pint of his blood
put into my arm...

...so I could have just a pint's worth
of, uh, that kind of realism...

...about, you know,
how the business works...

...and how you keep from starving.

NARRATOR: Ronin would become Frank Miller's
first creator-owned project for DC Comics.

It was his entrance into the world of DC...

...and a new era where he would be given
artistic freedom.

CARLIN: Ronin, which was like this really
crazy, science-fiction extravaganza thing...

...it was definitely a lot more mature,
more adult.

"NARRATOR".
It was a striking read for the fans...

...and something that felt like a novel.

I had done a 13-issue run on Daredevil.

Which, really, is structurally a novel.

It's an unplanned one.

But when I did Ronin...

...I was deliberately
after a novel structure.

"NARRATOR". This was a raw comic book
without pages of advertisements...

...presented in a way that only fans
could have dreamed of at the time.

MILLER:
Later, Dick Giordano, um, God rest him...

...he approached me and he said:

"Do you want to take a crack at Batman?"

[TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING]

Well, at first I was scared shitless...

...because Batman struck me
as one of the icons.

One of the sort of the triad
of really big characters.

There's Superman, there's Batman,
there's Wonder Woman.

And I thought, "What can I offer?"

What can I possibly offer...

"...that Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams
didn't already do?"

I was walking through the hallways at DC...

...and Dick Giordano just asked me,
"Frank is working on a Batman project...

...and he wants to know
if you'd like to ink it."

Which, obviously, jumped at. I mean,
there was really, you know, no hesitation.

No deep thinking involved.

CARLIN: DC was really...
They were pulling out all the stops.

And I wouldn't say it was "anything goes"
kind of universe...

...but it was an "anything goes"
kind of universe...

...if you were a certain level of creator.

And Frank, clearly,
was top of the field at the time.

KAHN:
I believed in Frank.

And I believed that
he needed the freedom.

If we'd tried to curtail him,
if we'd over-edited him...

...uh, we would not get the kind of discovery
that we thought we would get with Frank.

MORRISON: That was the genius of it,
to be given a character that iconic.

And for management to understand
that he was the right creator...

...and for Frank to understand these are the
right people for me to do this, to comics.

Because if you can transform Batman
in everyone's head...

...then you can transform everything.

MILLER: Right behind you, um, there's
everything from Joe Kubert to Milton Caniff...

...on my shelf there.

And, um, to me, it's a treasure library.

And the idea of comic books
being something temporary...

...uh, is part of what held us back.

USLAN:
Frank took a hard look at superheroes.

And if you're going to do that...

...and try to convince the world
they could be real...

...and get into the grittiness...

...and get into the psychological
motivations of what they do...

...how they do it, how they could
possibly operate in a real world...

...you better first be talking about
somebody who has no super-powers.

And Batman fits that bill to a

When I sat down to start Dark Knight...

...one of the things that had
bothered me most...

...was how insular and closed in
the world of comics was.

It had nothing to do
with the rest of the world.

And I was wondering
what would make Batman...

...genuinely relevant.

And I looked out the window.

It was the Reagan era, um...

...the city was in near chaos.

And I thought that's what we need...

...is a gigantic father figure
to straighten things out.

KAHN: Some of the stories
that affect us most of all...

...are the ones
that have some rooting in reality.

And certainly those that shine a light...

...on us as human beings
and on our society...

...on our mores and on our foibles.

O'NEIL:
Nothing should be off-limits.

There shouldn't be any topic
that a comic book can't treat...

...because it's a comic book.

So Frank walked into a situation...

...where he had the freedom
to explore those things...

...and I sure as hell
wasn't gonna get in his way.

JANSON: It was Frank's ability
to take, you know, something...

...and comment on it, uh, sociologically...

Um, even if it was in a negative way
or was spotlighted in a negative way.

...And yet still engender a certain amount
of, uh, sympathy and compassion...

...for the characters that had to live
through that period of time.

O'NEIL: In some ways as much in awe of it
as everybody else.

And another artist, writer, could have come
into that same situation...

...and not accomplished what Frank did.

You have to have the talent,
you have to have the devotion...

...and the determination.

"NARRATOR".
Like a cultural anthropologist...

...Frank Miller showed us a gritty side
to the world of Batman...

...and how extreme criminal situations
require extreme heroic action.

MILLER:
Think of Batman as a large jewel.

You can throw it against the wall,
you can throw it against the floor...

...you throw it against the ceiling,
it's not gonna break.

Every way you wanna treat Batman
is gonna work.

From that old Adam West TV show...

...through to Neal Adams' takes,
through to mine...

...and through many others...

...he always works.

Since I have, um,
an innate love of mythology...

...I was just drawn very naturally
to make him a mythic figure.

USLAN: You might say that superheroes,
the initial feeling was...

...well, they're really too juvenile
and too silly to be dealt with...

...in the format of a graphic novel.

We just need something heady,
something of thematic importance.

And superheroes certainly
just wouldn't fill that bill.

But there's no denying
if you're talking about the comic book...

...that the heart and soul of the
comic book is the superhero.

Better or worse, like it or not, it is.

And that meant it was up to Frank,
as well as Alan Moore in Watchmen...

...to tackle that subject matter, to find
a way to deconstruct the superhero...

...and present it in a way that put
it in a very, very different light.

MORRISON: One of the great things that
it did was to be a complete work.

Because before that, most Batman stories
had been part of an ongoing canon.

You know, you couldn't really tell
the final story.

But for Frank Miller to say, "Let's do
the ultimate, definitive Batman story..."

"...that will be read forever, so we'll ha...
Every beat will..." You know, and it's...

Even today, you can see people
have learned that trick now...

...about taking the character...

...and make sure we get every single
ounce of juice out of that character.

"NARRATOR".
A comic book that reads like a novel...

...is precisely what became
the Frank Miller signature trademark.

But it was the work
of The Dark Knight Returns...

...that launched this technique into the
world of a pure, mythological status.

GOODMAN:
When Dark Knight Returns came out, uh...

...I was already
kind of at an early adulthood age...

...where comic books
were kind of a thing of the past.

But I was hearing from friends
that you have to look at this book.

And this is something that isn't just...
That our age group can be reading this.

Even then,
it was something inspirational for us.

This is really grown-up writing.
This is something as complex, uh...

...as a real literally work.

It had all these different layers
that you could be reading it on.

It's about, you know,
interesting characters...

...and Bruce Wayne and Batman
handled as a real character.

There wasn't a focus in comic books
before this...

...in really treating these individuals
as real people.

Um, and this book really changed everything
after that, this and Watchmen.

MORRISON: It was easy to tell straight away
that there was structure to this book...

...which felt unusual
and gave it weight and depth.

And then you got the multiple voices
and the multiple screens...

...and the multiple readings of the text.

Which, again, is definitely
from Watchmen...

...which I kind of think only gives you the
one reading, just "This is the clockwork."

You are in the clockwork, everything works.

The more you study it, the more beautifully
and perfectly you see that it works.

But it's all to this end.

With Dark Knight,
it's a lot more interpretation.

And as I say, there's a lot of voices.

"NARRATOR".
One of the many novel writer techniques...

...is the inclusion of multiple points
of view from which a story is told.

Often these narrators take a major role...

...and are dynamically changed
throughout the chapters.

The Dark Knight Returns is no stranger
to this type of writing...

...as we hear from Batman, Superman,
Carrie Kelly...

...and Commissioner Gordon
throughout the book.

I do think that Frank is himself a writer.

He would have been a novelist
if he couldn't draw at all.

And maybe that would have been
his way to get into film-making.

So I do think that he needed to feel
the story as an actual story...

...for his own sake first.

GOODMAN:
You can feel in Miller's take on Batman...

...the kind of DNA of the noir detective.

JANSON:
Frank was very influenced by Dirty Harry...

...and detective and cops stories.

GOODMAN: The noir detective is somebody
who claims the moral right...

...to do things that other people
don't have the permission to do...

...and would stop other people
from doing in the same story.

CARLIN: That's what Frank tends to like,
the film noir stuff.

It's all tough guys, but
they're still human...

...and they have weaknesses,
and they have vulnerabilities.

And clearly the Batman in Dark Knight Returns
is a guy who's got a lot of vulnerabilities.

GOODMAN: Also, of course, that the
city as a dark, gritty character...

...the city as a morally corrupt world.

These are all things that
Frank Miller loves...

...and come from
the noir detective genre.

JANSON:
There's absolutely no doubt...

...that one of the things that Frank and I
really agreed upon...

...in both Daredevil and Dark Knight...

...was the use of the city,
whether it was New York or Gotham...

...as a second or third character.

I think that probably was
Will Eisner's influence.

I know that both of us
were influenced by Will Eisner.

USLAN:
Part of the advantage of this, I thought...

...was to give the whole superhero thing
and the whole Batman thing...

...the perspective
of a real in-the-street human being.

MILLER:
Whoever Batman was...

...lived inside Bruce Wayne.

And...

But it was not Bruce Wayne.

It was a different
creature that was bigger.

And the entire premise of Dark Knight
sprang from that.

CARLIN: My interpretation of reading the
book, it's like he's almost resentful...

...that he has to admit
that he finally has some vulnerabilities.

Because he's not better
than everybody else.

And he finds he needs to have help when
he thought he didn't need to have help.

He finds that maybe stepping
out of the spotlight as Batman...

...was the worst thing
he could have ever done.

He had been retired and dissolute
for 1O years...

...but because he was more than a man,
it was his comeback.

USLAN: Bruce Wayne's big challenge
is always losing his humanity...

...as he gets deeper and deeper
into the world of Batman...

...which is a very, very dark world.

And sometimes there just is no room left
for Bruce Wayne.

And it's Commissioner Gordon
and, in this particular story, Carrie...

...that serve as anchors on that humanity.

NARRATOR: Carrie Kelley
gave Bruce a way out.

Someone he could confide in
as well as train.

A female was now in the role of Robin.

She was every bit as powerful
as her predecessors.

And some say a female Robin
was long overdue.

MILLER: It was funny
because when I first started Dark Knight...

...there was gonna be no Robin.

I always thought the character was
a nuisance.

And then I was on a cross-country
plane flight with John Byrne.

And he said,
"Do Robin, but make her a girl."

And I thought,
"What if she is this plucky character...

...who doesn't belong in our world either?"

NARRATOR".
Because of the treatments...

...Frank Miller created
one of the more indelible characters...

...to tear through the pages
of a Batman comic.

MORRISON: So I think we were all
primed for it at the time...

...and we wanted to see
these kind of radical reinventions.

And the idea of a female Robin
was kind of long overdue.

It was a surprise it had never been done.

And in the '50s and '60s,
we were trying to steer away from...

...you know, the potentially negative
connotations...

...of Batman's living arrangements
because of the Wertham trials.

So they had the opportunity then
to introduce Batgirls and Batwomen...

...but there was never a female Robin.

"NARRATOR". Carrie Kelley was the obvious
answer to a character...

...that was becoming outmoded.

As Robin,
we had a new counterpoint to Batman...

...and one that put a fresh spin
on the dynamic duo.

MILLER: There had to be a light, I guess,
to show off the darkness.

Because he's all gray and black.

And, uh, she's all red
and, you know, yellow and so on.

And, uh, also, I wanted
to feature his age...

...by having someone
who was so much younger.

It would make him as old he was.

As the series progressed,
she became a richer and richer character.

And I really did fall in love.

"NARRATOR".
The villains are equally as developed...

...similar to the style we are
accustomed to in any great novel.

The four books taken as a series...

...show Batman having to sort of work his
way through an escalation of villains.

MILLER:
So much of writing heroic fiction...

...involves defining the heroes
through other people.

And Batman is best, uh, described
by his villains.

"NARRATOR".
The villains were carefully selected.

Each had a unique menacing psychosis...

...all revealing shades
of Batman's personality.

MILLER:
I deliberately went from one to the next...

...so that...

You would see it first with Harvey Dent,
you know, with Two-Face...

...that Batman was two people.

And then with the Joker.

That the Joker was his nemesis.

The Greeks would have a character...

...who was...

Who had hubris...

...who would then be menaced by Nemesis.

"NARRATOR". Although today,
we take the Joker for granted...

...as Batman's greatest villain...

...there was a time when Miller's choice in
making the character symbiotic to Batman...

...was seen as a decisively bold move.

Miller showed us just how connected
the Joker was to Batman.

One could not survive without the other.

USLAN: Have you ever read a Civil War story
or seen a Civil War movie...

...in which you have one soldier
from the South...

...one soldier from the North
killing each other on a battlefield...

...both Americans,
dying in each other's arms?

I've seen those images,
and they have always resonated with me.

I see the same image
with Batman and the Joker.

USLAN:
There is this real deep-seated...

I don't wanna say camaraderie.
It's not camaraderie.

But I think they both have experienced
the same hell.

JANSON: I just, you know,
loved, uh, taking the Joker...

...to such an extreme place.

Um, and again, it's to Frank's credit and his
writing that, uh, we were able to do that.

You know, there's no doubt,
he's not a clown.

He's crazy. He's nuts.
Uh, he's a psychopath.

Um, and that really is a lot different
than the Joker that had been portrayed...

...you know, prior to Dark Knight.

The Joker is a demon.

But he has no reason to exist
without there being a Batman.

And so as soon as Batman appears,
the Joker reawakens like Lazarus.

"NARRATOR". Having the Joker
become reliant upon Batman...

...opened up a new interpretation
for the villain...

...and expanded on the work
of Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson.

Here was a Joker that harkened back to the
homicidal character in his early days...

...but with a deeper twist.

This Joker never wanted
to be separated from Batman...

...even in death.

USLAN: I've always believed that the battle
between Batman and the Joker is eternal.

I think they, or some form
of Batman and the Joker...

...have been engaged
in this personal one-on-one warfare...

...since the beginning of time,
and will be doing this dance forever.

In many ways... This is the first time
I've really thought of it in this way.

I've read Dark Knight a lot
and I've thought about it a lot...

...but I really started to think
about the structure and how it works...

...and the villains that he chose.
Because it's not really...

He doesn't fight Killer Croc and
the Penguin. It's very deliberate.

In the first book, he fights Two-Face.

And there's constant images of Batman
coming face-to-face with the bat.

So that character's clearly used to set up
everything that will happen in the book.

And then you have the Mutant Leader
who kind of is set up once as Batman...

...and the second book is kind of
Batman versus society, almost.

You know, and we're seeing as they start
to understand that he's back...

...and he's up against the cops,
and he's up against the government...

...and he's up against the media.

And so the Mutant Leader really represents
all of that, I think, you know.

It... The fight takes place as a spectacle.

It's kind of like a wrestling match.

It becomes, like, it's Batman against the...
Basically the entertainment monolith.

Batman against the people
and subjugating the Mutant Leader...

...as monstrous, angry social force...

...and suddenly,
okay, Batman has now tamed the city.

Now, in the third one,
he's up against madness and the Joker...

...and set in, you know, candy colors
and fairgrounds...

...and it accelerates to absolute horror.

And finally, he's up against,
not only as a citizen...

...a nuclear winter is going on
and he has to fight Superman.

And this is him against the elements,
it's Batman ascending to myth.

"NARRATOR".
Miller achieved the impossible.

He transformed Superman
into the real enemy of the state...

...where he became part of the problem.

It was an unexpected
emotion for the fans...

...to find themselves angry with Superman.

GOODMAN: When you think about this book
back in its historical context...

...the idea of vilifying
Superman was crazy.

And it was a new idea.

We're still hearing the ripplings
of this argument...

...that "Oh, Batman's a better character
than Superman"...

...or, you know, "Batman's, uh, the more
interesting, the tougher character"...

...or the one with this sort of moral right
that Superman doesn't have.

And that's all because of Miller convincing
us of that argument in this book.

NARRATOR: Miller made Superman the lackey
of President Reagan...

...and unpopular position
for the comic book audience at large.

But this was the genius of Miller.

Always poking and prodding at society...

...challenging our allegiances.

MILLER: See, it always struck
me as completely silly...

...that World's Finest Comics
would have Batman and Superman as pals.

I mean, why would these two people
like each other?

They're complete opposites.

I mean, that's like...

You just don't expect a crabby terrorist...

...to like a good soldier.

And so they don't really end up
liking each other...

...so much as forming an alliance.

MORRISON: The portrayal of Superman
is really contentious...

...but it worked so well
within this doctrine of the book.

And it kind of is the ultimate...

Here's the new superhero
taking on the old superhero.

Superman set against pastoral scenes
and, you know, images of the American flag.

The first introduction of Superman
is done as a dissolve...

...from the stars and stripes
into the S on Superman's shield...

...so you get the feeling
that we're in no doubt...

...that he's equating Superman and America
at this moment...

...a particularly conservative,
mummified version of America.

GOODMAN: Miller is satirizing our image
of the flag as the symbol of power...

...the symbol of nationalism.

The fact that the president
literally wears the flag as his suit...

...is making fun of it and is saying,
"Okay, this is just a facade."

I think Frank was going
for the symbolism...

...of only "the American way"
of Superman's trademark slogan.

I think the "truth and justice" part
he wasn't caring about.

And I think he was using Superman to say:

"You know, the American way
isn't always the way."

TIMM:
I don't think he's saying...

...that Superman is de facto a bad guy
or a wimp or a patsy.

I think Superman literally
is supposed to represent America.

And America is, in its idealized form,
a great, great thing.

But it's not perfect.

MILLER:
I was a confused young man.

And to me, the American flag seemed to
represent a variety of possibilities...

...most of which I did not respect
all that much.

What Miller is attacking, the illegitimacy
of false authorities at every turn...

...and that Superman, um,
is answering to a false authority.

Superman is appeasing
his own conscience by saying:

"Well, I have permission to do what I do."

Superman kills more people than Joker
in this story, certainly.

Implied in the fact that he is the
war machine of the president.

Um, but he gets to sleep at night because
he's been given permission to do it.

In his unwillingness to self-examine,
Superman is weakened...

...and Superman's authority is weakened.

And Batman, of the two, is the only one
willing to make the tough decisions...

...the only one willing to cross the line
and do the difficult things.

And so he kind of becomes
the one true authority.

So again, it was part of the whole
revitalization he was going for, I think.

That Batman, the ultimate human,
had to beat this figure into submission.

MILLER:
Batman up against a very good man...

Um, and, you know,
obviously a very powerful man.

...To me completed the circle
for who Batman was.

That he was anti-establishment.

He was not, um, an obedient citizen.

And his idea of dealing with crime
and with corruption...

...was to, um, attack it with full force.

And ignore the law.

Ultimately, the two had to have
their showdown.

Also ever since I was a little kid...

...I wanted to see Batman
kick the shit out of Superman.

It's just one of those things
I always wanted to see.

"NARRATOR". Perhaps the final jab
at America and its culture...

...came in the way Miller used the media
throughout The Dark Knight Returns.

GOODMAN: It was really interesting and
unusual to be as contemporary as it was.

Um, you weren't used to opening up a comic
book and seeing a picture of Ronald Reagan...

...clearly Ronald Reagan,
clearly the current president...

...um, and lampooning him.

MILLER: I regard being a cartoonist
as being kind of like an assassin.

Only all he fires is rubber darts.

And he fires them in different directions
and he's willing to hit anybody.

He's not gonna hurt them...

...they'll just have those stupid things
stuck to their heads.

O'NEIL: You know,
if we're gonna do this work honestly...

...and not be a hack, your own
feelings are going to creep into it.

Sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly.

As I went about doing Batman...

...what I wanted to do was to show him
as a grand and glorious figure.

Wagnerian.

The best way to do that
was to contrast him...

...with the utter silliness
of the world that surrounded me.

I'm a news junkie.

And to me, the world is run by amateurs
and is a pretty funny place.

And so to have this Wagnerian hero...

...all of a sudden in the midst of it...

...would cause these
petty, paltry reactions...

...that frankly I thought were funny.

"NARRATOR".
Panel after panel, page after page...

...he showed us the reporters, pundits and
talk show hosts that permeated our society.

Here it was, right in our faces...

...in a giant soup of buffoonery
mixed with paranoia...

...all for entertainment value.

Frank's pen artistically depicted
just how far off the deep end we have gone.

MILLER: And a lot of Dark Knight,
was done with me laughing out loud.

I mean, a psychologist wearing
a button saying, "Hey, I'm okay."

That kind of thing is just a touch beyond
what we're already seeing.

We're all just used to that now.

You at home are watching a talking head
right now. And it's just normal.

For those reasons...

...it's up there with Wall Street
and American Psycho...

...as this mythic document of the '80s.

NARRATOR:
Each reading of The Dark Knight Returns...

...gave us something unique...

...something we could deeply glean from
the writing and the social commentary...

...to the artistic choices used to
help express the folly and conflict...

...of the greatest of DC champions,
both in Batman and Superman.

It was a hard-hitting and seminal work...

...but in order to have maximum impact...

...the way it reached the public
needed to be equally potent.

If Frank Miller had to deal with the format
of the pamphlet weekly comic book...

...with approximately 20 to 24 pages
of new material in an issue...

...interrupted left and right
by advertisements...

...it wouldn't have had the impact.

It wouldn't have worked.

A new format had to be invented.

O'NEIL:
A Prestige edition...

...is a 48-to-72-page story,
or part of a story...

...that's printed on
coated stock, it's slick.

Uh, The New Yorker
as opposed to your daily newspaper.

JANSON: I think that was exactly the point,
was to make it stand out on the news-stand...

...and give it some, uh, specialty,
some singularity...

...something to make it stand apart
from the regular comics.

Just the appearance of it
sent a signal that, uh...

...at the very least you wanna pick this up
and page through it.

You wanna check it out.

JANSON: You know, I know that Frank
was very heavily invested...

...in making sure that it did, uh,
stand apart from the monthly books.

Urn, but I also know that, uh, you know,
Jenette was involved in this...

...and that Dick Giordano, who, uh, I
have a great deal of affection for...

I remember him using phrases like, uh,
"We have to push the envelope."

We have to try something different.

"We have to, uh, move the, uh,
dial a little bit further."

KAHN: As with Watchmen, too, I think we
just would run up and down the hall saying:

"Look at this, look at this." Heh.

Uh, you know, also waiting for a long time
for the pages to come in.

But when they did come, always say,
"Oh, my God, this is so special.

Look what we're doing right now."

O'NEIL: What is this anyway?
Is this a comic book or something new?

Miller structured these books...

...in an unusually, uh, rigid format.

MILLER:
I came up with The Dark Knight format...

...um, so that each one would be
square-bound and 48 pages long...

...and I made the pages...

...really rather incredibly dense
with material...

...because I wanted to keep people
tied to the narrative.

Immediately it creates a kind of
imposed pace to your reading it.

A kind of a beat, beat, beat, uh,
to the reading of it.

JANSON: The pacing is absolutely, um,
integral to the emotion.

The emotional reaction, um,
is really predicated on...

...you know, the content of the story...

...and the ability to pace it correctly
so that it has some power and some effect.

It's a very deliberate choice on Frank's part
to lay out and design the book in that manner.

Right down to the specific shot.

"NARRATOR". Like a director making choices
on where to put the camera on a film set...

...so did Frank Miller
make his own choices...

...on what the comic-book panel
would showcase from scene to scene.

USLAN:
Frank was directing a movie.

I really think
that's how you have to look at it.

So it's not traditional comic book.

It is graphic novel
and graphic novel and cinema go together.

And depending on the graphic artist,
to one extreme or another...

...um, here, I truly believe
he was writing and directing a movie.

So that you had scenes
that were intercut...

...you had cutaways...

...uh, you had more than one set of action
going on at a particular time.

GOODMAN: Then once you have
that cinematic pace and rhythm...

...you have the opportunity to break it
for impact.

You have the opportunity to suddenly
create, like, a splash page...

...of the first time we see Batman
in his costume...

...as he descends from
the sky in the storm.

Um, and, you know, you can hear the music,
you can hear the soundtrack...

...because it's so cinematic.

And all of a sudden now,
we're hitting the big hero shot.

Um, uh, you can quicken the pace,
you can slow the pace.

Uh, so it gave all sorts of opportunities
to break that mold.

And all of a sudden,
when something doesn't fit...

...you know, when, uh, the word
of somebody screaming...

...or a "crack" of a bone breaking
breaks through those panels...

...now all of a sudden, that has
more impact and really grabs you...

...and you know, gets you in the gut.

"NARRATOR". But this ingenuity
only partly came from instinct.

Long-standing inspiration
also played a key role.

Frank Miller's style became the embodiment
of everything he had ever learned.

MILLER:
When I first moved to New York...

...I found comic-book artists
to be among the most generous people...

...I've ever met in my life.

And I got to meet a lot of the old guys.

Almost all of whom are dead now.

And they taught me techniques
and gave me examples of work...

...that went far back
to sometimes the '30s.

I'm lucky to have learned them
well enough to use them.

That's one of the reasons
why I don't draw on a computer yet.

And believe it or not...

...it takes about a year and a half to learn
how to use, um, a ruler and a brush together.

But once you know how to do it,
you got gold on your hands...

...because your staircases become warm.

And there's just enough wrong with them
for you to believe them.

As far as the penciling goes...

...well, this little old Ticonderoga
works just fine.

I don't like mechanical pencils
because they bother my hand.

And, uh, things like using rubber cement
or liquid frisket...

...all these techniques
are ones that I learned from masters.

Urn, and I intend to keep using them.

USLAN: I've also seen the influence
of manga and anime in his work as well.

Um, he is someone who has just
taken in so much...

...from everyone from Will Eisner to great
directors and then made it his own.

"NARRATOR". Inspired by the best, it is clear that
Frank Miller's artistic sense is extraordinary.

But in the world of comics...

...extraordinary can transcend to
master-work with the right team.

One key member was inker Klaus Janson.

JANSON:
With Frank's pencils...

Frank's, uh, pencils ranged
from, uh, being elegant to crude...

...depending on the image
that was being drawn.

Obviously you're not going to draw
a love scene in a crude manner...

...but you will draw, for instance...

...an action scene of somebody
being thrown through a window...

...uh, in a more brutal hand motion.

"NARRATOR".
Inking, as its namesake implies...

...is the usage of ink
applied to the penciled image.

The contrast heightens the emotion
of the sequence...

...as our eyes are guided
from character to character.

I know that when I'm drawing, the hand will
respond to the emotion in the scene that I feel.

Um, so it's important that the inker
is aware and can look at the work...

...and see the differences
and try to pick up on that.

MILLER:
In the course of drawing Batman...

...as much as he is transformed
across the series, um...

Because he starts out
as kind of a Neal Adams Batman.

And he ends up being more like
the Incredible Hulk or something.

Um, as much change as there was...

...there was less
than my hands were guiding me to...

...because I would pull it back,
or I would find a way to amplify it.

Um, and I felt that, um...

...by the midpoint of the series,
I'd really found my Batman.

JANSON:
It's a funny process, um...

...which, uh, remains I think a mystery to
most civilians, if I could use that phrase.

It's akin to what, uh, I know about,
say, acting.

Uh, you memorize the lines,
but then you forget them...

...and you get on set
and you get into the scene...

...and the lines will
then have more meaning.

And I think it's very similar,
being an inker.

In a sense, you memorize the lines
and then you forget about it.

MILLER: Klaus, um, you know,
as he had on Daredevil...

...he smoothed out my rough edges a lot...

...and was able to bring his facility,
which I didn't have at the time...

...um, to bear.

JANSON: I always look at the pages, uh,
very, very diligently.

I really try to analyze what the penciler
is trying to do.

Um, I try to figure out what the weaknesses
are and hopefully fill those in...

...because I think that's
part of my job as a...

That's part of the definition of being,
I think, an effective, good inker.

Um, but I also try to...
I push it just a little bit further.

One of my, uh, favorite things to
contribute is adding texture, uh...

...and the ability to, uh, contribute
to the storytelling through texture.

Whether it's Zip-A-Tone using dot patterns or
spatter using, you know, a brush technique.

Or using cross-hatching.
Texture is anything.

You know, shrubbery, grass. Anything
that is a gray is basically a texture.

Texture is something that I can contribute
to almost, uh, any pencil job...

...and improve the relationship
of black to white...

...the ability to form shapes...

...um, the ability to guide the eye
through the panel on to the next panel...

...and through the entire page.

Um, it's always about storytelling.

It's always about helping the reader, uh,
guide their eye through the page...

...making them look at
what you want them to look at.

We really created a third entity.

It was neither Frank's work nor my work.
It was a third person.

He's a terrific guy
and he was a superb partner.

"NARRATOR". But as with any master-work,
the labor of its creation...

...can lead to conflict.

MILLER: In Dark Knight, we began to
drift apart, just creatively, um...

...because I was into all
the European stuff...

...and the Japanese stuff
and all of that...

...and he was still very much
in the tradition of DC.

You know, there's one issue
where I redid a bunch of it...

...because I wanted a certain look.

There was a point, uh...

There was a point in the, uh,
project that, uh...

...Frank was unhappy with the work
that I was handing in.

My policy has always been
and remains to this very day...

...that if a penciler is not happy
with my work...

...I will re-ink it, uh, free.

And, uh, Frank took it upon himself...

...to not avail himself
to that offer, uh...

...which is his right...

...and took it upon himself
to re-ink, uh, a couple of pages...

...that he was unhappy with.

MILLER: I had clone layouts,
particularly for the end of the book...

...that I ended up throwing away.

Um... And because I wanted to go
for the quieter ending that I went for.

JANSON: ls Frank tough to work with?
Is he demanding?

Does he know what he wants? Sure.

Um, do I know that going into it? Sure.

Uh, do we have an understanding
of each other? I think so.

If you're going to work with somebody
who's, you know, good...

...or under the best of circumstances
better than you...

...uh, you have to rise to the challenge.

And there's no guarantee, by the way,
that you'll actually be able to do that...

...but you know that in
accepting that challenge...

...uh, that you will do work that is at least
better than the work that you normally do.

It's part of that whole process of working with
people who do challenge you, like Frank...

...and who do inspire you like Frank.

Uh, and perhaps I even learned that, you
know, from working with people like Frank.

Now that he's drawing his own work,
it's wonderful to see...

...because he's... Because he's... It's...

You know, when you work with a partner...

...there's nothing better
than to seeing him fly alone...

...and he's become quite good at it.

"NARRATOR".
Also contributing to this master-work...

...was colorist Lynn Varley. ..

...whose unique style brought something new
and unsuspecting to the readers.

CARLIN: Lynn was at the time one of the
best colorists going in the business...

...and there is a real limitation...

...to the regular comic book separation
system that was being used back then.

The process at the time was called "blue
line," which was that the black artwork...

The black-and-white artwork
was shot on paper, on heavy stock paper...

...in blue, in non-reproducible blue.
In a blue that would not reproduce.

And then Lynn, uh, would color over it.

"NARRATOR".
Lynn incorporated the use of gouache...

...an opaque watercolor that provided
both the signature muted tone...

...and expanded the color palette
of comics to new levels.

CARLIN: I think Lynn came
up with the gouache, uh...

...and just the whole look.

It's a little bit of a muted palette
except for when you get to Robin...

...and when you get to, you know,
Batman's oval.

It's like... It's a real standout
when you get to those things...

."because, uh,
the city is kind of dingy-looking.

The application of liquid,
whether it was gouache or watercolor...

...but the fact that it was wet
would distort the paper...

...no matter how heavy the paper stock was.

You had to put a black plate on top of it
which was shot on acetate...

...but the black plate
almost never matched the blue line...

...because the blue line was distorted.

So it was a rather involved and a tedious,
time-consuming approach to the work.

But it's a measure, I think,
of the amount of dedication...

...that everyone had on the project, uh...

...and Lynn's interest in pursuing, you
know, this particular approach to color.

"NARRATOR". Tying in with its
glossy page prestige format...

...gouache stood out as something fresh.

It was the perfect storm
of commerce and art...

...demonstrating to an industry
what was possible.

O'NEIL:
Lynn didn't have to worry about...

...the limited 122-shade color palette...

...that had been the great iron lock
on comic book creativity for years...

...because it's all the presses
would accommodate.

JANSON: I think that it was her and
everyone's feeling on the project...

...to try to, um, stretch as
much as we could individually...

...and achieve something
that was bigger, better...

...than the usual, uh, work, uh...

...that a monthly comic might,
you know, produce or look like.

MORRISON: With every page it's like this
young guy showing you the possibilities.

"Look at all this," you know?

So there's a kind of enthusiasm
in every page of it.

"Here's what we can do. Here's what we
can do. I'm gonna prove it to you."

This was, to a great
degree, his baby. Um...

So he... It was a moment where everything
really fell together and came together...

...in a, uh, very, very effective
and powerful way.

GOODMAN: I don't know
which one was, uh, Frank's intention...

...to be first and foremost.

What's clear is that this
story is many things.

Um, it can be read on
many different levels.

It can be read as social commentary.

It can be read as a very intimate
personal story...

...about one man struggling with
his inner demons.

One man searching for his own relevance...

...in a world that has
kind of passed him by.

There are so many different, uh,
layers you can look at, this story.

So many different lenses
you can look at it through.

And you can go back and discover another, and
discover another with repeated readings.

That's part of what's really made it, uh,
have staying power...

...and still, uh, be a valid literary work
after 25 years.

For me, I hadn't read Dark Knight
again for a long time.

I reread it when I was writing my book and
wanted to sort of, uh, have it fresh again.

And I was really impressed again...

...because, you know, you figure out a lot
more yourself in the intervening time...

...and suddenly you realize
there's so much going on here...

...than even I figured out
when I was 26 or whatever.

That really appealed to me and I've been
trying to bring that into my own comics.

KAHN: Without question, Dark Knight
has influenced generations of comics...

...and other, uh, iterations of Batman...

...like Grant Morrison's just extraordinary
Arkham Asylum.

I think we've gotten to the point where comics
are considered literature at their very best.

Clearly, not all comics are great
literature, but some of them are.

USLAN:
What Frank did in Dark Knight Returns...

...uh, was show that the Batman, and the
mythos and the world, and Gotham City...

...were much more serious
than the Adam West TV show...

...or the Saturday morning Batman cartoons.

Uh, it was a real reflection of...

...and a real, uh, examination of...

...vigilantism, and evil, and good...

...and what the need and value
of these heroes really could be.

TIMM:
Frank's version of Batman was so popular...

...that was the way they went
with the movie franchise...

...and, um, so then suddenly, you know,
everybody in pop culture...

...suddenly has a whole new idea
of what Batman is.

You know, the movie came out
and it was a huge success...

...and then following right on the heels of that,
you know, we got the Batman animated series.

And then, "Hey, thank you, Frank."
Ha, ha. Because now I have a job.

I've been employed here at Warner Brothers
for 20-some odd years thanks to that.

What I have had the privilege of doing...

...is watching something go
from pulp disreputability...

...to universal recognition
as a valid art form.

I got to see that several times.

Probably the first
and most significant time...

...was the work I did with Frank.

JANSON:
I experienced Dark Knight and Watchmen...

...sort of from the other side.

Urn, so I don't have the experience of, uh,
say for instance...

...discovering, um, you know,
the first Beatle album...

...or David Bowie,
or, you know, certain directors.

Um, but I think that the public was ready
for, uh, this particular medium...

...to grow up a little bit.

They are, uh...

...valid pieces of work, um...

...that have the power to sustain.

KAHN:
There, something felt really right...

...and we had a tremendous will
to see it happen.

And that didn't mean
we didn't run numbers.

We did a lot of due diligence...

...but in the end the final decision
informed by that due diligence was:

"This could be amazing."

And it was.

NARRATOR: Before The Dark Knight Returns
and Watchmen...

...the social voice of comics dealt primarily
with issues plaguing young adults.

In 1986, these two seminal publications...

...broke the barriers and created
a new genetic makeup to the comics we love.

The work of the greats like Frank Miller...

...is forever galvanized in comics
and pop-culture retellings of Batman.

We simply would not have our modern hero had
it not been for one man's determination...

...to find his artistic freedom and voice
in Gotham's protector.

Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns...

...is the cornerstone
to modern Batman stories.

In there, deep in the mind of Frank Miller,
is the proof of legend.

MILLER:
This business is doing comic books.

One of the things I love about my job...

...is that you are essentially making it up
as you go along.

This is, in a way, a community property...

...and so one of us will read
a comic book that comes out...

...and go, "I got an idea how to use that
or how to get there."

And it's perfectly legit.

It's not like somebody's stealing
a plot from Sin City or something.

It's Batman.

I mean, I know I'm doing something
that is contributing to a collective work.

The Dark Knight Returns gave me,
more than ever, freedom.

And that's what, like I told you
about my conversation with Jenette Kahn...

...it's what I've always been after.