Miller wasn’t the first comic book creator to give Batman a dark sensibility. Miller gave us the best Batman - and the worst one, too. And in the process, he has squandered much of what made the original so great. Today’s Batman, from Christopher Nolan’s austere Dark Knight to the gothic hero of Scott Snyder’s contemporary Batman comics, is inseparable from Miller’s vision of Batman and, in some sense, from Miller himself.īut in the years since Dark Knight, Miller has continued to work with both the character and the brooding sensibility, with increasingly unpleasant results. The four-issue comic permanently redefined the character of Batman, and is arguably responsible for making him the pop culture sensation he is today. The influence of Miller’s Dark Knight, however, extends far beyond this one movie.

It is safe to say that without The Dark Knight Returns, Batman v Superman wouldn’t exist.

The passage in question was an internal monologue from the book’s final chapter, which revolves around a fight between Superman and an aging Batman Batman delivers a pulverizing blow and thinks, 'I want you to remember … the one man who beat you.' Snyder was teasing an epic showdown between the two comic book heroes by referring to one of the most iconic scenes in comic history.īatman v Superman is not even a loose adaptation of Miller’s book, but as Snyder said on the Comic-Con stage, 'It is the thing that helps tell that story.' Imagery and dialogue lifted directly from Miller’s graphic novel appear throughout the movie, and were prominent in its advertising as well. When Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was announced at the San Diego Comic-Con in the summer of 2013, director Zack Snyder introduced the film by bringing actor Harry Lennix to the stage to read a passage from Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 Batman story The Dark Knight Returns.

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