The Dark Knight Returns with some improvements.

I remember as a kid watching reruns of the original Batman tv series, the Scooby Doo/Batman crossover, etc. and thinking to myself "Are they serious?". Even then I had trouble believing that this perfect looking, overly polite, rich white guy actually survived in a city with even a semi-serious crime problem. His sidekick was this typical all american who used horrible one liners in a poor attempt at seeming witty and humorous and all the villains were a joke, never really causing anything other than a minor inconvinience. I was never really that into Batman.

That is, until I read Frank Miller's take on the Batman.

In Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller takes a much more realistic look at into who Batman has to be in a real Gotham. In a real world, Batman would have to be a ruthless, vicious bastard to strike fear into the hearts of less than decent men, and that's just how he's presented in this graphic novel. No more goody goody, stop the bad guy before dinner with the family. Here we have a man who has suffered real loss. Not just the loss of his parents but also of his sidekick, Robin. We get to see a gritty old man give the seedy element of Gotham a well placed kick in the groin without stopping to ask if it's ok.

And amidst all this ass-kickery, we see that the Batman is still clothed in the traditional blue and gray. A very nifty touch.

I guess all I really want to say is I like this new direction with this established character. Batman is finally someone the readers can relate to (and considering the fact that he's a billionare who has anything he could want, besides his parents, that's a big thing).