Reception
Priced at $2.95 an issue, DC Comics promoted The Dark Knight Returns as a "thought-provoking action story". At the time, Time saw the series' depiction of a "semi-retired Batman is unsure about his crime-fighting abilities" as an example of trying to appeal to "today's skeptical readers". Despite the then-high cost of the single-issue packaging, The Dark Knight Returns sold well.
The New York Times gave the 1987 collected release of the series a negative review. Mordecai Richler felt that The Dark Knight Returns was not as imaginative as the work of Batman creator Bob Kane. Richler commented, "The stories are convoluted, difficult to follow and crammed with far too much text. The drawings offer a grotesquely muscle-bound Batman and Superman, not the lovable champions of old." He concluded, "If this book is meant for kids, I doubt that they will be pleased. If it is aimed at adults, they are not the sort I want to drink with."
IGN Comics ranked The Dark Knight Returns No. 2 on a list of the 25 greatest Batman graphic novels, second only to Batman: Year One, also written (though not drawn) by Miller. The website called The Dark Knight Returns "a true masterpiece of storytelling" with "scene after unforgettable scene."
In 2005, Time chose the collected four-issues as one of the 10 best English language graphic novels ever written.
In 2001 and 2002, DC Comics published The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller's sequel to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The sequel, which differs drastically in style from the original, received mixed reviews but was one of DC's biggest selling titles at the time.
Forbidden Planet placed the collected issue on top of their "50 Best of the Best Graphic Novels" list.
In April 2010, Nicolas Slayton from Comics Bulletin ranked The Dark Knight Returns 2nd in their Tuesday Top Ten feature's Top 10 Overrated Comic Books, just behind Watchmen. "There is no central plot to the comic, leaving only a forced fight scene between Superman and Batman as an out of place climax to the story." "Gone are the traits that define Batman," also citing "misuse of the central character."
Writer Matthew K. Manning in the "1980s" chapter of DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle (2010) calls the series "arguably the best Batman story of all time."
Read more about this topic: The Dark Knight Returns
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)