The Dark Knight Returns 30th anniversary
 

Hard to believe this masterpiece of comics/graphic novels just turned 30! This one along with Heavy Metal Magazine, Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Akira, The Sandman etc. proved comics weren't just kids stuff as it was aimed at mature readers. It had nice artwork done in a ralph Steadman kind of way and good storytelling, not to mention it was a satire on the culture of the time and became a smash hit comic among the masses even critical acclaim. This influenced many films especially Robocop, i read it when it first came out when i was 4/5 as it showed me the world wasn't all sugar coated even in comics and inspired me to a comic fan then i sold my old issues when i was 13 to get the graphic novel version. One of my all time fave GNs.

Edgy teen punk here reporting for duty.

Narcissistic cynical edgy geek who has successfully spawned reporting for duty.

Being edgy is taking the wrong lessons from Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns.

Tbh fam, I never read those comics.

The art's pretty terrible except for four or five "iconic" splash page shots that came out pretty good. There are pages and pages and PAGES of poorly-drawn talking heads arguing with each other with giant angry word balloons. And Batman is constantly talking to himself, and in his own head, he's apparently got a pretty elevated opinion of himself.

...It's honestly not very good. I'm pretty convinced most people like it because they're told they're supposed to. Everything good about it was done better elsewhere. Every single thing.

Ain't missin' much, kid. Watch the cartoon, it's better. Partly because the cartoon doesn't look like it was drawn by a goddamn stroke victim.

Confession: I am not exactly what one would call a "fan" of Frank Miller. Even as a kid, I didn't get why he was supposed to be so great. That's kind of a hipster thing to say, but it's true. I grew up reading about Dark Knight Returns as a little kid, and how great it was, but couldn't get my hands on it for the longest time, and when I finally read it when I was like 9 or 10, I really didn't like it much at all, and while as I got older I had a better understanding of a lot of what it was actually about, it didn't make it dramatically better as a book, it's sill ugly and annoying and self-congratulatory. People were shocked years later when Miller exposed himself as a hack and a lunatic, but I saw that sh*t coming when I first saw his supposed greatest work and was supremely underwhelmed at best and bored and annoyed at worst.

Year One is better. Year One is Frank Miller's only good Batman story. And you can bet, if they hadn't insisted he mostly stick to established canon with only minor deviations, and he was instead allowed to do his own, "unfiltered" Batman origin story, then that book would've been junk, too.