March 1986--"The Dark Knight Returns"
As Crisis on Infinite Earths drew to a close, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight appeared to give comic-book fans and writers (and its worth remembering that most of the people currently writing comics were young fans at this point) an alternate vision of Superman and Batman's relationship.
As Miller imagines the DCU, Superman and Batman were once friends (he has since sort-of-retconned that in his own All-Star Batman and Robin, where Batman treats the dim-witted Superman with loathing...but in DKR they were clearly very good friends once), but time and political pressures have pushed them apart. The government has forced all superheroes but Superman into retirement, but Bruce Wayne is not taking that retirement well at all. In DKR, Bruce has finally given up denying his need to be Batman: donning the suit once again he takes to the increasingly-violent and chaotic streets of Gotham to wage war on crime yet again.
The president calls Superman in to his office to tell him to bring Batman to heel. Now, what's striking about DKR is that, although Miller is attempting to eliminate the old friendship between Clark and Bruce, he doesn't replace their former affection with indifference. Instead he turns their relationship into a raw struggle for dominance, a struggle to make the other recognize their power and submit. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the end result is a very homoerotic book. Look at the language the president uses below:
Superman is to break Batman by riding him hard. Yeah, that's not sounding sexual at all.
Here's Clark Kent the first time we actually see him in the pages of DKR, when he comes to "talk sense" to Bruce:
Yes, it is certainly in-character for Clark to wear a shirt that's open to the navel, then pose like a romance-cover hero while butterflies and flowers flutter around him and Bruce stares at him.
The hawk and mouse/ predator and prey metaphor below is also pretty darn sexual:
I include those last four panels because they're my favorite in DKR, a rare glint of humor from Miller. DKR has its strengths--it's funny in places, has a compelling narrative and strong characterizations, and a raw vitality that's undeniable, all things generally missing from increasingly-unhinged The Dark Knight Strikes Back and All-Star Batman and Robin.
So eventually Batman and Superman square off in a titanic battle. Superman is weakened from absorbing a nuclear explosion, and Bruce has Kryptonite, a power suit, and allies (Green Arrow and Robin), so the two are fairly evenly matched. The fight is...well...
It's kind of homoerotic.
It turns out that Batman has also taken a drug that will cause his heart to stop (temporarily, so he can feign death and shed his Bruce Wayne persona), right in the midst of his contemplations about how he wants Clark to think about him and his hands on Clark's throat in his most private moments from now on...
Clark cradles Bruce's cooling body in his arms and when the soldiers come to take him away:
So then, to summarize DKR, I have created a LOLBAT:
Now, even though DKR's Superman and Batman are supposedly friends torn apart by politics in the rather-distant future of the DCU, Miller's vision of the relationship between them was compelling and intriguing enough that many writers started writing them as though they had always disliked and distrusted each other. Miller himself does so later: in All-Star Batman and Robin, a just-beginning Batman only keeps Superman from arresting him by threatening to reveal his secret identity, and he appears to feel nothing but contempt for Clark. Miller managed to re-define Clark and Bruce's friendship retrospectively (though admittedly, he's using the same tropes introduced in Batman and the Outsiders #1 three years previously, but he does it with a lot more narrative subtlety and vigor). Other writers pick up the dynamic and run with it as something fresh and new, and within a handful of years it's become canon that Superman and Batman have always only grudgingly tolerated each other--a canon that will hold for more than a decade.
Return to 1985-1990 summary
As Miller imagines the DCU, Superman and Batman were once friends (he has since sort-of-retconned that in his own All-Star Batman and Robin, where Batman treats the dim-witted Superman with loathing...but in DKR they were clearly very good friends once), but time and political pressures have pushed them apart. The government has forced all superheroes but Superman into retirement, but Bruce Wayne is not taking that retirement well at all. In DKR, Bruce has finally given up denying his need to be Batman: donning the suit once again he takes to the increasingly-violent and chaotic streets of Gotham to wage war on crime yet again.
The president calls Superman in to his office to tell him to bring Batman to heel. Now, what's striking about DKR is that, although Miller is attempting to eliminate the old friendship between Clark and Bruce, he doesn't replace their former affection with indifference. Instead he turns their relationship into a raw struggle for dominance, a struggle to make the other recognize their power and submit. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the end result is a very homoerotic book. Look at the language the president uses below:
Superman is to break Batman by riding him hard. Yeah, that's not sounding sexual at all.
Here's Clark Kent the first time we actually see him in the pages of DKR, when he comes to "talk sense" to Bruce:
Yes, it is certainly in-character for Clark to wear a shirt that's open to the navel, then pose like a romance-cover hero while butterflies and flowers flutter around him and Bruce stares at him.
The hawk and mouse/ predator and prey metaphor below is also pretty darn sexual:
I include those last four panels because they're my favorite in DKR, a rare glint of humor from Miller. DKR has its strengths--it's funny in places, has a compelling narrative and strong characterizations, and a raw vitality that's undeniable, all things generally missing from increasingly-unhinged The Dark Knight Strikes Back and All-Star Batman and Robin.
So eventually Batman and Superman square off in a titanic battle. Superman is weakened from absorbing a nuclear explosion, and Bruce has Kryptonite, a power suit, and allies (Green Arrow and Robin), so the two are fairly evenly matched. The fight is...well...
It's kind of homoerotic.
It turns out that Batman has also taken a drug that will cause his heart to stop (temporarily, so he can feign death and shed his Bruce Wayne persona), right in the midst of his contemplations about how he wants Clark to think about him and his hands on Clark's throat in his most private moments from now on...
Clark cradles Bruce's cooling body in his arms and when the soldiers come to take him away:
So then, to summarize DKR, I have created a LOLBAT:
Now, even though DKR's Superman and Batman are supposedly friends torn apart by politics in the rather-distant future of the DCU, Miller's vision of the relationship between them was compelling and intriguing enough that many writers started writing them as though they had always disliked and distrusted each other. Miller himself does so later: in All-Star Batman and Robin, a just-beginning Batman only keeps Superman from arresting him by threatening to reveal his secret identity, and he appears to feel nothing but contempt for Clark. Miller managed to re-define Clark and Bruce's friendship retrospectively (though admittedly, he's using the same tropes introduced in Batman and the Outsiders #1 three years previously, but he does it with a lot more narrative subtlety and vigor). Other writers pick up the dynamic and run with it as something fresh and new, and within a handful of years it's become canon that Superman and Batman have always only grudgingly tolerated each other--a canon that will hold for more than a decade.
Return to 1985-1990 summary