Batman Dark Knight Returns, The Complete Kayfabe Review 

Watching this AGAIN. Thank you guys so much for all you do. You are pure oxygen to the comic culture.

I love this channel, it’s literally perfect

When I was 12 years old in the early 2000's my uncle gave me a big box of Batman comics ranging from the late 70s to the early 90s. In that box was the original 4 part run of Dark Knight Returns. Made me a comic book fan for life. Most of those comics are long gone now sold off or traded, but I still have those 4 issues.

Tried to let this play in the background while I drew, but became engrossed. Great stuff!

This review is absolutely incredible! This is the best review/discussion about The Dark Knight Returns I’ve watched on RU-vid. You’ve done a fantastic job on this video, awesome absolutely awesome.

In the 80s, i read The DKR listening instrumental music from Jan Hammer´s Miami Vice soundtrack. Very effective.

This is one of the milestone videos for Cartoonist Kayfabe. These guys and especially Scioli went in on this comic and gave me a newfound appreciation for it.

It didn't predate CNN but Miller's Batman and Moore's Watchmen do feel like a future that has definitely arrived. And now, in some very sad ways, we all are living what these artists imagined more than 30 years ago.

Return of the Dark Knight was an Excalibur level creation

At 1:56 when Tom talks about the spitting, Ed and Jim clam up and get all weird... AWKWARD... Ha! I love it.

Goddamn it why is your guys’ content so good I’ll never get any work done 😂

I would like to hear your guys' opinion on Dark Knight Strikes Again. I avoided reading it for 15 years because of the hate it receives. I finally read it yesterday and it blew my mind.

Thank you....For celebrating OUR...history in such an indepth fashion

I read this when it came out and it certainly shook up what I thought of comics. You guys do a great job at breaking down the particulars and hopefully helping newer generations of comic fans appreciate just how groundbreaking it was...and still is IMO. But I also appreciate you going into how it's also been over-played, and how things sunk perhaps too far 'into darkness' after it.

This was incredible, I don't know the words to properly articulate how much I enjoyed this. Thanks!

THANK YOU for doing this! Love this review!

It was cool to watch these vids then see Tom's work getting influenced by looking at these panel grids again. Cool experience.

Amazing stuff here. Lot's of thought and substance. No ego.

Best review / discussion of DKR that I've ever seen- great work, guys! Also, is Ed's favorite word BIFURCATION? 😄😉

I recived the fourth part (only) as a xmas present when I was 9. In that time I hated it. It blew my mind. I didn't understand anything. Questions like why Batman and Superman have to fight? Why Batman has a Big gun and a machete in the cover? Why Batman was old and fat? Why Robin was a girl?... Two decades after I read the complete story and I love It.

I was 14 years old when I got issue 2 and 3, I would reread and just look at the artwork in this series more than anything, I felt at this time comics was growing up with me, comics was no longer for kids and I loved it. To this day I still reread and look at the complete mini series.

I was hoping you'd bring up Chaykin

2:02:45 one of my favourite pages ever

10:46 It took me 30 years to realize that the mutants googles were referencing X-Men's cyclops. Gotta see this Fishburne movie. You guys are really insightful. 36:16 It's too bad that Zack Snyder, a real innovator of action movies, totally got a different read of this book than I did. So impressed with Batman's determination to see them suffer for years in fear rather than put them out of their misery. 37:44 I totally believed Jason Todd died to fullfill DK. 2:16:26 I think it was "Dark Knight Over Metropolis," just after Byrne's run on Superman. I thought that too. This is the moment where Batman obtains the Kryptonite he uses in DKR!! They documented that piece of kryptonite everywhere it went. It used to be Luthor's ring. The only piece of kryptonite on Earth.

What a wonderful review!!! I love all your videos but this has made me hungry to reread DKR. Also like you, I was afraid of that trade paper back front cover back in the 80s. Took me a couple of years to read it back then.

Interesting and a really in-deph discussion, I sat through all of it. Thank you. If only I had had this vid some years ago when I taught comics as part of a literature course at a local private high school here in Bavaria, Germany. I used The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City vol. 1 and Wolverine: Origin (the comic, not the crappy movie).

The Fleischer Superman cartoons definitely had that warrior element, with a particular episode featuring Superman destroying a Japanese fleet, in part by dragging ships under by the anchor chain. He was absolutely killing for America in those, and nobody commented on it.

Great analysis on a masterpiece, thank you! 💀🔥🦇

This video represents what Cartoonist Kayfabe did that seemed so unique. Very literate critical analysis. Definitely NOT the way that all comic book nerds talk.

Definetly should be hailed as one of the high water marks of comics as a true art form

Great conversion, I feel like I’m listening to a class. Tom’s point of DKR getting the same reaction that disaster and conflict media elicits was powerful, it is easy to point to something dark and be afraid, it’s much more difficult and rewarding to engage with something hopeful when done well. That’s, I guess, during all these lock downs I started reading the Kyle Higgins power rangers comics and diving into all thing nostalgia. All joy and hope. Love DKR and Watchmen but there needs to be balance

A great discussion!

Outstanding analysis of this modern day mythology. Thank you

I watched it all, at the night of an exam. It was a really good conversation and I loved it. All the powers to you! P.S: If you could please analyze comics not necessairly Anglophone. Especially from Middle-East, Central Asia and Africa that is represented way less.

Fantastic vid.

This was fantastic. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do the same thing for Year One.

the only other set of panels that kinda confused me, beside the first page was Two-Face's thugs playin' cards as he walks in. I got it,but it took a minute.

Frank Miller has said in several interviews that he was mugged while living in New York, and part of the anger he felt about it was channeled into writing Batman. In another interview he cites the books "Culture of Narcissism" by Christopher Lash and "People of the Lie", by M. Scott Pecks M.D. as helping him on the Batman writing. I'd be interested to hear your guys thoughts on Batman: Year One.

I was lucky enough to get the leather bound signed and numbered version. Love this series. I remember standing in the comic shop and looking at number 1 and it cost 5$. I put it back and bought electric warrior 1 and 2!

Only 22 minutes in, so not sure if you touch this (and it is tangential to DKR) but it is a shame that DC doesn't run reprints with the Alan Moore intro from the first trade edition.

An overall good analysis, however Tom was pretty overbearing with his sexual theories revolving around Batman and his relationship with the Joker as well as the killing of Bruce’s parents being depicted as sexual. It seemed like he couldn’t articulate what he was trying to say, so he actively kept falling back on his sexual hypothesis.

Miller was definitely getting ideas from other artists at the time. Miller himself stated (and Byrne has brought this up himself on his own forum several times): "At 30,000 feet. I talk to cartoonist John Byrne about Batman. John talks to me about Robin. 'Robin must be a girl,' he says. He mentions a drawing by Love & Rockets artist Jaime Hernandez of a female Robin. To prove his point, John provides me with a pencil sketch of his own."

Plutonian vs Apollonian god damn Tom Scioli! Hell yeah this is good stuff. Also please finish the Akira series!

If the kid Gordon shot didn't want to get shot, he shouldn't have made Gordon shoot him.

Still have the same copy my mom bought me in 1989.

38:14 Damn..... RIP

Have you guys read "Planetary" or "Top 10"..?

Wow. This deconstruction is Smithsonian level shit

Early 90s was quite fun when Valiant Comics has sleeper hits.. until Jim Shooter was sacked or something..

Is that Jerry Garcia on Ed's shirt?

This is the old testament of comics, all star superman is the new

Fascism is when you dont kill your enemies. Ok.

I love a lot of Batman stories, but yeah, the political implications of a figure like Batman are terrible. We already have police that aren't held accountable enough, having figures that answer to no one and beating up poor people is worse. But I do vibe with the anti-authoritarian and anti-government sides of Miller's work

2:09:16

Bernie Goetz initially received public support, but less so after it was revealed how racist he was. Trivia: One of the men Goetz shot was named Barry Allen (The Flash would die the following year in Crisis on Infinite Earths).

Nuclear Bomb drills at public schools. Nuclear arms race. The future dominated by radioactive cockroaches or dominatrix gasoline warlords. Cold War Childhood in a nutshell.

Was he really drawing this book at 10x15"?

Epic story and I loved it, especially some of Bruce's inner dialogue. However, I prefer to think that Carrie wanted someone to fill the void for a father that she was missing and that Bruce looked at her as a daughter. I don't really see any evidence that in the sequel vats and Carrie were involved in a sexual relationship. Now, by the time of The Master Race, I could accept it, because she'd be at least 19 by that time, which is legal.

homeboy said DKR book 1 looked dirty & pornagraphic to him @12yrs old...uh what. what was goin on in his house. I thought it looked awesome @11yo in '86.