This is my first experience with Batman outside of major cinema (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) and cartoons. The first thing I noticed off the bad was how distracted I felt as I read The Dark Knight Returns. I either found myself flying through the pictures or getting so distracted by the words that I didn’t notice the pictures. This being said I had to keep going back so that I could understand what exactly was going on. I also found that there was a lot more action in this as opposed to Gods’ Man. There were also many more pictures on each page. There was also much less gutter space between images. This being said I had to use more imagination in Gods’ man than in this because I felt a lot more was given. For this reason the story was more straight forward and easy to understand.
One thing I thought was interesting and confusing at one time was how the novel would jump back and forth between action sequences with Batman and what was going on with the news and the public. Though I had to go back a few times I think this added a nice touch to the story. It allows a duel story where you see things through both the public’s eyes and through batman’s eyes. The way some were for batman and other were not really fascinated me. What did this do for everyone else? Did everyone enjoy this aspect of the book or did it confused them? Was this easier to read than Gods’ Man? If you are new to Batman in graphic novels like I am did this live up to what you know about Batman?
This was also my first time delving into Batman outside of the movies and saturday morning cartoons. I agree that going from Gods’ Man to this novel was a very large jump. Compared to Gods’ Man, The Dark Knight Returns seems almost chaotic and it takes a while to get used to the writing style. But once I caught the flow of how to read the pages it was a very good read, and a lot easier to understand the plot because the reader doesn’t have to make guesses at what the plot should be like they would in Gods’ Man.
The scenes that jumped back and forth in the story were very confusing at first, but the further I got into the novel the more I liked them. They really showed society and the media’s very different reactions toward Batman, and I think its really easy to get caught up in the “hero” aspect of the story, but seeing the people who were not pro-Batman really added a whole new dimension to the story. Because that’s kind of the whole point of Batman, not everyone is going to like what he does, but he does it anyway because that’s what he thinks needs to be done. I was a Batman fan before reading this, and I think that this novel made me even more interested in how people (writers, directors, other people in general) view him as a hero.