Breathing life into the only dynamic character in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Miller allows us to “hear” Bruce Wayne’s first-person narrative as an insightful running dialog between the person he once was and the person he has become. Wayne’s metastatic attitude toward the conditions of Gotham, a city he must both love and hate, keep him from focusing on the moral dilemma of sacrificing the few to save the many . Wayne’s metatextual comments assist the narrative as much as they reveal his provocative thoughts toward the criminals he seeks to annihilate. Wayne’s thinking is self-centered, and, of course, more appealing as the unconventional superhero. Gordon and Superman’s characters’ embody compassion and remain static throughout the novel. This is not a bad thing.
Dictated by the violence of his past and by the fierce rampage of helplessness he feels for the loss of a functional, loving world, Wayne is looked at as either a “crusader or [a] menace” (49). After the Joker kills over a hundred people in the audience of a night time talk show, Wayne expresses the futility of trying to take on criminals and the public together: “Every year they grow smaller. Every year they hate us more” (129).
Paradoxically, Commissioner Gordon has tremendous concern for the public safety, but he does not blame society as a whole. In fact, he worries repeatedly that after he retires his lack of influence and power will result in more chaos, violence and destruction to Gotham. Here we see the difference between Batman and Gordon. We readily recognize that authorial intention is aimed at keeping the city safe; the dichotomy of how Miller represents these two points of view on method and outcome complicate the characterization of Batman and foreshadow violence for the future.