The Dark Knight Returns – THE BOY AND THE BOOK – Derek Adnams

Page 1 – (11 Panels)

Layout:  Like the sixteen panel grid format Frank Miller used in DKR – four panels across the top, four panels underneath, one panel in the third row and a larger Panel 10 with an insert in spot sixteen taking up the remainder of the page.

1.1:  The cover to the first edition trade paperback of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  It’s brand new, right off the shelf.

Caption:  Once upon a time there was a book.

1.2:  Interior, a small apartment, Christmas Morning.  A Boy of ten or eleven holding the book from Panel 1.1, smiling broadly.  There is wrapping paper littering the carpet and a decorated Christmas Tree just behind the Boy.

Caption:  And on a magical Christmas morning a boy was gifted this book.

1.3:  Interior, evening, a private hospital room in a sterile pediatrics ward.  The Boy from Panel 1.2 is lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV.

Caption:  Shortly thereafter, the boy was imprisoned for what, to a young boy, seemed like an eternity.

1.4:  The Boy sitting up in the hospital bed, reading Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  It’s night and the only light source is a lamp on his bedside table. 

Caption:  And the boy was left with only the book.

1.5:  Interior, night, the Boy’s room in the apartment from Panel 1.2.  He’s out of the hospital and sitting at a desk, drawing.  The desk is lit by a single desk lamp and the boy is wearing pajamas. 

Caption:  The boy lived inside the book, and knew that he wanted to make a book too. 

1.6:  What the Boy’s drawing: an extremely crude replica of a Frank Miller style Batman.

Caption:  But alas, the book was a force of nature and could never me replicated.

1.7:  The Boy, a teenager now, sitting at an old 1990-style word processor.  He’s behind the same desk from Panel 1.5, wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans.

Caption:  He learned about words and for what they were meant. 

1.8:  The Boy, in his late twenties or early thirties, in a business suit, standing before a group of other people in business suits.  They are sitting around a conference table, watching the grown-up Boy giving a Power Point presentation.

Caption:  But he forgot then what he knows now and was an imitation of a happy man.

1.9:  Repeat of Panel 1.1, only a very well-worn and beaten copy.

Caption:  Then he remembered his old friend, the book -

1.10:  Large panel taking up half of the page of the Boy, now in his late-thirties or early forties, sitting at a desk, typing away on a laptop.  He’s wearing a grey t-shirt and black pants.  On the desk next to the laptop is the battered book from Panel 1.9.

Caption:  Becoming the boy again.

Caption:  This will be a good life . . .

1.11:  Inset to Panel 1.10, where a sixteenth panel would be if the 4 x 4 grid structure had been maintained for the entire page, and the smirking face of the grown-up Boy.

Caption:  . . . good enough.

Why The Dark Knight Returns?

. . . because if you were to pierce the fabric of spacetime and ask eleven year old me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would answer “Frank Miller.”  Go back a little further to Coles Books at the Seaview Square Mall just before Christmas in 1986 and you’ll know why – there, in the science fiction section, stands a wide-eyed boy reading a book unlike anything, ever.  That boy was me. This is the book:

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns made me want to create.  This was a classic superhero presented in a manner that was bold and new.  I was too young to truly appreciate everything Miller was doing, and there are plenty of resources available that deconstruct the work, but upon reading it again, for the first time in about 20 years, I can see how it made its way into the pages I write.  My penchant for “talking heads” scenes is a direct correlation to the repeated television screens used throughout Dark Knight Returns, only without the subtext that the newscasters, experts and pundits bring to Miller’s work.  Early in my writing I tried to jam as many panels onto a page as possible, subliminally borrowing from the 16 panel grid layout Miller used to heighten the sense of a claustrophobic Gotham City.  I just didn’t know how to tell a story.

As a kid, the grand vision of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was lost on me.  What wasn’t lost on me were the images – iconic and beautiful.

Like this, the Dark Knight ready for battle:

Or the Dynamic Duo leaping through the night:

And of course the simple cover from Issue #1:

But the image that stuck with me the most was this page, and what Bruce says before dying:

Followed by Superman cradling the body of his fallen friend, telling the soldiers “Don’t touch him.”

This is the type of book I wanted, and still want, to create, and every time I sit in front of another blank page, eleven year old me appears as a reminder that I will never be able to “touch” this masterwork from Frank Miller.

But that doesn't mean I can't try.

One page at a time.