The Dark Knight Returns was a seminal work from 1986. It's been rereleased in untold collections, and now they have yet another one to add to the pile: Nior Edition. It's the story you know and love with all the color stripped out of it. The first thing that struck me about the book is seeing how much it was drawn with the idea of color. I have a feeling their goal was to get Sin City: Batman Edition, but the art is not nearly as clean and readable with just black and white. But once you get used to it, it's still that same Batman story you remember.

I was talking to my brother about getting this edition, and he was very not excited. "I'm done with grim and gritty" was basically the consensus we came to. For so long it feels like a lot of comics have been grim-dark and just plain un-fun to read. Heroes fighting heroes, villians doing the most horrible things immaginable. It just became too much for me at a point. But in re-reading DKR, I've come to appreciate that darker superhero stories can still exist and entertain. It really comes down to the quality of the craft. And when Frank Miller was at the top of his game, he nailed it.

Batman is old, Gotham is beaten, and the world at large hates anything to do with super powered beings. Even Superman, who is actively helping the White House in military affairs, is a four letter word when it comes to broadcast television. It's a plot point they don't delve very far into, but it sets an interesting backdrop. Sure, they've always been viewed as vigilantes, but never censored like this. As Batman decides it's time to return, so does the Joker, which sets up a final showdown. A lot of this book has a sense of finality to it, except for the fact that there was a sequel years later, and a threequel in the works currently.

I do hold issue with the characterization of Bruce, but I guess that's just something that you have to chalk up to Frank Miller's DC Universe which has since been established with the All Start Batman & Robin series from several years ago. His Batman is not the DC Batman at large. I don't see how our bruce Bruce could be so vindictive against Clark to force the kind of showdown that he does. And in the end, Clark is the one who knows what is going on, but let's Bruce continue. Clark still cares for his old friend even though Bruce is too caught up in himself and his crusade to see it. There is definitely something to that angle, but it's not one I enjoyed. I was rooting for Superman.

Thirty years later, The Dark Knight Returns still stands up as a great read. This is not the definitive edition that I think I was expecting, but it is fun to see the line art on it's own. Still, if you have a choice and are reading it for the first time, spring for the color edition. This book is a neat novelty and looks cool on a shelf, but is not the best version of this story.

4 out of 5 Old-Ass Superheroes

(Editor's Note: Ian from McSoss called me out on this not sounding like a 4 out of 5 review, and rightly so.  Basically, the story itself is great, even with my issues with some of the story beats described above, and I would give that a 5. The presentation leaves something to be desired, so that would have been a 3, so I took the average of the two.  Reviewing re-releases is weird espeicially when it's in a different format. In the future I will try to justify my number more clearly in the review text)