40 Years of The Dark Knight Returns

Show notes provided by Joe Peluso This year has been the year of anniversary celebrations on SOMC: 75 years of "I Love Lucy", 75 years of "Adventures of Superman", 60 years of "Star Trek", 40 years of "Transformers", and now the Mint crew looks back to1986 (that's 40 years for those of you who have trouble with math like Joe) and the premiere of "Batman:The Dark Knight Returns". The boys gather in the dusty, dank, decrepit Batcave (the giant penny rolled off its base and knocked over the dinosaur) to examine this ground-breaking work by Frank Miller. As Chris so eloquently put it: "It's not required reading to understand Batman, but it's important to understand the history of the character culturally".    Believe it or not,1986 was part of an era when Batman sales were soft and interest in the character had waned.In three short years a major motion picture would change all that when Michael Keaton's Batman '89 dropped and sales began to pick up rapidly. But there was still work to be done before that cinema shot in the arm from Warner Bros put stacks of Batman books back on the LCS shelves..DC comics had to rebuild trust and interest with the fans and that was going to take time.. Frank Miller's TDKR was an early step upon that path to redemption, but like any work with decades behind it, did it stand the test of time? Was this still a seminal work in the character's canon, or a curious sidestep by an author who was experimenting with the genre?    This is an episode of the SOMC that may surprise you.Not as surprising as the work itself, but nonetheless valid in its analysis of that work. With that cryptic lure, we hope you will listen all the way through, and of course leave your much appreciated comments across our social media platforms.    Oh, Happy Batman Day!