Making Gotham Great Again, Part 4: Mitt Romney, Man of Steel
Considering Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns as a Mirror to Today’s Politics
By Shant Eghian
When doing pieces like these, it’s really easy for everything to become one giant Rorschach Test. You see some faint parallels between a book or movie you love and the current political situation, and you immediately start making these ridiculous connections between things that really have no relation at all. “Batman is Trump, so the Joker is Hillary Clinton, because they’re both the archenemies! And The Joker and Clinton both wear lipstick and… stuff…”
Thankfully, I think I’ve mainly avoided that throughout this series, but I have to admit, I started getting suspicious of myself when I got to the subject of this final article: Superman. He’s an integral part of The Dark Knight Returns, and a central part of Miller’s satire, so I couldn’t just ignore him. At the same time, any parallel I drew between Superman and a current political figure seemed to be an exercise in the “Rorschaching” that I was worried about. Is he Hillary Clinton? Robert Mueller? Pepe the frog?
See the previous installments in the “Making Gotham Great Again” series analyzing the themes of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and today’s political culture: Part 1: The Media, Part 2: Law and Order, Part 3: Ronald Reagan and the Republican Establishment
Making Gotham Great Again, Part 3: Ronald Reagan and the Republican Establishment
By Shant Eghian
One of the most innovative aspects of The Dark Knight Returns is that Miller very clearly places Gotham City in the real world of 1980s America, and not a hyper exaggerated comic book universe. Ronald Reagan is president, the United States is locked in an ever-escalating Cold War, and real-life celebrities like David Letterman and Dr Ruth Westheimer are murdered by the Joker. Of course, Miller never comes right out and names these people, but by the way he draws them, it is easy enough to figure out what he is up to.
Based on previous installments of this series, you may assume that Frank Miller would be very supportive of Ronald Reagan. After all, Batman is a stand in for a type of conservatism that, to paraphrase Whittaker Chambers, recognizes the reality of evil and fights it instead of smiling and waving at it (Chambers, Witness, 704). In a time when Reagan was constantly (and rightly) denouncing the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” while many on the Left did not want to hear it, a reader may easily think The Dark Knight Returns is thinly veiled pro-Reagan propaganda. When Reagan does show up approximately halfway through the book however, Miller paints him in a less than flattering light. In almost every appearance, Miller portrays Reagan as a doddering, uncaring fool, who throws American soldiers into Cold War conflicts for no particular reason.
Check out the previous installments in this series: Part 1, The Media, and Part 2, Law and Order
Making Gotham Great Again, Part 2: Law and Order
Considering Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns as a Mirror to Today’s Politics
By Shant Eghian
In an interview with Comic Book Confidential in 1988, Frank Miller remarked that 1980s America was a “very frightening, silly place… it’s often silly and frightening at the same time and [he] hope[d] [The Dark Knight Returns] is silly and frightening at the same time.”
Editor’s Note: Click here for Part 1 of this ongoing series. Warning: spoilers in this and the previous installment.
You do not have to read very far in The Dark Knight Returns to realize that Miller can indeed illicit horror and laughs on the same page, if not in the same panel. Miller’s genius at combining these two seemingly contradictory responses lead to some intriguing commentary on criminality and society’s response to it. And like Miller’s satirical attacks on the media, his observations on modern America’s inability to seriously deal with crime make interesting parallels with the Trump era.
The Harsh Truths of ‘Essex County’
Deconstructing Canadian Culture, Part 3: Graphic Novel Nihilism
By Josh Lieblein
Down the aimless streets of Toronto in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and through the idyllic back country of Letterkenny, lies the way to understanding the way Canadians see themselves, or at least would like to be seen. Both these works are about keeping up a carefully crafted image: the studied apathy and hipsterdom of the big city, and the carefully cultivated simplicity of the country.
But beneath these polished exteriors (that do their best to not appear polished) lies the haunted world of Jeff Lemire’s Essex County. This is the Canada that we don’t talk about, rendered in stark black and white inks.
