Reading Visually

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was our book club selection for January. This is definitely not the girly, let's-have-a-good-cry, Oprah-esque book club and that's why I love it. We started the bc with the Watchmen and decided to see what the other seminal graphic novel was like. In fact, I am really glad I could talk about this book with a group of mutual comic novices because there were a lot of plot points and even characters that I was clueless about and in this group I felt more than free to admit my ignorance. On a story level it is fairly well written and I can see that at the time the ambiguously moral batman was fresh and exciting take on the classic story. Now of course, we are used to this ambivalent batman and I got a little tired of the story beating over my head whether or not he was good guy or a bad guy. I did like the comments Miller was making about the media and their influence on public opinion. Twenty years later it is still relevant. In fact, I feel the media he depicted as an exageration is very close to our own reality now. One thing that became clear for me in this book is that I am not very good at reading visually. Often I would find my self skipping panels if they did not include text. I would miss important pieces of the story because of this oversight. It is interesting to me that there is almost a skill in being able to read these. I have a feeling that in the future my book club will give me a few more opportunities to practice.


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