7.1.24

I’ve spent a good chunk of time these past few days reveling in my comic book collection. I’m finally cataloging my collection, and I’ve been focused on getting my graphic novels put into a spreadsheet so I’m ready for Montreal Comic-Con this weekend.

While doing this, I was thinking about how, a few years ago, I tried doing some blogging about my connection to different comics in my collection. I called the project Longbox of Memories. (Longboxes are the literally long boxes that comic books are stored in.) It didn’t work out, mostly because the idea was there, but my commitment wasn’t. I realized yesterday, though, that what I wanted to do back then was essentially a comic book version of what I have been doing on the blog with my Cosmic Jukebox posts.

So maybe the time is right to return to my Longbox of Memories. It’ll allow me to alternate between music and comics — two of my three great pop culture loves (maybe I’ll do the same with B movies sometime) —and hopefully it’ll keep things interesting from a writing and reading perspective.

I’m kicking things off here with the lowest of low-hanging fruits: the indisputable DC Comics classic, The Dark Knight Returns.

I’m not going to spend much time summarizing the story of what was originally a prestige format, four-issue comic book series. Among Batman fans, it’s well known, and there are countless articles online about this outstanding story. In short, a bitter and broken Batman comes out of return, and hell follows with him. Spoiler alert: it ends with a nuclear bomb detonation and Batman riding a horse.

I found the collected edition of The Dark Knight Returns at the Kinney Drugs pharmacy in Morrisville, VT, at the height of Batmania during the summer of 1989. (Read more here.) It had to be a state of Batmania to find such a thing on the tiny drug store’s book rack, right?

I’d read about the story in an issue of SPIN magazine, so I bought it, took it home, and read it in one sitting. It changed my understanding of Batman, comic book storytelling, and writing in general, forever. The examination of aging, justice, and the conflict between what we think we are doing and what we are actually doing was profound. Especially in my 14-year old brain.

The next day was spent on a tractor, tedding and raking hay, preparing for my dad to bale it up. As I made my rounds on the field, the tedder tossing the hay to dry, the rake tidying it up into neat wind rows, my head was firmly rooted in the dark, decrepit Gotham City that was the setting of The Dark Knight Returns. 

I wondered about what could have happened to drive Batman to retirement. I considered how Commissioner Gordon and incoming-Commissioner Yindel could have such profoundly divergent views of the Caped Crusader. I guessed at what could have turned Superman into an errand boy for Ronald Reagan. And for the first time, thanks to Frank Miller introducing Carrie Kelly as a new Robin, I questioned just what the hell Batman was thinking, recruiting kids to fight his personal war on crime.

I went home that night and read the book again, cover to cover. And the next night. And the next.

Since then, I’ve read The Dark Knight Returns once a year, with rare exception. I like to wait for a hot night that’s dripping with humidity and tension, thunderstorms in the forecast. It’s a great mood setter. 

I haven’t read it yet this year. There are plenty of hot summer nights ahead, and you can bet that when conditions are just right, I’ll be pulling my well-worn copy off the bookshelf, finding a comfy spot, and reading it cover to cover.