Frank Miller — The Dark Knight, Forever

Original Art and The Artists

Preliminary Art, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, 10th Anniversary Edition, 1996

The annual Batman Day is this upcoming Saturday, September 18. Although not exactly a national holiday, DC and Warner have used the occasion to commemorate the caped crusader and launch and market new products. 

So, as in the past two years, we honor the celebration in our own way with the rest of the month’s posts devoted to The Dark Knight….

Kicking off…. with a prelim sketch of Batman and Robin from The Dark Knight Returns 10thAnniversary edition by the legendary Frank Miller.

In the ”art coincidence” department, I acquired this piece early this year, and apparently, at about the same time, the finished original (see below) also changed hands separately.

There is of course, nothing I can say or add about DKR that hasn’t been covered elsewhere. 

I did only discover recently that Dark Knight returns became the catchall for the original series only because it’s the technical title of issue #1. Each issue of the four-issue comic book series has its own “title:” 

Issue #1 — The Dark Knight Returns

Issue #2 — Dark Knight Triumphant

Issue #3 — Hunt The Dark Knight

Issue #4 — The Dark Knight Falls

Given its influence on the Batman mythos in all media, The Dark Knight Forever is most definitely not hyperbole.

Back here on Friday.

(Wikipedia has a ton of good DKR trivia assembled in one place here.)

Frank Miller created new art for the 10th Anniversary edition of The Dark Knight Returns, and some of it has made its way into other collections as well. Directly above is Frank’s finished original art.