10 Hugely Influential Comics That Changed Everything
2. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns / Batman: Year One (DC Comics)
Admittedly, by including two separate comic book stories in this entry, we may be cheating a bit, but hear us out. Frank Miller's 1980's Batman work is seminal, informing nearly everything fans have known about the character since, and it is hard to separate the influence of The Dark Knight Returns and Year One. To us, they are both every bit as important. Batman is, without doubt, the most popular character in comics. While his comics mightn't have always been at the top of the sales charts (although they are always there or thereabouts), sometimes being usurped by the likes of X-Men and Spawn over the years, Batman is THE icon of comics. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have returned him to the top of the charts in the last few years, and in any interviews with Snyder, he always points to Frank Miller's work as being 'his' Batman that he grew up with. In fact, we reckon it'd be hard to find too many creators working in comics today whose Batman isn't Frank Miller's gritty, tough and stoic version. The Dark Knight Returns is the ultimate future Batman story, a grim but yet operatic vision of a Gotham thrown into chaos and an ageing, hardass Batman being brought out of retirement to bring justice to the city by any means necessary. Year One, conversely, is the accepted Batman origin story (at least until Snyder's Zero Year becomes the origin fans point to). For our money, it is the best Batman story ever told, simple yet effective, dark yet hopeful. It heavily influenced Christopher Nolan's version of Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy (the scene in Batman Begins with the bats following the sonar gizmo in Batman's boot is almost straight out of Year One). We'd also be shocked if elements of Jim Gordon's characterisation aren't included in the upcoming Gotham TV show. Basically, the Batman we know today may have been a very different beast if Frank Miller hadn't done such sterling work in the 80's. Mercifully, this means we can even forgive him for his Batman work in the 2000's, the less said of which the better, because his influence is still so large in Gotham.
