If it was an age of heroes, a “Golden Age”, as the Daily Planet reports “Snapper” said in the “Truth to Power” article preceding “Book 1” in The Dark Knight Returns, then it must also have been an age of villains.
It’s a simple assertion to make. Heroes are pointless without some evil, some villains, to fight. And vice versa, if there were no heroes to stop the villains and to defend ‘good’, then there wouldn’t be a story to read. Just and endlessly growing tower of crime reports. But, in this graphic novel, it isn’t that cut and dry. There’s more to the Batman story than black and white. More than good and bad. More than heroes and villains.
The comic book superhero story typically has a protagonist - the hero - and his or her antagonist - the weekly villain. The story is polarized in its panels and in our minds. We read about the crusader who throws himself into the line of fire to save a city [good], or the savior who makes a daring rescue without a thought for her personal safety [good]. The Dark Knight Returns challenges this black and white type of universe in every way, beginning with its hero. The Batman is a dark figure. He’s a vigilante, wealthy and reckless enough to wage a one-man war against the criminal network of Gotham city that he blames for the loss of his parents. He’s an enigma for Gotham’s citizens because he is fighting crime and taking down criminals that might have overwhelmed the police force, but he’s operating with revenge in the forefront of his mind instead of heroics. He’s called dangerous, and he is. A danger to his enemies, definitely, but also a danger to any of Gotham’s citizens or police who get in his way.
And a danger to Bruce Wayne. Readers of The Dark Knight Returns will notice a distinct separation of Bruce and The Batman. When speaking or thinking, Bruce refers to himself in the first person, but he Batman in the third person. The Batman, though a part of Bruce, isn’t entirely under his control. Before his “rebirth” as Batman, we see Bruce in his home, struggling to stay in control of his memories and of his dark alter-ego. Just as Harvey Dent’s face was split in two by the acid to reveal the madness within, so is Bruce Wayne split. Unlike Harvey, though, he’s torn into two separate personas and his darkness is easier to cover up.
In my opinion, the reason Bruce Wayne funded the rehabilitation and surgery that tried to make ‘Two Face’ into Harvey Dent again was to prove to himself that recovery is possible. If Harvey could be free of ‘Two Face’, then couldn’t Bruce one day be free of the Batman?
There is no salvation for Bruce, though. He’s not the hero in one of those black and white stories. He’s the Batman, an anti-hero, and he’s made up of every shade of gray in the spectrum.