Le setting se situe dans un des multiples elseworld de DC comics, basé sur la mini série Dark Knight returns, voici l'histoire:
The Dark Knight Returns"
The book is set some 10 years since the Batman was last seen and retains many elements of Cold War culture. It is a dark, depressing world where criminals run amok in the absence of superheroes and effective crime prevention. Gotham City is terrorized by a gang of vicious and aimless teenage murderers, the Mutants. Bruce Wayne, now aged 55, has been retired from crime fighting following the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd (it is never explained in DKR how he died, though he was later killed by the Joker as a result of a telephone poll). Attempting to bury his guilt over Jason's death, Wayne has turned to alcoholism and near-suicidal recreational activities. In an effort to prove to the world (and himself) that ones personal demons can be bested, Wayne has generously funded the rehabilitation of Harvey Dent (a.k.a. Two-Face).
But two events push Wayne back into the dark place in his soul where the Batman resides. First was a chance meeting of two Mutant gang members on the very spot where his parents were killed years before, the second was Two-Face’s immediate return to crime, despite the years of psychological and cosmetic rehabilitation.
But a lot has changed in the years since Batman hung up his cowl. The criminals he now faces are not organized as they had been, rather they are an unfocused band of kids who could kill for money, drugs, or just for thrills. The city has also changed. Where the public once hailed Batman as a hero standing up for the citizens of Gotham, now there are those who cry out that Batman is violating the villain’s civil rights. The media, the Mayor’s office, even police officers start to debate whether Batman is a savior or a menace.
But the change Batman notices the most is the change in himself. He’s an old man now, not able to leap as easily from roof to roof on as little sleep as he used to. His body takes longer to recover from blows and he gets winded much quicker than he ever remembered in the old days.
The first episode ends with Batman foiling a plot by Two Face to blow up Gotham’s twin towers. Batman sees that Dent’s face is not split into its normal good/evil sides, rather it is all clean and handsome as a result of the plastic surgery. However, Dent is still psychotic as ever. Batman comments that looking at Dent is like seeing a reflection, indicating that the monsters inside us may never entirely fade away.
"The Dark Knight Triumphant"
The second part chronicles Batman's struggle against Gotham's newest criminal threat, the vicious Mutant gang. The Mutants have gotten so sure of their power and the ineffectiveness of the Gotham PD that one of their own, a teenager with an M60, attempts to kill Commissioner Gordon on his way to work. Gordan shoots and kills the teenager in self-defense.
Batman discovers that an Army general has been supplying the Mutants with military weapons in return for cash payments. The general justifies this by using the money to help his sick wife, but still shows remorse for his actions when Batman confronts him. The General commits suicide shortly after confessing what he has done.
Meanwhile, the Mayor has appointed Ellen Yindel to succeed James Gordon after his mandatory retirement. Yindel is extremely qualified for the position and actually respects Gordon and his career, but she despises vigilantes, Batman most of all, and cannot see how Gordon could have turned a blind eye to the Dark Knight’s actions all these years. It is because of this strong anti-Batman stance that the Mayor appointed her.
Across town, a 13 year old girl who Batman rescued in the first story, Carrie Kelley, decides to seek out her hero and aid him in his fight. She buys a Robin outfit using her school lunch money and slips out of her window to find Batman.
Batman, meanwhile, steers the Batmobile (shown here as a powerful tank-like machine with huge guns) towards the Mutant’s meeting ground (the city dump). The gang gathered there at the request of the Leader so that they could storm police HQ en masse. Carrie Kelley watches as Batman opens fire with the guns on his tank (Batman assuring the reader that he is only using rubber bullets). As the smoke clears, the only person left standing is the Mutant Leader, who stands directly in the gun sights and challenges Batman to single combat. After some hesitation, the Dark Knight takes the challenge.
The fight goes badly for the Batman. His advanced age and the fact that he has been out of practice at hand-to-hand combat for years simply make it easier for the powerful Leader. Batman gets in a few good hits, but it’s only delaying the inevitable. Just as the Leader is about to slaughter Batman, he is distracted by Carrie who then hustles Batman’s broken body into the Batmobile and away.
En route to the Batcave, Carrie attends to Batman’s wounds as best she can. Once home, Batman makes a speedy recovery and decides to take Carrie on as the new Robin, despite Alfred's objections. The matter of the late Jason Todd is raised, but Batman is impressed enough with Carrie’s resourcefulness and skills.
The Mutant Leader, now in police custody, still threatens to unleash his army onto the streets and raze Gotham to the ground. The Mayor tries to show that he doesn’t need Batman’s heavy-handed vigilantism and offers to negotiate a deal with the Leader, one on one. The Leader rips the Mayor’s throat out with his teeth.
Batman has Carrie dress up as a Mutant gang member and spread a rumor that the Leader wants an assembly. With Gordon's co-operation, the Leader is allowed to escape from jail through a waste pipe. Batman assaults the Leader in a huge mud-hole to compensate his physical disadvantage by slowing down the movements of his opponent using his knowledge of vital points. With thousands of Mutants looking on, Batman is finally able to defeat his opponent.
The Leader's defeat has the desired effect: the Mutants disband. However, as an unforeseen side-effect, they start forming various splinter groups including Neo-Nazis and armed robbers wearing Richard Nixon-masks. Some of them even rename themselves the Sons of the Batman and take on criminals instead of innocent people. However, unlike their inspiration, they are not above using lethal force and overstepping the mark in other ways. For example (featured in the next issue), one of the sons-of-Batman kills some store thieves with a shotgun, and then cuts off the fingers of the store clerk who failed to stand up to them.
James Gordon, meanwhile, is looking forward to his retirement from the madness of Gotham and is concerned about the predicament that Batman will once again find himself in: caught between criminals and the police. He does warn Yindel that Batman may be too big an issue to be considered as simply just a vigilante. Yindel responds by immediately issuing a warrant for Batman’s arrest.
"Hunt The Dark Knight"
"Hunt The Dark Knight" returns Batman to his classic struggle, against the incomprehensible madness of The Joker. Newly awakened from his catatonia, the Joker has been slowly returning to his mad schemes while still incarcerated. He convinces his psychiatrist, the fame-seeking (and Batman-hating) Dr. Bartholomew Wolper, that he is not only sane, but regretful. Seeking to discredit Batman, Wolper intends to exhibit the Joker on a late-night show ("David Endochrine", parodying Late Night with David Letterman) in order to "prove" that the Joker is actually a victim of Batman's own "psychosis." Not pleased with this turn of events, Yindel places a heavy guard on the building. However, she still sees the primary threat as Batman and intends to arrest him if he appears. As the police are occupied with attacking Batman, the Joker murders everyone in the studio (including Endochrine and Wolper) with his "smile gas" and escapes. Batman follows him to Selina Kyle's, where the former Catwoman has become a depressed, alcoholic and overweight madame. The Joker uses two of her girls to drive local politicians to suicide. He then beats and dresses Selina Kyle up as Wonder Woman, leaving a clear clue for Batman to follow.
When the police burst into Selina's flat, Batman and Robin escape, but Yindel notices the young sidekick and adds "child endangerment" to the list of charges against Batman. But he then calls her up on her radio to say that it is up to her to rescue the Governor from another Joker threat. Yindel is left lost for words.
With the police on his heels, Batman, accompanied by Robin, tracks the Joker down to a county fair. They arrive too late to prevent the Joker from poisoning to death a group of young Cub Scouts, but Robin is dispatched to prevent the Joker's accomplice from blowing up a rollercoaster loaded with riders. Robin succeeds in getting the bomb clear of the ride on the moment of exploding, but in the fight that follows, the Joker's accomplice is killed. Meanwhile, Batman pursues and defeats Joker in a bloody and violent showdown. Throughout the past days, the Batman has been thinking of doing what he never would before: kill the Joker and end the cycle of meaningless deaths once and for all. But in the end, he still will not bring himself to kill his old enemy, stopping himself before fully killing the Joker, leaving him paralyzed instead. The Joker, laughing madly at Batman's seemingly cowardly action, commits suicide by further twisting his own broken neck, intending for the police to charge Batman with murder.
In this episode, Superman is introduced as an undercover agent for the American government (under a President who is unnamed, but recognizable as Ronald Reagan). Superman travels to Gotham to persuade Batman to keep a low profile. However, tensions with the Soviet Union are reaching a head over U.S. support for a South American country named Corto Maltese (a reference in the comic strip to Hugo Pratt), and Superman is called away to "deal with it." He and other superheroes, like Green Arrow and Wonder Woman, are referred to only by their civilian names: i.e., "Clark" or "Kent", "Oliver" and "Diana".
Also, the Sons of the Batman have begun to make their presence known, taking an even more brutal - and deadly - tack towards criminals than Batman. Despite Batman's non-involvement, the actions of the "SOB's" only incenses the growing anti-Batman forces in the government and media further.
"The Dark Knight Falls"
Cover to "The Dark Knight Falls" (1986). Pencils by Frank Miller.All these threads converge in "The Dark Knight Falls", when the USSR launches a nuclear warhead called Coldbringer in response to Superman's presence in Corto Maltese. Superman manages to divert the missile to an uninhabited desert area before it detonates, but damage is done nonetheless. The warhead was designed to disrupt all electronics and communications in the Western Hemisphere as well as throw millions of tons of dust and debris into the atmosphere. Deprived of the sunlight that gives him his powers, Superman is nearly consumed by his own hypermetabolism. Gotham descends almost immediately into chaos as the blackout hits, with rioting and looting rocking the city. An airplane crippled by the electromagnetic pulse crashes into a building, feeding the panic. A few citizens, including Jim Gordon, pull together to fight the fires and retain some semblance of civilization until the power is restored.
Though near death from wounds inflicted during his fight with the Joker and the police, Batman applies his ingenuity to restoring law to Gotham. He and Robin muster a force of SOBs and train them in non-lethal methods as a means to stop looting and ensure the flow of needed supplies. Gotham, ironically, soon becomes the safest and best-fed city in America. Seeing this as an embarrassment rather than a blessing, the U.S. government dispatches Superman to take the Dark Knight down. Warned of their plans by Oliver Queen, the former Green Arrow who is now a bitter one-armed revolutionary, Batman prepares for his ultimate clash.
Throughout the story, Bruce has been facing the fact that his end may be approaching, but if he is to die he wants it to be a grand death rather than a simple one. He's contemplated such "opportunities" during a car race and his final confrontation with Two-Face over Gotham's Twin Towers. Now he faces the chance to go down as the one person who beat Superman.
Armed with an artificial powered exoskeleton, the Batmobile, synthetic kryptonite and a mysterious pill, Batman confronts Superman in a final showdown at Crime Alley, where Wayne's parents were murdered decades earlier. Batman manages to defeat the weakened Superman, only to die of a heart attack at the stroke of midnight. At precisely the same moment, Alfred oversees the destruction of the Batcave and Wayne Manor, and suffers a fatal stroke immediately afterward (his last thought as he realizes that he is dying is "how utterly proper").
The news that Bruce Wayne was Batman spreads throughout the world; however, Wayne's stocks and funds have been sold and liquidated to his "heirs" and Wayne boardmembers, Wayne Manor and the Batcave destroyed, and all evidence as to his methods and tools wiped out. At a funeral attended by Gordon, Kyle, Yindel, Carrie and others, Superman (as Clark Kent) is plainly ravaged with sadness and guilt. Just as he turns to leave, however, he hears a faint heartbeat coming from the interred coffin. After staring at Carrie for a few silent moments, Kent gives her a wink and leaves. Wayne has faked his death with planning, skill, and his knowledge of chemistry; Carrie digs up his living body as soon as possible. Wayne had hoped to keep the secret even from Superman; with his wink, however, Kent confirms Wayne's hope that he will play along with the charade.
Bruce Wayne, finally looking forward to his life, leads Robin, Green Arrow, and his army deep into the unexplored caverns beyond the Batcave, preparing to continue his fight for justice in a more low-key, but equally important, way than in his "previous life."
Sujet: Histoire 
Sam 26 Mai - 21:43
