How Did The Batman Become His Destiny?

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Frank Miller’s masterful design for the story, the plot, the protagonist’s discourse, while carefully attending to the visual properties of the illustration prove evident of his genius in this dark and grim drama of a graphic novel. Bruce Wayne is haunted by the death of his parents. Guilt ridden and trying his best numbing his pain with alcohol, Bruce Wayne is suddenly thrown into a flashback of his parent’s murder by the familiar sound and music of the last show the Waynes watched together, “You loved it so much…you jumped and danced like a fool…you remember…” (Miller, page 22) That night was the last time Bruce Wayne was truly happy. Moments later, someone pulled the rug from under his feet. His life was turned upside-down. That moment …show more content…

The young boy looks up with frightened and widened eyes. On the next frame, he sees the shadow of a gigantic bat flying over the moon in the dark night sky. Was it fate that the bat was to become his destiny? Was it free will? One thing for sure is that bat was his only hope and savior in a moment of desperation. Batman was just what Bruce needed, power, abilities, strength and a chance to avenge for his parent’s death and moreover, right all the wrongs in the world. One could also argue it is not unlike Dissociative Identity Disorder in psychiatry, young Bruce reacted to the trauma of witnessing his parents’ murder. The stronger persona came out to protect the weaker one. By at least partially faithful to the original source material and Batman storyline, in TDKR, Bruce Wayne unavoidably allows Batman to take over his body again. Out of all five pages, the first four pages are 16-panel layout in design, all sixteen panels equal in size. With the exception of the last frame on page 26 which contains only a single image of a ferocious looking bat, its fangs flashing, its eyes burning yellow fire, centered in the middle of the panel, breaking through the bars of a prison

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