P1: Describe the work of a graphic novel or comic publisher
America: The Dark Knight Returns – DC Comics By Frank Miller DC Comics published the Dark Knight Returns in 1986. It has inspired many other comics and films. There were only 4 issues. Its Genre is dark as it tells a story of a man who has to fight people to do good for his city. DC also owns a number of titles like Superman, Wonder Woman and The Flash and is a rival of Marvel Comics.
Marvel Comics - America Marvel also owns a number of titles like Iron Man, X-Men and Captain America who had a duel with Iron Man, similar to that of Superman and Batman. There are many famous writers such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Bob Kane. They were responsible for creating the famous comic book characters we see today.
Genre The most known genre for comic books is Superheroes but there are also others such as Crime, War, American and British. There are also different types of comic; Graphic Novels are lots of comics over the period of a month or a year or a story that is too long to be considered a comic. Comic strips are small comics that would feature in a newspaper or magazine.
Manga - Japan There is also Manga. Manga is a Japanese comic in which the books or comics go from back to front instead of mainstream comics that go from front to back. Well known authors and inkers include: Osamu Tezuka and Eiichiro Oda. They wrote stories like: One Piece and Astro Boy. Death Note was written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. Death note is a well-known manga series published by Shueisha in 2003. It ran until 2006 when it was followed by a novel later that year and an Anime TV series.
P2: Describe a chosen graphic novel or comic product
The Dark Knight Returns is a superhero comic as it features many different superheroes from around the DC Universe as well as villains to fight the heroes. The plot also seems to have a classic superhero comic story of the villains appear and the heroes have to stop them but The Dark Knight Returns is a bit more complex than that. It has conflict amongst the heroes and it even leads to a big battle at the end between Batman and Superman. This is a different type of story as most people hadn't seen this thing happen before and it was a big battle between people's favourite heroes. A similar comic would appear in the Marvel Universe called Civil War where Iron Man would fight Captain America. The comic also looks quite violent as you can see some quite brutal attack moves and you can see people dying which can be distressing depending on who is dying for example your favourite character.
The text for The Dark Knight Returns is written as if it has been typed up however for effect words like ‘POW’ is like a mix between being typed and also hand drawn. The image boxes are mainly rectangles and squares but they aren’t always the same size as the ones next to it. Some are big to show a significant or cool image. Some of these do not have text accompanying them as to let the reader focus on the picture. There is one picture of Batman riding a horse towards the camera followed by Robin and an army of people. This picture takes up the entire page and has no text. There are about 8-16 image boxes on each page and most have text to accompany but sometimes there is text outside the box and slightly above it so the reader can clearly see the picture but also know that the text is for that picture. Most of the speech bubbles are round and some are joined together. There are some square boxes that serve as descriptions of what is happening.
I think the target audience for The Dark Knight Returns is a Young Adult male due to there being lots of fighting and violence and most females don’t tend to like that. However there is a female heroine in Robin (Carrie Kelly) and young females may see her as a role model. The backstory for Batman is very well known but the backstory for this comic in general is set years after Batman has retired from being Batman and he returns to fight Villains like The Joker and Two Face. He also fights Superman towards the end of the comic. It is this fight that inspired the film Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice.