Christopher Nolan was able to use the rough outline of Knightfall for The Dark Knight Rises. I mention this because The Death & Return of Superman suffers from a lot of the same problems that plagued Knightfall, but lacked a lot of the redemptive strengths of that narrative. It’s not perfect, but it’s interesting and fun. Denny O’Neil is reportedly so ashamed of his work on Wayne’s recovery that The Search (the arc covering that part of the plot) was omitted from the otherwise commendably complete Knightfall collections. Bruce Wayne’s miraculous recovery in the third act feels a little contrived and a little convenient. There’s the same sort of narrative disjointedness you find in these sorts of crossovers as writers baton-pass plot points across multiple books in the same line. It’s a story that understands Batman as a character, even if the execution is a little clumsy. Knightfall is – I’d argue – a flawed epic. Eventually, after showing the readers that this replacement wasn’t up to the task, Bruce Wayne got magically better and saved the day. A newer decidedly more “nineties” stand-in character took his place, allowing the writers to offer some commentary on the popular trends in the nineties comic industry. In that story, Batman was defeated by a new “badass” enemy, leaving his city unprotected.
Knightfall followed a very similar pattern to The Death & Return of Superman, at least superficially. To be fair, The Death & Return of Superman probably merits discussion in comparison to the other iconic DC comics event of the nineties.
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