Dark Night: A True Batman Story

 

When I started reading "Dark Night. A True Batman Story" by Paul Dini and Eduardo Risso, I never thought I'd be writing about it, but I found myself with such an original comic in my hands that I couldn't resist spending a few words.

It's an atypical Batman story because the author, known for having participated in the creation of the Warner Bros. cartoon Batman series of the 90's, here tells part of his personal human story and how the comic book characters in his life have been with him for both good and bad.

I'm writing about it because this story is dedicated to all of us, lovers of comics who have read about heroes to find inspiration and encouragement, to imagine with the great power of the fantasy what it would be like to have a hero at our side in difficulties and to imagine what his advice could be for us. It's a story about the power of imagination and how our heroes and our ideals can inspire us and then move from our deepest selves to influence our external world. So, the power of imagination not as a cage to escape from reality, but as an incentive to change what we don't like and to do it following our best principles.

The central event of the comic is about the night when Dini was attacked and brutally beaten. With several broken bones and his face in pieces, the screenwriter went through a difficult recovery process, hampered by the imaginary buffoonery of the villains he had written about for television, including the Joker, Harley Quinn and the Penguin. However, despite how sad the circumstances were or perhaps because of it, Dini also imagined that Batman was on his side encouraging him in his darkest moments.

As I was saying, the thing that struck me most in this comic book is the power of imagination, which in the weakest subjects can be a refuge to escape a difficult childhood, a problematic adolescence, the difficulties of life, until it becomes a laboratory to invent a different world or a new reality.

And to ensure that through our imagination we can see reality in a different way and that this allows us to find the courage to face the challenges of life. And this is exactly what happened to the writer of this story who in these pages stages his personal journey to hell and back.

So, for me the character of Dini himself represents a metaphor for all of us comic book lovers, that in the difficult moments of our lives we had these characters always been there to hold our hand to make us get up and give us courage.

 

To close I want to quote a part of the words that serve as an introduction to the comic written by Matteo Bussola in the Italian version, because I cannot express the same concept, which I share, with better words:

"This is what Paul Dini teaches us, describing with a unique intensity his "dark night": to get up every day, to refuse to be victims, to re-emerge from our cave before it becomes just a warm doghouse. Because life is hard stuff that can be faced better if we consider imagination not a refuge, but a training, the superpower we will need to change things. If it becomes a way to say to the existence: you're not good enough for me as you are, you can be better than that. I can be too.

This is what the Batman stories have always taught us, especially in the hands of the most skilled writers: that the most powerful way to change the world is to accept our pain and make it an opportunity to change first of all ourselves.

Only then can it work. Only then will we remember that the hero most important to our present, and our future, lives hidden within us. In our darkness."