Hunting The Dark Knight: Twenty-First Century Batman

Publishing to coincide with Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, in July 2012, Will Brooker’s new book explores Batman’s twenty-first century incarnations. Brooker’s investigation into Batman Begins and The Dark Knight uncovers the complex relationship between popular films, audiences, and producers in our age of media convergence. He addresses a myriad of questions raised by these films: did Batman Begins end when The Dark Knight began? Does its story include Burger King’s ‘Dark Whopper’, the Gotham Knight DVD, or the ‘Why So Serious’ viral marketing campaign? Is it separate from the parallel narratives of the Arkham Asylum videogame, the monthly comic books, the animated series and the graphic novels? Can the brightly campy incarnations of the Batman ever be fully repressed by The Dark Knight, or are they an intrinsic part of the character? In other words, do all of these various manifestations feed into a single Batman metanarrative?