"The Dark Knight" by Dennis O'Neil

Foreword: As far as I remember, this ought to be the first time I have read a novel based on a film and watched the actual movie. I usually do one or the other (i.e. read the book or watch the movie) to gauge if I want to do the other (meaning read the book if I watched the movie or watch the movie if I read the book) and hitherto, I have never wanted to do both. With "The Dark Knight" (henceforth shortened to "TDK"), I did both, credit going largely to the good movie for having imbued me with enough curiousity to see how the book would turn out. Since this is the first time, I thought now's as good a time as any to do my first review of a novel-based-on-film.


For me, TDK, the book, is both less and more than the movie. It is less in that in its prose form, it naturally fails to match up to the adrenaline-pumping, visual fest, of the actual movie. It also fails to convey the Joker's bone-deep enjoyment of evil for evil's sake, Wayne's anguish, and Alfred's humour. In these, I found the movie immensely more enjoyable, profound and at times disturbing.

But TDK the book does have its strengths, and this is by and large due to the vehicle in which it has told its story. The first few chapters add more background to the story by telling the "story behind the story", the beginnings of the villains, Bruce Wayne's beginnings and how he himself increasingly realises that in seeking to deal with evil, he has to deal in the very depravity his enemies traffick in. These are things that for obvious commercial reasons, TDK the movie is unable to do. Pity, for I thought they were also the very things that would have deepened and fleshed out the movie and novel.

However, TDK the book did answer one question which was never resolved for me when I watched the movie, being how did Batman end up rushing to Dent's rescue rather than Dawes' when he had explicitly hollered at Commissioner Gordon that he was going to save the latter? (Heh, I won't tell you what transpired -- read the book if you wanna find out!)

One spoiler for me in reading the book was in knowing that Dent is not the white knight that he was made out to be, even taking into account his pre-Joker-influenced days. But I guess it also made the character more realistic and added some verisimilitude to the plot. [Seriously, no one can be that perfect a "knight", can they? (In good ol' movie plots, anyone that perfect to the outside world typically has a few dusty skeletons in his closet.)]

For some strange unfathomable reason, on finishing the book I was reminded of Yeats' quote,

"Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as much courage in entering into the abyss of himself"

Don't ask me why. Maybe Batman's feeling of isolation reminded me of Hamlet's, which was when I first came across Yeats' quote.

Taking the good and the bad, I give this book a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars.