WAKE UP PEOPLE: Dark Knight shooting in 1986 comic

In ‘Dark Knight’ shooting at Aurora theater, eerie echo of seminal 1986 comic by Frank Miller

In the second issue of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” a crazed gunman stands up in the middle of a Batman-inspired porn movie and opens fire inside the crowded theater.



There are eerie similarities between the massacre at the Aurora multiplex during a showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” and a sequence in a seminal 1986 comic book.

In the second issue of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” a crazed gunman stands up in the middle of a Batman-inspired porn movie and opens fire inside the crowded theater.

“Arnold Crimp fingers the cold steel thing in his pocket and stares at the movie marquee and does not throw up,” the caption reads above one panel.

DARK KNIGHT MASSACRE: A PHOTO TIMELINE OF THE SHOOTING

“The [movie] title is ‘My Sweet Statan,’ the narrator continues, as the red-headed gunman stands up in the darkened theater with a revolver in his hand. “Which is what Arnold Crimp is absolutely certain he heard when he played “Stairway to Heaven” backwards.”

“On the screen, a nun — a nun is doing something and she’s painted exactly like a whore.”

The scene then cuts to a television news telecast with a Batman logo in the background. “Three slain in Batman-inspired porn theater shoot-out. Details to follow...”

“Listen, you’re talking about a character that’s been published over 60 years with a million stories, if you want to look through all those panels through Comic book fist fights, you’re going to eventually find one that’s could be construed as similar,” novelist and comic book writer Brad Meltzer told The News. “But that’s as like blaming the Columbine school shooting years ago on rock and roll music.”



Though it’s unclear if the suspected gunman who killed the 12 people at the midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” early Friday morning ever read the Miller series, he apparently knows something of comic book lore.

James Holmes burst in through an emergency exit dressed as a comic book villain, police said.

“He said he was the Joker, enemy of Batman,” New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said after being briefed by Aurora police.