Watchmen

Alan Moore 

Watchmen

What I like best about this novel, is that it's all original characters. They could have easily made it about pre-existing superheros, but the fact that they created their own really makes you focus more on the content of the story. Not to mention, if the comic focused on DC characters like it was supposed to, then those superheros wouldn't have been really usable for future stories.

Frank Miller

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

This is a four-part graphic series which includes The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Triumphant, Hunt The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Falls. My dad actually has all of these from when they were first issued, and so I got to read them back when I was in high school. I didn't actually read any of these this week, but I thought I'd mention them in my post here since it came out around the same time as Alan Moore's Watchmen (I think Miller's work came out the year before Moore's).

Both of these pieces though were revolutionary in how they portrayed "superheroes." While Watchmen definitely made superheros in general much more "realistic" characters, The Dark Knight Returns is known as the turning point for making Batman much more "serious." Even the storylines seem to reflect one another:

Watchmen - Ozymandias figures out how to usurp Dr. Manhattan's abilities so he can't "see" his plans.

The Dark Knight - Batman ends up creating a gauntlet for Superman, he used Kryptonite to weaken him, and then precedes to beat the shit out of him.

Despite these two characters doing sort of the same thing, Batman is regarded as a hero while Ozymandias is a villain. Although, you don't realize that he's the villain until the end of the novel. Yet they both are, in a way, a reflection of the time they were made during the mid-1980s; the feelings of helplessness against a dismal future. And Reagan.