Entertainment
Celebrating The 40th Anniversary Of The Greatest Batman Ever Made
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
For better or for worse, we are currently living through the age of superhero cinema, with movies like Avengers: Endgame and Superman (2025) dominating the box office. But would you believe that this entire genre owes its existence to a single comic? A comic that also managed to inspire some of the greatest TV shows the world has ever known?
That comic is Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, the seminal Batman comic that recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. Miller’s comic is very nearly perfect, and it helped usher in a modern age of darker and grittier superhero stories. That much is well known, but today, I’d like to focus on a lesser-known fact: that the modern superhero genre of movies simply wouldn’t exist without The Dark Knight Returns.
You’ll Believe A Batman Can Fly
The success of the 1978 Superman movie proved that tights-and-flights films had the potential to be critical and commercial hits. Accordingly, that film got three sequels, but the franchise did not keep going “up, up, and away.” Eventually, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace proved to be such a critical and commercial disaster that we didn’t get another Superman movie for nearly two decades.
Following the success of the first Superman movie, a new Batman film went into development at Warner Bros. in 1980. After he wowed everyone with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (his first feature film), young Tim Burton was hired in 1985 to direct this new Batman film. He immediately wanted a darker, less campy script.
Conveniently enough, The Dark Knight Returns came out one year later, and the success of Frank Miller’s comic made the public hungry for a serious take on the Caped Crusader even as it made Warner Bros. keener on bringing this Darker Knight to the big screen.
Obviously, the 1989 Batman film went through many rewrites over the years, including several lighter-hearted drafts that included Robin, the Boy Wonder. But Burton really wanted his film to have the grim and gritty atmosphere of Miller’s comic, so he insisted on a story with the same basic beats as The Dark Knight Returns: Batman is obsessive, the Joker is deadly, and Gotham City is a cesspool. Burton’s film ended up being a smash hit, launching a Batman film franchise that continues to this day.
When Cartoons Got Dark
Tim Burton’s Batman made the character more popular than ever before, and Warner Bros. quickly began developing a new cartoon featuring the Caped Crusader. The result was Batman: The Animated Series, a show that modeled Gotham City after the one scene in the 1989 film. There were some different design flourishes (mostly, the abundant Art Deco style of the buildings), but Gotham retained the dark and broody atmosphere that electrified fans of the live-action film.
Batman: The Animated Series won multiple Emmy awards, so you may be shocked to hear that Warner Bros. executives were nervous about the new show. They feared that executive producer Bruce Timm was making everything way too violent for children.
Warners wanted to cancel the series before a single episode was animated, but the success of Burton’s movie kept that from happening. Eventually, Timm was able to create the pilot episode “On Leatherwings,” which was so impressive that it helped his controversial series (complete with music from and inspired by Danny Elfman, the composer of Burton’s Batman) get the green light.
Batman: The Animated Series quickly became one of the most popular cartoons ever made, and the release of various sequel series (including Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League) established the fan-favorite DC Animated Universe. The DCAU was the first truly viable superhero cinematic universe, one that helped pave the way for the MCU. Before that happened, though, The Dark Knight Returns helped inspire Earth’s mightiest mutants.
Rise Of The Mutants
Tim Burton’s Batman would not have existed (or at least, wouldn’t have been worth watching) without the influence of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. But after Burton left, the franchise was in the hands of Lost Boys director Joel Schumacher. He made the franchise over-the-top with Batman Forever and downright silly with Batman & Robin. After audiences rejected that campy crapfest and Blade proved to be a big hit, 20th Century Fox made a decision: they’d swoop in and take the comic book movie crown away from DC with an X-Men movie.
That film came out in 2000, eventually getting two sequels, four prequels, and three spin-offs featuring Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. The success of Fox’s X-Men spurred Sony to create a Spider-Man movie in 2002, and Sam Raimi eventually delivered an entire trilogy of webslinging goodness.
Ironically, these characters were only available to the studios because Marvel had to sell the movie rights back in the late 90s to avoid bankruptcy. After seeing how successful Fox and Sony were, though, Marvel decided to create its own films and television projects, all of which would later be known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Obviously, the MCU proved to be a huge hit with audiences, spawning nearly 20 years of movies. Eventually, this inspired Warner Bros. to try its own hand at a superhero cinematic universe, and they created the DCEU as a direct competitor to the MCU. The second film in this new cinematic universe was Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and (for better or for worse), returning director Zack Snyder based his slightly older, much darker version of the Caped Crusader on Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
It’s All Connected
Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns has had an outsized impact on movies and television, serving as the foundation of modern geek culture. Without the success of this comic, we don’t get successful Batman movies; without the later failure of Batman & Robin (which veered away from Miller’s dark tone), we don’t get the X-Men movies. Without those films and Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, we wouldn’t have the MCU, and without that, we wouldn’t have the DCEU or (more recently) the DCU.
It’s all connected, and comic nerds everywhere owe it to themselves to re-read this comic. Considering that it may be years before we see Batman properly appear in the DCU, re-reading it is currently the best way to experience the most iconic and fully formed version of the Caped Crusader ever made. Just be careful when handling this old comic; after all, you’ve got a genuine piece of pop culture history in your hands!
Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on March 1
It’s a new month, and while the Moon may appear totally full, we’re still a couple of days away from this yet. But in the meantime, there’s still lots to spot on its surface.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Sunday, March 1, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide, 94% of the Moon will be lit up tonight.
With just your naked eye, tonight you’ll be able to see the Mares Imbrium and Crisium, as well as the Tycho Crater. If you have binoculars hanging about, dust them off and pull them out to catch a glimpse of the Mares Nectaris and Frigoris, and the Endymion Crater. And proud telescope owners will see all this and more, including the Apollo 15 and 17 landing spots, and the Schiller Crater.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon will be on March 3. The last Full Moon was on Feb. 1.
What are Moon phases?
According to NASA, the Moon takes about 29.5 days to orbit the Earth. Over the course of this period, it moves through eight recognisable phases, what we call the lunar cycle. While the same side of the Moon always faces us, the amount of its surface lit by the Sun changes as it continues along its path. The shifts in sunlight create the different appearances we see from Earth, ranging from a fully illuminated Moon to a thin sliver or near darkness. The eight phases are:
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
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Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Entertainment
Men are paying to have negative posts removed from Tea app
As reported by 404 Media, online service Tea App Green Flags will scrub negative posts from anonymous gossip app Tea and similar online forums where women post about negative experiences they’ve had with men they’ve dated.
According to 404 Media’s interview with Tea App Green Flags’ founder, simply identified as Jay, the company launched two years ago to tackle posts on the many Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His focus has turned to Tea in the past year.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told 404 Media. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn’t fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters.”
Tea App Green Flags’ site claims to have removed over 2,500 posts from the Tea App for over 759 clients. Most of the service’s clients are men, although Jay noted that occasionally the wives and girlfriends of men posted on the app will reach out.
Prospective Tea App Green Flags clients must provide their name, age, location, and photo to the service, as well links to specific posts targeting them. According to Tea App Green Flags’ FAQs, they can only remove posts with direct references to a client. On average, the site says, a Tea App “takedown campaign” will take 21 – 30 days. The lengths of other takedowns depend on the platform.
Price-wise, it costs $1.99 to report one Tea account and up to $79.99 to report 25 of them. The company also offers “24/7 Reputation Monitoring,” which costs $19.99 per month and alerts clients when they appear on Tea or Facebook.
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Jay would not share the details of the takedown process with 404 Media. Tea does have a free form for takedown requests on its website, and says that it will “only reply to takedown requests submitted via the takedown portal.”
Jay emphasized to 404 Media that Tea App Green Flags does not extend its services to people who have been accused of sexual assault multiple times on Tea, or who have been accused by one person using their real name and photo in a Facebook group.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they’re very bad,” Jay told 404 Media. “So we say, ‘we’re not doing this.’ We can’t take a rap for that. We’re ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Tea markets itself as presenting “dating safety tools that protect women.” In July 2025, it was the target of a large-scale cyberattack that exposed thousands of user images including drivers’ licenses, leaving users vulnerable to doxxing and harassment. These images were provided as verification for accounts, although the app itself is otherwise anonymous.
Jay claimed to 404 Media that Tea’s anonymity “causes a cesspool of defamation,” and that he would prefer if women shared their faces, even if they are speaking out against dangerous men who have done them harm.
While Tea is meant to be a women-only app, Tea App Green Flags is proof of men’s infiltration of these online dating spaces. (Tea itself was founded by a man: Sean Cook.)
“I have a Tea app account. I’m a dude,” Jay told 404 Media. “All my reps have Tea app accounts. They’re men.”
Mashable has reached out to Tea for further comment.
Entertainment
NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for February 28, 2026
Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is for people who love golf.
As we’ve shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.
Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier — so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.
If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
What is Connections: Sports Edition?
The NYT‘s latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication’s sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.
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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer.
If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake — players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.
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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.
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Here’s a hint for today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:
Here are today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:
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Yellow: Golf Equipment
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Green: Materials in a Baseball
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Blue: SEC School Locations
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Purple: First Names of Chicago Bears
Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.
Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.
Drumroll, please!
The solution to today’s Connections: Sports Edition #523 is…
What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?
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Golf Equipment – CLUB, GLOVE, RANGEFINDER, TEE
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Materials in a Baseball – CORK, LEATHER, RUBBER, YARN
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SEC School Locations – ATHENS, AUBURN, LEXINGTON, OXFORD
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First Names of Chicago Bears – CAIRO, CALEB, LUTHER, ROME
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.
Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to today’s Connections.
Chicago Fire score twice in stoppage time, blank CF Montreal
Layne Riggs holds on to claim first NASCAR Trucks street race
