 The immense popularity of "The Dark Knight Returns" served both to return the character of Batman to a central role in pop culture, but also (along with "Watchmen") started the era known as the Dark Age of Comic Books (also known as the Modern Age and the Iron Age).The grim, seedy versions of Gotham and Batman successfully updated the character's identity from the campy Adam West version remembered from the 1960s Batman TV series, and proved critically and commercially successful enough that a new wave of "dark" superheroes were either created, repopularized, or revamped altogether to fit this new trend.