Paul Dini has turned a tragic night of fear into an instantly-classic graphic novel.
In Dark Night, available in print and digitally from Vertigo Comics, Dini, a writer who contributed to the Batman: The Animated Series and Tiny Toons cartoons in the 1990s, retells the tale of the night his career and life almost came to a halt after he was brutally beaten during a robbery.
The graphic novel, which has a visual assist from artist Eduardo Risso, starts with the reconstructing of Dini's face after the robbery and leads into the floating in and out of dreams that come after.
Readers go on a journey through Dini's life and mind. A childhood love of cartoons and comic-book characters. A father convinced cartoons wouldn't lead anywhere in life when it came to future employment. Beautiful Hollywood women who have an eye on his studio connections instead of having any interest in him. The one thing that remained strong when the rest of Dini was broken: his imagination.
The night of the robbery, Dini is seemingly on top of the world, working on a top cartoon in Hollywood while wining and dining with a beautiful actress. But it turns out she's interested in getting her portfolio to Steven Spielberg, whom she assumes Dini has connections to because of his work on Tiny Toons. Dini quickly realises a woman he thought was his girlfriend is just using him and that he's more alone in life than he realises. So when his "girlfriend" offers him a ride home, he declines. He walks off into the shadows and into a dark life-changing moment.
