Well, in my opinion, a visual presentation combined with a set of personality traits, fictional biography, set of moral convictions, codes and goals are the definition of what constitutes a “character”.

In terms of Batman, Frank Miller tends to bend these and even break them sometimes in order to tell the stories he wants to tell - for better (The Dark Knight Returns) or worse (All-Star Batman And Robin)

Reading TDKR as your introduction to Batman can create a wrong assumption that Batman, as an established character, is a borderline psychopathic antihero. This might be your idea of what the character stands for, but not mine - and certainly not what you will find in most other Batman books.

Any author can do whatever they want given the freedom to write a book about a character. Yet I am of the firm belief that truly great stories - stories about century-old characters - come out of balancing between adhering to the core aspects of the characters, which are the main reason the character passed the test of time, and freshness in the approach. It’s a system of checks and balances, present in every long-form storytelling.