Inevitably, a thread about THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS

FM = jerk for being a fascist. Aka Tuomas to thread.

I really don't like those bomb-dolls.

But yeah, Year One is better. It feels more perfect and the art is just beautiful.

DKSA reads like he made it up as he went along and his contempt for the Superhero genre is evident on every page.

Anyone know anything about the b&w Batman GN he was supposedly working on before Hollywood came a calling (again)?

I think Miller's a great stylist, but his 'a man's gotta do' ethos really turns me off. His citing of Ayn Rand in that shitty sequal to 'Give Me Liberty' was the final nail in the coffin. Although I do love the fight with Superman in DKR.

For a spot-on parody of Miller, see "Church and State' vol. 2. Ah, Dave Sim... Now there's a man with impecable liberal credentials.

Actually, there's some great superhero moments in DKSA. I don't read a lot of contempt in it. Hell, he made The Atom cool. The Atom!

Last I heard about the Batman OGN he was working on was some nonsense about Batman vs. The Terrorists. I kid you not. It may be for the best that it's lost to the ages.

I think my main problem with a 'realistic' depiction of Batman (or at least a depiction as dead-serious and humorless as Miller's is) is that the character is so hard to take seriously. I mean, this is a guy who dresses up in a fucking BAT SUIT and goes out to beat people up. I can suspend disbelief when I read the old Batman stories because they clearly don't take place in the real world, but when Miller tries to put Bruce Wayne in Reagan's America (as theoretically good as the idea is), it just doesn't work for me. There's a basic absurdity (= fun, like comic books are supposed to be, y'know?) in the whole concept of Batman that Miller doesn't even touch. I dunno, maybe I just hate fun.

DKR blew me away as a teenager (i.e. when it came out), but I tried a re-read last year and it just seemed a bit too thrown together in places. I really don't care for the sudden turn around of the gang at the end either.

It's the kind of thing that I'm not sure ages well, especially since at this point it's been ... almost twenty years? I think it came out in 1986.

I've only read DKSA once, as it came out -- I've never even read the issues back to back, come to think of it. But I'd like to hear more from the folks who had strong opinions on it one way or the other.

I bought a burned CD full of academic-style papers, and one of it was lauding DKSA. It's not particularly well written or argued, but if people are interested, I'll email it around.

He's a dickhead.

I was making an honest attempt to deal with the material--where does "self-importance" come into it?

Dave

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/27/184950.php

(I've also written a lot about Animal Man, The Filth, Watchmen, etc...

http://blogcritics.org/author.php?author=David%20Fiore

well, thanks for your attention

Dave Fiore

Dave

Dave

Can our first Random Googla be far behind?

(I didn't read David's blog entry BTW so have no wish to insult him)

Anyway, I think it's a not-very-good thing when the Miller one is diluted -- which is inevitable, it seems, when it becomes the default model -- because it doesn't dilute well. But still a better thing than Batman had been for years before Miller. (And I haven't read Batman since sometime in the 90s, so I'm not sure what the current one is necessarily like.)

Is it fair to say that GM's dilution of FM's Bats occurs in regards to Bats' jaded outlook? (I was about to say that I can't see The Dark Knight taking intergalactic shenanigans in stride like he did in JLA, but then there's DK2 to consider, unless we're chatting under the assumption that those 2 stories occur in two distinct and totally separate worlds.) Also, I was under the impression that FM's Bats was a hopped-up version of the OLD OLD OLD Bats - the psychopathic Punisher-type pulp fiction antecedent that wasn't afraid to use guns and kill and get the job done by any means necessary. But that may be a redundant statement.

I think the problem with trying to figure out how a Miller Batman would operate and act in a pre-DKR but post-Year One DCU is that the context is so different, especially with regards to other superheroes. Part of Morrison's in-story justification for Batman's involvement with the JLA -- and I don't remember how explicitly this was stated, actually -- seems to be that it's a way for Batman to keep tabs on the most dangerous people around, and to keep them available as tools. That's not incompatible with the Miller version, but it's definitely not DKR Batman's approach, either -- DKR Batman would need to be the leader, and would need to bully them.

Or was it just me that suspected that of Fire & Ice?

There may have been a time in the late 80s and early 90s when FM's vision didn't hold total sway (as with JLI), but it's pretty clear to me now that they're working off of his model. Until someone else recreates him in a compelling manner as Miller did in 1986, that is.

Thing is, DKR worked because of the contrast between its Batman and the Batman of the then-present (and the really great art and storytelling, of course.) Now that folks are trying to write that Batman without anything to contrast him against, it's losing some of that hard sheen. My opinion, of course.

The best-written Batman now is in Gotham Central, only because we see very little of him and he's genuinely scary.

The fact is that Batman's become a big boring goth twat. I can't bear the thought of reading about this ridiculous self-important little bitch for even a page.

Anyway, standard Batman rant over. Feel free to surprise me and make me look foolish by reporting on huge stylistic changes that have happened without my knowledge.

Loeb's Batman, which had sorta slipped my mind, is sort of an amalgam of Morrison's super-brainiac and Miller's hard-boiled vigilante.

Sadly, Ed's run on Detective was all-too short.

(Of course, that's even more true of imdb and Allmusic, isn't it. Man, the people who started those were insane.)

pretty sweet write-up about the new "absolute" dark knight edition by joe carducci: http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/7796603269/sons-and-fathers
was thinking i'd like to get it til i saw the price tag! absolutely ridiculous! still never got around to the strikes back, loved dark knight returns when i was 12 or 13.

lol "new", he notes at the top that it's almost as old as this thread

I really don't care for the sudden turn around of the gang at the end either.

Nah, this works – the gang are not ideologically motivated, but a swarm looking for a direction. Their leader has been killed and it makes sense that they will fall in line with an alpha figure who is shown to be stronger and have more of a mission than the old king. Plus, he will continue to give them chances to beat up people and feel justified about it, which is what most of them are probably looking for in the first place.

Huk’s mum OTM btw

Their leader has been killed

I thought he had just had the shite kicked out of him... surely Batman would never kill????

broken and supplanted, then!

it may have been a couple of decades since I read this book

I suppose that was the first time Batman and Superman were presented as being, um, not pals.

One of the best aspects of the book, and probably my favourite ever depictions of Supes. There's a splash of him lifting a tank above his head which is beyond iconic.

The scene where Batman drains all the electricity from Gotham to power his suit to fight Superman is amazingly thrill powered.