The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1-3
By Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
Published by DC Comics
You've said that you hated DK2 #1 so much that you wouldn't read the concluding two issues even if you got them for free. Now you've gone and picked up all three issues -- because you hated #1 so much you sold it back to a retailer for $2.00. What's going on here?
Much like DK2 itself, it's complex and hard to explain. I did have a very adverse reaction to #1. I read the original Dark Knight Returns when it came out in the mid-'80s, and while I liked it, I didn't love it. But when DK2 was announced, I was certainly curious enough to pick up the first issue. Like a lot of readers, I didn't like it. It wasn't because I had high expectations from the first series -- I thought that was flawed. And it seemed like with this second series, everything I hated about the first one, the cartoony exaggeration to no good effect -- was magnified a hundredfold.
At least a dozen people have specifically asked me to re-read #1 and read the rest of the series. People I like and respect, like Rob Vollmar and some of my regular readers. But it took J. C. Glindmyer to make me breakdown and look at the damned thing.
Who is J. C.?
He's the guy who runs Earthworld Comics, the store in Albany, New York that I get my comics at. J. C. runs the best comics shop that I've found in upstate New York, and the selection and service tell you that this is a guy who cares about his customers and wants them to be able to have the best chance possible of finding books that they will enjoy. We had an hour-long discussion on Friday about comics in general and DK2 in particular, to the point that he pulled a #3 off the rack for me to show me what he liked about the series. He seems to acknowledge that it's flawed, but there were many things about it he liked. He really seemed to want to know what I thought of the book, and it made me realize that, on some level, as someone who's been following Frank Miller's work since around 1979, I want to know, for myself, what happened with this book. Was it me? Was it Miller?
How long did it take you to read all three issues?
I read #1-3, the entire series, last night in one sitting that might have been interrupted by dinner. But more or less in one sitting. It's worth noting, for what it's worth, that while I was reading it, my 8-year old daughter sat down next to me and looked at a page that had Wonder Woman, Superman and their daughter on it. Without any comment at all from me, she asked me "Why do they look so ugly?"
Maybe distaste for the visual style of the book runs in families?
Actually, in reading all three books at once, I was thinking, honestly, that my daughter could easily have drawn some of the pages better than Miller did. She's interested in drawing and Barry Windsor-Smith has told me he thinks there's something to her pictures. But beyond that, there are many, many images in the series -- especially in the particularly bad second issue -- that look like they may have been drawn by an eight-year old with a nice set of magic markers.
Oh, come on, Miller's a good artist.
Certainly he can be an interesting one. The first time I saw his work, during the Roger McKenzie Daredevil era, I loved his dynamic synthesis of Gil Kane and Steve Ditko. And Klaus Janson's moody, expressive inking added so much to Miller's work, which really became apparent in retrospect. But solo Miller projects like 300 and some of the Sin City stuff has had some nice artistic moments. But some artists comtinue to grow through their entire lives, like a Gil Kane or a Barry Windsor-Smith, and some stagnate. And I think that's what Miller has done. He's gone to seed.
But you loved him in the '80s.
Yes, I loved him, and John Byrne, and Walter Simonson. And Simonson has continued to grow as an artist and storyteller, and Byrne has clearly fell into some sort of ego-trap that has destroyed his ability to just do the work and be an artist.
You're mean.
I guess so. I was asked once during a job interview, "If someone told you you were an asshole, what would the likely reason be that they were saying that?" I told her that that's happened plenty of times, and it's usually because I've confronted the person with a truth that they don't want to hear. So if my saying that Frank Miller is not growing as an artist makes me mean, makes me an asshole, then fine, I'm an asshole. But I have 30 or so issues of Sin City that all look and read the same and bore me to tears that will back me up. I don't want to say Miller's a hack, because with DK2 I think he's clearly reaching for something, but his reach clearly exceeds his grasp by a magnitude of astronomical units.
What?
An astronomical unit is 93 million miles. And I said "units."
You're mean.
I often say, in defense of my reviews that I shouldn't be defending, that I've never bought a comic book hoping it will suck. I don't want to write a negative review. When I buy a comic book my hopes are the same as any other reader's: I want to enjoy the reading experience, I want to be taken away somewhere else and experience something like never before and come back breathless with anticipation for the next issue.
Yeah, but you already knew #1 wasn't your cup of tea when you went and bought #1-3 yesterday. So you're a big fat liar, in addition to being mean.
I think I saw the book through J.C.'s eyes a bit yesterday when he was flipping through the third issue. Certainly I saw that there was enough in the series to make some people like it, and the online evidence seems to back that up. There's almost a war between those who like it and those who don't. The anger the topic seems to create reminds me of the abortion debate.
What's to debate? A woman is free to do whatever she wants with her body, and society has already dictated that it's okay to kill some people, say, in a time of war or with the death penalty. So what's the debate?
I'm not going to be sucked into that. I am a conservative Republican who strongly believes in the Rule of Law, and abortion is legal, so I'm all for it.
You're being ironic, aren't you?
Just possibly.
There are a lot of Republicans in DK2.
Yes, Miller seems to make fun of the entire Bush administration, from slimy mouthpiece Ari Fleischer to the clearly underendowed Donald Rumsfeld to the very "President who wasn't there." That last seems to be the only piece of satire in the entire book that actually works.
Come again?
Miller seems intent on mocking just about every aspect of early 21st Century living, but doesn't seem to have enough actual understanding of it to hit his targets very often, or even know where he wants to shoot. He has "The Naked News" in the book without seeming to realize there really is such a thing in the real world. And if he does realize it, then it takes more than just depicting it to make some sort of comment about it. Now, Warren Ellis has defended DK2 as a comedy, and so have some other folks, but I don't believe that Miller intended the entire thing to be funny, or satirical, or whatever. I think the third issue makes it pretty clear he had A Statement to make, but even after reading the entire thing with as open a mind as I could muster, I'll be damned if I could tell you what it is he wanted to say.
No, no, Miller was making fun of comics fans and their expectations.
That's certainly a possibility, although Batman's inner monologue suggests he thought he was saying Something Important. The final battle, between Dick Grayson and Batman, though, totally undercuts whatever Miller was saying. Like the ending to The Prisoner, it comes from nowhere, makes no real sense, and to my way of thinking, betrays and dissolves whatever was good about the work in the first place.
But Dick Grayson was the Joker! It was so shocking!
All it told me was that maybe Miller saw the Batman Beyond movie where Tim Drake was "Jokerized." Or maybe he didn't. Miller seems to be doing things like that -- or Supes and Wonder Woman having a kid together -- thinking they're somehow revolutionary comments on comics, when they've already been done before, and in a better and more entertaining comic. What Miller seemed to be doing with Dick Grayson's confrontation with Batman at the end of #3 was to say how stupid the "teen sidekick" is, and that it deserves to die. But I don't see any reason why it's any stupider than the idea of superheroes themselves. It ultimately seems like this is a fairly major point Miller wants to make, but again, to what end? And in the context of the story, no reason is give for Dick to be so despised. There's no reason why a character -- one of the few to superheroes in comics history consistently be depicted as wanting a normal life -- is treated with such contempt.
Surely there must be something you liked in DK2?
Not a whole lot. While it was nice to see Barry Allen and Hal Jordan again, I don't understand what purpose they serve. Are they here because Wally West and Kyle Rayner are less worthy characters? And if they are, why is that? Why not have Flash and GL be Jay Garrick and Alan Scott? Or Mercury and Prometheus? Miller's contempt for the most recent and more modern incarnations of these characters might ring true if he did anything worthwhile with them, but turning GL into a cartoon blob and Barry Allen into a shorts-wearing goofball while saying essentially nothing new or compelling about their characters comes off mostly as MIller being a bitter old fart who "Can't stand that rock and roll." Maybe this is an Elseworlds tale, like the first one. I don't really give a shit about things like that, though, as long as the story is good. And in this regard, and overall, this story is not good. In fact, I'm not even sure there's a story.
You may recall I asked you if there was anything you liked.
Oh, yeah. I liked Carrie Kelly, as I did with the first series, despite the silly slang. I liked how Ray Palmer's powers were depicted. I like the characterization of Batman as a terrorist insurgent. But this is a mini-series full of undeveloped ideas, unexplained and inexplicable ideas, and just plain bad ideas.
What was the worst element of the series?
Just the overall disappointment. No one can deny that a lot of effort -- of some kind -- was put into the book. On second reading, Lynn Varley's colours didn't bother me at all. Even Miller's art, for the most part, is all right when isolated from the story and taken just as art itself. Unfortunately, it's wedded to a story that, like President Rickard, is barely there. Miller wanted to make a big, loud story about the entire DC Universe, and it is big, and it is loud, but when I closed the final issue and tried to formulate a thought about DK2, I found that it's hard to really put your finger on why it's so awful. Because like Rickard, like George W. Bush that Miller is satirizing, there's virtually nothing there. I'd love to think that Miller deliberately delivered such a story to be ironic or something, but I don't think he's that clever, or that cruel, to charge $24.00 for a big, empty joke. I think that Miller's ambition, and possibly his greed, just got away from him. Whatever he wanted to accomplish here is not accomplished. The desire to create a big event of some kind is visible on virtually every page, but my overall reaction is disappointment. So much effort, such a nice package, for an empty, pointless, noisy mess. I was angry after reading the first issue last year, but my reading of the entire series has just left me feeling sad.
That sounds kind of condescending and dismissive.
I don't mean to condescend. I'm just trying to explain my feelings about a work that defies easy explanation. And I am dismissive. There's too many great, great comics being produced today for DK2 to be considered even as acceptable throwaway entertainment. Given the massive amount of effort put into it and the attention it was given, I think it is sad that the resulting work is so easily dismissed. Grade: 2/5
You're mean.