The Dark Knight Strikes Again Catwoman
Gotham is saved, the time to come finds hope, and the Dark Knight has returned. But when the earth is at its worst, it'south fourth dimension for the Dark Knight to strike once again.
In 2001, Frank Miller returned to DC Comics for a belated sequel to his highly influential Batman dystopia Nighttime Knight Returns
Comic volume sequels are kind of historically disastrous. For every Surreptitious Wars 2015 or Dark Victory
Consider everything that happened in the time betwixt The Night Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again, both in comic books and the larger globe around them.
Tim Burton and Michael Keaton turned Batman into a blockbuster, which was followed by 3 sequels that flamed out. The Soviet Union, a major gene in the political tensions of DKR, complanate. Ronald Reagan, lampooned in those same pages, had left the presidential office, with three more than presidents following. Frank Miller gave Batman a new origin in Year One just to leave DC Comics for Hollywood and so Dark Equus caballus for Sin Urban center, Martha Washington, 300, and more. Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen had pushed mainstream superhero comics into the era of grim and gritty deconstruction, leading to the early 90s speculator boom and subsequent catastrophic collapse. And both Marvel and DC had narrowly avoided shuttering.
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Comic books and the world they occupied were not the same, merely The Dark Knight Returns seemed to loom larger than it always had over the industry. And when Miller signed a bargain with DC to return to the story that helped alter comics, DK2 became i of the virtually highly anticipated comic books of all time. Only apprehension and reality are 2 very different things.
Reception to The Night Knight Strikes Again was negative, to say the least, with the comic rapidly becoming infamous for beingness one of the great disappointments in the history of DC. But information technology was, financially, a hit, selling close to 200,000 copies of consequence i and problems 2 and 3 staying at over 150,000 sold each, with a $7.95 price tag for its large prestige format meaning that DK2 has made DC Comics effectually $5 million when including its collected reprints. When you put a proper noun like Frank Miller together with a vision of Batman that's famous worldwide, y'all become a lot of money, especially in 2001 when Miller was nonetheless a respected and active author.
And this is why Nighttime Knight Strikes Over again is infamous in the world of comic books. This is not a series that no one cared almost. It was hotly anticipated and widely read, quickly turning vast amounts of readers sour on Miller. Decades and several follow-ups later, and DKSA is withal shorthand for comic book disaster. But why?
How does Miller effort to follow upward 1 of Batman's most iconic stories? What is The Nighttime Knight Strikes Once again actually trying to say? How does this belated sequel fit into the larger story of Frank Miller? And what is the legacy of The Night Knight Strikes Once more, warts and all, in the ongoing Batman saga?
Returning to the Return
The Nighttime Knight Returns is about the balance of hope and despair in a future dystopia, simply it's also about Batman transcending humanity and becoming legend, moving from an quondam human being who struggles to defeat a broken Two-Face to a hero that tin go toe to toe with Superman. So what can a sequel practise to challenge the transcendent? It must become larger than life in every aspect.
The futurity of The Nighttime Knight Returns is dystopic in a sort of "humanity's worst impulses continue" sort of manner. Just the future of Dark Knight Strikes Again is a full-on police force state, with the regime controlling every element of the population. The president of the United states is a hologram controlled past Lex Luthor, wars and invasions ravage the planet, superheroes go along to exist outlawed and snuffed out. And it's this escalation of horrors that brings Batman out of hiding.
According to Miller, "When I did the start one, I was very much rebelling against all the established stuff, like the old TV show. Just how lame all the stuff had get. This time, I'm finding that I'm playing around with DC'due south whole pantheon of characters and trying to evidence them off in ways that feature the joys behind them."
If Miller'due south original was a stiff eye finger to the forces that control the globe, DK2 is all-out war against them every bit Batman gathers an aged Justice League to destroy Luthor and his forces. But what starts every bit a war for freedom violently devolves into nonsense every bit Miller slams more and more plot developments down on the reader. Boom! Braniac attack. Bang! Superman-Wonder Woman love child. Kersplat! New shapeshifting joker. Blammo! Superheroine rock band protest.
And at the center of this hopelessly shattered narrative lies a real world tragedy.
A few years before writing Strikes Again, Miller then-wife Lynn Varley had moved dorsum to Hell'southward Kitchen in New York, and in the midst of writing his return to Batman, the September 11th terrorist attacks happened – the fume and expiry visible from Miller's dwelling house. While issues ane and 2 came out in December 2001 and Jan 2002, all of upshot one and some of issue 2 had been written before September 11th.
Whatever Miller had originally planned was waylaid past his horror at the devastation. Instead, consequence 2 diverges into an extended destruction of City every bit Superman is rendered powerless to stop Braniac.
There'southward a striking double-folio spread that directly evokes the aftermath of nine/11 in issue 3 of DK2, published in July of 2002. The rubble of Metropolis echoes first responders in search of survivors in New York, simply information technology'south all made perfectly clear as Superman and his daughter fly off, the smoldering city separate in one-half backside them. It'south one of the few images in the entire series that Miller bothers to give a detailed groundwork and connects to the real world destruction.
Much like Miller would cite existence mugged in New York as the inspiration for his paranoid, ruthless approach to Daredevil and Batman in the '80s, ix/eleven would interruption Miller in the 21st century. The writer's Libertarianism, frequently on display in his individualist Batman, would morph into the hard right wing Islamaphobic viewpoint of "Holy Terror," originally planned to be a Batman comic but disavowed by DC in 2006. So "Strikes Again" sees Miller in the midst of a personal political crisis, i that's pushed through a psychedelic lens of conspiracy, superheroism, and justice, all embodied in a gleefully violent Batman.
In Miller's hands, Batman is a monomaniacal furious brawl of moral rage, pushed to the brink from a world the writer sees as immoral in every way. And in a repeat of Returns, Bruce in one case again transcends his mortality, essentially asserting himself as across age by the end. I don't know how or why, he simply does.
Miller seeths beneath the surface of the comic, with Superman'due south calm reason seen every bit the encapsulation of everything wrong with the mod hero. Near the end, Superman finally snaps, destroying multiple fighter jets and probably killing their pilots. But this isn't framed as the fall of The Man of Steel, it'south his rise. Now, Batman condones killing, aiding Hawkman and Hawkgirl'south son in murdering Lex Luthor. And as Superman becomes a furious god, a new religion forms around him, exalting a savior you can see and touch over i y'all can't.
"Strikes Once more" is a mess. I can't deny that. But I observe it to be a fascinating mess. And a much meliorate experience when you immerse yourself in its madness instead of flipping through its pages. These panels hurt the optics without aligning. And while it's not as bad every bit staring at the sun, it does aid to permit the pupils dialate accordingly.
DK2 is a pop fine art speedrace, striking the gas immediately and ruby-red-lining before the first result is over. Every installment is a mega-sized chunk of pages, just fifty-fifty with so much existent estate, it seems like at that place's never enough time for any of Miller'south ideas. Major characters of Returns, like Gordon and Yindel, are given no more a single panel as the increasingly manic story vibrates with a billion screaming thoughts. By issue 3, the narrative is leaping tall buildings in a single bound, flashing back to forgotten moments and refusing to institute time or place.
Rage-filled rebels burn down guns at unseen hordes every bit increasingly cartoonish talking heads gawk and groan similar some sort of vocalism populi bobblehead from hell. Politicians, journalists, villains, soldiers, common people, artists – they're all caricatures here, designed to echo a strawman argument for Miller to ruthlessly mock and tear apart. And when the President is shown to exist a hologram, the people just shrug and take it. If in that location was e'er a time to use the term "sheeple," it'south when describing Miller's approach to the common man. And Batman is here to vanquish some awareness into them.
Actually, despite Batman being our titular graphic symbol, he's probably the least of import. Carrie Kelley is given much more to do, acting out her mentor'southward plans while the various returning members of the Justice League similar The Atom, Plastic Human, The Elongated Man, Light-green Arrow, Light-green Lantern, and more have up the fight. But if this is anyone's story, it's actually Superman'due south. His romance with Wonder Woman, becoming a parent to his daughter, and moving out of the regime stooge role that Miller is oft criticized for in Returns, are the given way more page real manor than Batman, who acts equally puppet master here. Batman is most entirely absent from the offset event. His voiceover permeates it, showing usa his plans, but he doesn't appear until the very end, once again mercilessly chirapsia Superman to a pulp. Batman is never incorrect in the pages of Strikes Once more, then how tin he have any sort of arc?
Everyone outside of Batman, and perhaps Carrie, is a moron, little more a chess piece moved virtually by The Night Knight. And no 1 suffers more than in relation to Miller's ubermench antihero than a late villainous addition.
Miller's relationship to Robin is … strange to say the to the lowest degree, and even downright hateful at its core. At the time of Returns publishing, Jason Todd was all the same alive in the main Batbooks and Batman's allusion to Todd being expressionless predates that character's telephone call-in mandated murder. Years subsequently DK2, Miller would team upward with Jim Lee for All-Star Batman and Robin for the origin of Dick Grayson, with Miller making him a violent fiddling psycho whose grooming by Batman largely consists of verbal abuse. I don't know if Miller intended for it to be more that, All-Star never finished and no you can't make me do a video on it. Carrie Kelley's Robin helps Bruce motion past the mental and physical roadblocks on his path back to Batman, merely she's become Catgirl by the time Strikes Again has started.
Returns never makes anything explicit, but it seems as if years of disillusionment and trauma have dissolved whatever semblance of the Bat Family. Where is Dick Grayson? It doesn't affair initially. Just in Strikes Over again, the fate of Robin is critical, and information technology paints the dynamic of this duo in a terrible calorie-free.
Throughout these pages, a new Joker begins murdering heroes, revealed at the cease to exist Dick Grayson, seeking revenge against Batman for his corruption and firing years earlier. It'due south completely unnecessary and is quickly solved by a decapitation and some lava. But why should nosotros intendance? Miller has done zero to give u.s. an emotional connection to anything in DK2 beyond a twist for twist'southward sake.
Who are these people? What are their relationships? Every grapheme's friendship, honey, or hatred toward one another is just established through us knowing traditional status quo established by other comics.
Alongside its critique of political powers, Strikes Again likewise interrogrates our burgeoning relationship with technology. The human-computer interface is taken to an farthermost through a constant barrage of information. A hologram president is the ultimate connexion of political manipulation and technological abuse. Having a graphic symbol similar Braniac, covered in nodes and constantly changing shape, be the power behind Luthor's control takes the critique to another level. Layers and layers of technology manipulating the world at large. All the while, Varley uses burgeoning applied science to haphazardly slam layer after layer of Photoshop color down on the folio, colliding Miller'south corybantic inks with a swirl of digital color.
And speaking of the art, DK2 is full-fledged late-phase Miller. Later his evolution in conjunction with inker Klaus Janson (who didn't return here) and his push into the heavily inked noir of Sin Metropolis (gone completely psychedelic by the final installment of Hell and Dorsum), Miller moved into a much more sparse line work with harsh geometric interpretations of the torso. Here, Miller'southward panels are nearly entirely devoid of backgrounds as each character floats through the void. The Gotham of Dark Knight Returns is famous for existence a instance for a more than grounded, gritty realism in superhero stories. Miller, Janson, and Varley'southward world in that original story was fabricated upwardly of cold hard concrete and dilapidated modernity.
What does the Gotham of Strikes Once more wait similar? I couldn't tell you. It doesn't be. It's all just harsh colors and screaming heads. A howl of high tech horror that bears no semblance to the world nosotros saw previously. And peradventure that's the key to understanding this comic. This is not a true sequel to Returns. In that location's niggling hither to connect the two outside of some returning characters. This is a different Frank Miller and a different dark future.
Miller'south art works best in splash pages here, creating i large image for the biggest touch on and sometimes breaking it upward with a scattering of pocket-sized panels that give greater context. But it's at it's worst when trying to create a true sequential approach to activeness or emotion. All the detail is lost. The context is missing. The movements and desires of characters are about incommunicable to parse at times every bit there's no sense of pacing or flow from panel to console.
The coloring past Lynn Varley is a hypercolored garish explosion. Unlike Varley's coloring of Returns, which used gouache to provide a natural, textured feeling to a dilapidated future, Varley adopts an early Photoshop coloring here. The result is something harshly unnatural, filled with pinwheels of rainbow colors and at times heavily pixelated. When combined with Miller nearly completely removing backgrounds, you get unmoored from whatever sense of setting or context. These are all characters adrift in an uncanny abyss.
In the midst of all this pop art excess, Miller tries to reassert the power of the superhero. But much is lost in both the messiness of an unfocused story and the years that recontextualized it in Miller'south career.
The Dark Knight Falls
When reflecting on his drive behind returning to superheroes to write Strikes Again, Miller said, "Fifteen years away from it has given me a much different perspective. I'one thousand much more than able to approach information technology similar I'm 7 years old than I used to exist able to."
And there's something both fun and thickheaded about that approach. Seen one way, and yous can hands view the comic as a dizzy throwback to the Silverish Age, where heroes were bright and weird and the stakes had little to do with reality. Seen another, and you face all the heavy real world bug that Miller infuses his story with, colliding an immature arroyo with recent tragedy.
There are loads of ridiculous moments throughout Strikes Once again. But comics can be ridiculous and still work. It'due south all about establishing a world and tone and then working well within information technology. If the unabridged globe is ridiculous, and so ridiculous things can happen and feel correct.
The trouble with Strikes Once more is that it never quite understands how it'south trying to operate. While Returns had elements of satire in how information technology portrayed the media and government, everything in DK2 is ridiculous to the point of unintentional self-parody.
Superman and Wonder Woman having earth-shaking insta-significant MEGASEX highlights but how outlandish Miller is willing to get. Everything hither is cranked up to its about farthermost caricature. The greek chorus of talking caput reporters are slammed into whatever scene at random, with highly sexualized women giving the news in the nude. In fact, every adult female, even 16-year-erstwhile Carrie Kelley, is sexualized, information technology's just that Miller'southward fibroid geometric shapes lack any sort of human sensuality. Right wing controlling politicians are now all puppets in a sort of conspiracy theorist'southward ultimate fantasy. Batman is now the perfect human, always 10 steps ahead and never wrong in his assessment of the earth effectually him.
In Miller's 21st century optics, the earth is one big, ugly cesspool of corruption and information technology must, at all costs, existence violently cleaned up. Is this righteous anger? Not really. More like decades of pent upward rage given life in a medium meant to inspire. Yet Miller would later dismiss the effects of political ideology given life through art, saying "I don't know many people who get their politics out of comic books. The notion of doing that scares me most of the time. I'thousand just throwing my stuff against a wall to see what happens. I don't think anything I'm doing could affect things on such a broad basis. I don't think everyone doing fiction could."
Maybe that'southward partially truthful Frank, only art is the gateway into a greater worldview. Peradventure no single comic has ever changed a person'south entire belief system, only it's likely caused them to consider a different viewpoint. Given enough reinforcement, and their behavior can change. Of course, any sort of beliefs Miller had about politics and fine art would be tossed out in the days of "Holy Terror" and a 1 human being drawing state of war on those he hated.
If DK2 left bad taste in your oral fissure, don't read this book.
In response to "Holy Terror," Grant Morrison would after say, "Cheering on a fictional character as he beats up fictionalized terrorists seems like a decadent indulgence when existent terrorists are killing real people in the real globe. I'd be so much more impressed if Frank Miller gave up all this graphic novel nonsense, joined the Ground forces and, with a howl of undying hate, rushed headlong onto the front lines with the young soldiers who are actually risking life and limb 'vs.' Al Qaeda."
In the long, convoluted arc of the story, "Nighttime Knight Strikes Again" is the reassertion of the superhero, angle back the totalitarian leanings of the globe through sheer force of will. What that means for each reader probable depends on how willing they are to wait past its fractured plot, foreign sexualizations, homophobic tangents, and real earth paranoia.
For all its loopy political ideaology and mid-writing identity crisis, Strikes Again is actually a hopeful volume. One that presents a global crisis of staggering proportions that collides decades of human's worst impulses with the failings of our political arrangement and believes that we tin can still pull ourselves out of the muck. It just may take lopping off your genetically modified shape shifting former ward's head to do information technology.
Dissimilar so many elements of Dark Knight Returns, Strikes Again has not entered the iconography of Batman. Whereas things like the tank Batmobile, the ability armor, the Mutant gang, Carrie Kelley Robin, the brick shithouse of former Batman, and then many iconic panels that were created by Returns accept been reinterpreted by other comics, movies, and television shows, the inventions of Strikes Again have bounced off pop culture and have never really been reclaimed. Its immediate rejection gave it no chance to permeate the larger civilization. And you know what? Thats ok.
It would be another nigh fifteen years until the world of DKR would have a full-fledged sequel in Dark Knight Iii: The Master Race, co-written by Miller and Brian Azzarello. While some elements of Strikes Over again influence part iii, like Superman and his daughter, the entry largely ignores it.
Just what could you really do to extend DK2'south world?
The Dark Knight Strikes Again is a work of pure anarchy. Anarchy in content equally superheroes cover their outlaw nature to topple the hole-and-corner rulers of the world. Anarchy in form as Miller and Varley throw away any traditional structure in favor of pure thought brought to life on the page. The upshot is a sloppy, strange, insulting, captivating, confusing, brilliant, and braindead, all at once.
And despite some changes in political idealogy and art in the decades since, The Dark Knight Strikes Again was the death of Frank Miller's career.
https://www.denofgeek.com/comics/frank-miller-returns-to-batman-and-the-dark-knight-universe/
http://www.metabunker.dk/?p=2595
https://vocal.media/geeks/the-dark-knight-strikes-once again-not-a-flop
https://www.avclub.com/frank-miller-1798208243
https://world wide web.comicsbeat.com/the-lives-and-death-of-jason-todd-an-oral-history-of-the-second-robin-and-a-expiry-in-the-family/
https://web.annal.org/web/20070705190553/http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Batman/Morrison/Morrison_Batman.html
https://world wide web.pastemagazine.com/comics/batman/in-defence force-of-batman-dark-knight-strikes-once more/
Source: https://www.comicbookherald.com/understanding-the-dark-knight-strikes-again-frank-millers-self-destructive-magnum-opus/
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