Dark Knight Strikes Again Lex Luthor
Gotham is saved, the future finds hope, and the Dark Knight has returned. But when the world is at its worst, it'south fourth dimension for the Dark Knight to strike again.
In 2001, Frank Miller returned to DC Comics for a belated sequel to his highly influential Batman dystopia Dark Knight Returns
Comic book sequels are kind of historically disastrous. For every Secret Wars 2015 or Night Victory
Consider everything that happened in the time between The Night Knight Returns and The Night 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 past three sequels that flamed out. The Soviet Union, a major factor in the political tensions of DKR, complanate. Ronald Reagan, lampooned in those aforementioned pages, had left the presidential function, with three more presidents following. Frank Miller gave Batman a new origin in Yr One only to exit DC Comics for Hollywood and so Dark Horse for Sin Metropolis, Martha Washington, 300, and more than. Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen had pushed mainstream superhero comics into the era of grim and gritty deconstruction, leading to the early on 90s speculator boom and subsequent catastrophic plummet. And both Marvel and DC had narrowly avoided shuttering.
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Comic books and the world they occupied were not the same, simply The Nighttime Knight Returns seemed to loom larger than it always had over the industry. And when Miller signed a deal with DC to return to the story that helped change comics, DK2 became ane of the nearly highly anticipated comic books of all time. But apprehension and reality are ii very different things.
Reception to The Night Knight Strikes Again was negative, to say the least, with the comic speedily becoming infamous for being one of the great disappointments in the history of DC. But it was, financially, a hitting, selling close to 200,000 copies of event 1 and issues 2 and 3 staying at over 150,000 sold each, with a $7.95 toll tag for its large prestige format meaning that DK2 has made DC Comics around $five 1000000 when including its collected reprints. When you put a name like Frank Miller together with a vision of Batman that's famous worldwide, you get a lot of coin, especially in 2001 when Miller was still a respected and agile author.
And this is why Dark 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 all the same shorthand for comic book disaster. But why?
How does Miller try to follow upwards ane 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 Dark Knight Strikes Again, warts and all, in the ongoing Batman saga?
Returning to the Return
The Dark Knight Returns is about the balance of hope and despair in a future dystopia, merely information technology'southward as well about Batman transcending humanity and condign legend, moving from an onetime man who struggles to defeat a cleaved 2-Face up to a hero that can go toe to toe with Superman. And then what can a sequel do to challenge the transcendent? Information technology must become larger than life in every attribute.
The futurity of The Dark Knight Returns is dystopic in a sort of "humanity's worst impulses continue" sort of way. But the hereafter of Night Knight Strikes Again is a full-on police state, with the authorities controlling every element of the population. The president of the U.s. is a hologram controlled by Lex Luthor, wars and invasions ravage the planet, superheroes continue to exist outlawed and snuffed out. And it's this escalation of horrors that brings Batman out of hiding.
Co-ordinate to Miller, "When I did the first one, I was very much rebelling confronting all the established stuff, similar the one-time TV show. Just how lame all the stuff had get. This time, I'm finding that I'm playing around with DC'southward whole pantheon of characters and trying to bear witness them off in ways that feature the joys behind them."
If Miller's original was a stiff centre finger to the forces that command the world, DK2 is all-out war confronting them as Batman gathers an aged Justice League to destroy Luthor and his forces. Simply what starts as a war for freedom violently devolves into nonsense as Miller slams more and more than plot developments down on the reader. Boom! Braniac attack. Blindside! Superman-Wonder Adult female love kid. 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 Over again, Miller and so-wife Lynn Varley had moved back to Hell's Kitchen in New York, and in the midst of writing his render to Batman, the September 11th terrorist attacks happened – the smoke and death visible from Miller's home. While issues 1 and 2 came out in December 2001 and January 2002, all of outcome i and some of issue 2 had been written earlier September 11th.
Whatever Miller had originally planned was waylaid by his horror at the destruction. Instead, event 2 diverges into an extended destruction of Metropolis as Superman is rendered powerless to stop Braniac.
There's a hitting double-folio spread that directly evokes the aftermath of nine/11 in outcome 3 of DK2, published in July of 2002. The rubble of Metropolis echoes first responders in search of survivors in New York, but it's all made perfectly clear as Superman and his daughter fly off, the smoldering urban center split in half behind them. It's one of the few images in the entire series that Miller bothers to give a detailed background and connects to the existent globe devastation.
Much similar Miller would cite existence mugged in New York as the inspiration for his paranoid, ruthless arroyo to Daredevil and Batman in the '80s, 9/11 would break Miller in the 21st century. The author's Libertarianism, often 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 past DC in 2006. So "Strikes Over again" sees Miller in the midst of a personal political crisis, one that'southward pushed through a psychedelic lens of conspiracy, superheroism, and justice, all embodied in a gleefully violent Batman.
In Miller'southward hands, Batman is a monomaniacal furious ball of moral rage, pushed to the brink from a globe the author sees as immoral in every mode. And in a echo of Returns, Bruce once over again transcends his mortality, essentially asserting himself as beyond age by the end. I don't know how or why, he just does.
Miller seeths beneath the surface of the comic, with Superman's calm reason seen as the encapsulation of everything wrong with the mod hero. Near the end, Superman finally snaps, destroying multiple fighter jets and probably killing their pilots. Merely this isn't framed equally the fall of The Man of Steel, it's his ascension. Now, Batman condones killing, aiding Hawkman and Hawkgirl's son in murdering Lex Luthor. And equally Superman becomes a furious god, a new faith forms around him, exalting a savior you tin can see and touch over i you can't.
"Strikes Once again" is a mess. I can't deny that. But I observe it to be a fascinating mess. And a much better feel when you immerse yourself in its madness instead of flipping through its pages. These panels injure the eyes without aligning. And while it's not equally bad every bit staring at the sunday, it does help to let the pupils dialate accordingly.
DK2 is a popular fine art speedrace, hitting the gas immediately and red-lining before the first outcome is over. Every installment is a mega-sized chunk of pages, only fifty-fifty with so much real estate, it seems similar there's never enough time for any of Miller's ideas. Major characters of Returns, like Gordon and Yindel, are given no more a unmarried panel as the increasingly manic story vibrates with a billion screaming thoughts. By outcome 3, the narrative is leaping alpine buildings in a single jump, flashing dorsum to forgotten moments and refusing to plant fourth dimension or identify.
Rage-filled rebels fire guns at unseen hordes equally increasingly cartoonish talking heads gawk and groan similar some sort of phonation populi bobblehead from hell. Politicians, journalists, villains, soldiers, mutual 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 be a hologram, the people just shrug and accept it. If in that location was ever a fourth dimension to use the term "sheeple," it'south when describing Miller's approach to the mutual man. And Batman is here to beat some awareness into them.
Actually, despite Batman beingness our titular character, he'south probably the least important. Carrie Kelley is given much more to do, acting out her mentor's plans while the diverse returning members of the Justice League similar The Cantlet, Plastic Human, The Elongated Homo, Light-green Arrow, Green Lantern, and more accept up the fight. Merely if this is anyone's story, it's actually Superman'south. His romance with Wonder Woman, becoming a parent to his daughter, and moving out of the authorities stooge role that Miller is oftentimes criticized for in Returns, are the given way more page real estate than Batman, who acts as puppet main hither. Batman is nigh entirely absent from the starting time issue. His voiceover permeates it, showing united states of america his plans, simply he doesn't appear until the very end, once again mercilessly beating Superman to a pulp. Batman is never wrong in the pages of Strikes Again, so how tin he take whatever sort of arc?
Anybody outside of Batman, and peradventure Carrie, is a moron, niggling more than a chess piece moved about by The Dark Knight. And no one suffers more in relation to Miller's ubermench antihero than a late villainous improver.
Miller'due south relationship to Robin is … strange to say the least, and fifty-fifty downright mean at its core. At the fourth dimension of Returns publishing, Jason Todd was even so alive in the main Batbooks and Batman's innuendo to Todd being dead predates that grapheme'south call-in mandated murder. Years after DK2, Miller would team up with Jim Lee for All-Star Batman and Robin for the origin of Dick Grayson, with Miller making him a violent trivial psycho whose training by Batman largely consists of verbal abuse. I don't know if Miller intended for it to be more than than that, All-Star never finished and no y'all can't brand me do a video on information technology. Carrie Kelley's Robin helps Bruce move past the mental and physical roadblocks on his path back to Batman, but she'southward become Catgirl by the fourth dimension Strikes Once more has started.
Returns never makes anything explicit, but it seems as if years of disillusionment and trauma have dissolved any semblance of the Bat Family. Where is Dick Grayson? Information technology doesn't matter initially. Merely in Strikes Once more, the fate of Robin is critical, and it paints the dynamic of this duo in a terrible light.
Throughout these pages, a new Joker begins murdering heroes, revealed at the cease to be Dick Grayson, seeking revenge confronting Batman for his abuse and firing years earlier. It's completely unnecessary and is apace solved by a decapitation and some lava. But why should we care? Miller has washed nothing to give the states an emotional connection to anything in DK2 beyond a twist for twist's sake.
Who are these people? What are their relationships? Every character's friendship, love, or hatred toward one another is only established through u.s.a. knowing traditional status quo established by other comics.
Aslope its critique of political powers, Strikes Once again also interrogrates our burgeoning relationship with applied science. The man-estimator interface is taken to an extreme through a constant barrage of information. A hologram president is the ultimate connection of political manipulation and technological abuse. Having a graphic symbol like Braniac, covered in nodes and constantly irresolute shape, be the power behind Luthor's control takes the critique to another level. Layers and layers of technology manipulating the world at big. All the while, Varley uses burgeoning technology to haphazardly slam layer later layer of Photoshop color down on the page, colliding Miller's frenetic inks with a swirl of digital color.
And speaking of the fine art, DK2 is full-fledged late-stage Miller. Afterward his evolution in conjunction with inker Klaus Janson (who didn't render here) and his push into the heavily inked noir of Sin Metropolis (gone completely psychedelic by the last installment of Hell and Back), Miller moved into a much more than sparse line piece of work with harsh geometric interpretations of the body. Here, Miller'south panels are well-nigh entirely devoid of backgrounds as each character floats through the void. The Gotham of Dark Knight Returns is famous for being a case for a more grounded, gritty realism in superhero stories. Miller, Janson, and Varley's world in that original story was fabricated up of cold hard concrete and dilapidated modernity.
What does the Gotham of Strikes Once again look similar? I couldn't tell you. It doesn't exist. It'southward all only harsh colors and screaming heads. A howl of high tech horror that bears no semblance to the world we saw previously. And maybe that'south the cardinal to understanding this comic. This is not a truthful sequel to Returns. There's petty hither to connect the two outside of some returning characters. This is a dissimilar Frank Miller and a different dark future.
Miller's fine art works best in splash pages hither, creating one large image for the biggest impact and sometimes breaking it up with a scattering of small panels that requite greater context. Merely it's at it'southward worst when trying to create a truthful sequential approach to action or emotion. All the detail is lost. The context is missing. The movements and desires of characters are nigh impossible to parse at times every bit there's no sense of pacing or flow from panel to panel.
The coloring by Lynn Varley is a hypercolored garish explosion. Unlike Varley'due south coloring of Returns, which used gouache to provide a natural, textured feeling to a battered 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 almost completely removing backgrounds, you go unmoored from any sense of setting or context. These are all characters afloat in an uncanny abyss.
In the midst of all this pop art backlog, Miller tries to reassert the power of the superhero. Merely much is lost in both the messiness of an unfocused story and the years that recontextualized information technology in Miller's career.
The Dark Knight Falls
When reflecting on his drive behind returning to superheroes to write Strikes Once more, Miller said, "15 years abroad from it has given me a much unlike perspective. I'm much more able to approach it like I'm 7 years old than I used to be able to."
And there'south something both fun and thickheaded about that arroyo. Seen one way, and you can easily view the comic as a silly throwback to the Silver Age, where heroes were bright and weird and the stakes had piddling to do with reality. Seen another, and you lot confront all the heavy real earth issues that Miller infuses his story with, colliding an immature arroyo with contempo tragedy.
At that place are loads of ridiculous moments throughout Strikes Once again. But comics tin be ridiculous and notwithstanding work. It's all about establishing a globe and tone and and so working well within information technology. If the entire world is ridiculous, then ridiculous things can happen and feel correct.
The problem with Strikes Again is that it never quite understands how it's 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 just how outlandish Miller is willing to go. Everything hither is cranked up to its most extreme extravaganza. The greek chorus of talking head reporters are slammed into any scene at random, with highly sexualized women giving the news in the nude. In fact, every adult female, fifty-fifty 16-yr-old Carrie Kelley, is sexualized, information technology's just that Miller's coarse geometric shapes lack any sort of homo sensuality. Right wing controlling politicians are now all puppets in a sort of conspiracy theorist's ultimate fantasy. Batman is now the perfect man, always 10 steps ahead and never incorrect in his cess of the world around him.
In Miller's 21st century optics, the world is one big, ugly cesspool of corruption and information technology must, at all costs, being violently cleaned upwardly. Is this righteous anger? Non actually. More like decades of pent up rage given life in a medium meant to inspire. Nonetheless 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 fourth dimension. I'm just throwing my stuff against a wall to see what happens. I don't think annihilation I'm doing could bear on things on such a broad basis. I don't think anybody doing fiction could."
Maybe that's partially true Frank, but art is the gateway into a greater worldview. Maybe no single comic has e'er changed a person's entire belief organisation, but information technology'south likely caused them to consider a different viewpoint. Given enough reinforcement, and their beliefs can modify. Of course, whatsoever sort of beliefs Miller had about politics and fine art would exist tossed out in the days of "Holy Terror" and a ane man cartoon state of war on those he hated.
If DK2 left bad taste in your mouth, don't read this book.
In response to "Holy Terror," Grant Morrison would later say, "Cheering on a fictional character every bit he beats up fictionalized terrorists seems like a decadent indulgence when real terrorists are killing real people in the real globe. I'd exist so much more impressed if Frank Miller gave up all this graphic novel nonsense, joined the Army and, with a howl of undying detest, 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, "Dark Knight Strikes Again" is the reassertion of the superhero, angle back the totalitarian leanings of the earth through sheer strength of will. What that means for each reader likely depends on how willing they are to wait past its fractured plot, strange sexualizations, homophobic tangents, and real world paranoia.
For all its loopy political ideaology and mid-writing identity crisis, Strikes Over again is really a hopeful book. One that presents a global crunch of staggering proportions that collides decades of human's worst impulses with the failings of our political organization and believes that we can still pull ourselves out of the muck. Information technology just may take lopping off your genetically modified shape shifting former ward'due south head to do it.
Unlike so many elements of Dark Knight Returns, Strikes Again has not entered the iconography of Batman. Whereas things similar the tank Batmobile, the power armor, the Mutant gang, Carrie Kelley Robin, the brick shithouse of old Batman, and and then many iconic panels that were created by Returns accept been reinterpreted by other comics, movies, and tv shows, the inventions of Strikes Over again have bounced off popular culture and have never really been reclaimed. Its immediate rejection gave information technology no take a chance to permeate the larger culture. And you lot know what? Thats ok.
Information technology would be another well-nigh 15 years until the world of DKR would have a full-fledged sequel in Night Knight 3: The Master Race, co-written past Miller and Brian Azzarello. While some elements of Strikes Over again influence function iii, like Superman and his girl, the entry largely ignores it.
Just what could you really do to extend DK2's earth?
The Dark Knight Strikes Once more is a piece of work of pure anarchy. Anarchy in content as superheroes embrace their outlaw nature to topple the secret rulers of the world. Anarchy in course as Miller and Varley throw away any traditional structure in favor of pure idea brought to life on the page. The outcome is a sloppy, strange, insulting, captivating, disruptive, brilliant, and braindead, all at once.
And despite some changes in political idealogy and art in the decades since, The Nighttime Knight Strikes Over again was the death of Frank Miller's career.
https://www.denofgeek.com/comics/frank-miller-returns-to-batman-and-the-night-knight-universe/
http://www.metabunker.dk/?p=2595
https://vocal.media/geeks/the-dark-knight-strikes-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-death-in-the-family/
https://spider web.archive.org/web/20070705190553/http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Batman/Morrison/Morrison_Batman.html
https://www.pastemagazine.com/comics/batman/in-defence-of-batman-dark-knight-strikes-again/
Source: https://www.comicbookherald.com/understanding-the-dark-knight-strikes-again-frank-millers-self-destructive-magnum-opus/
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