The Dark Knight Strikes Again


Have you ever seen something so stupid or bizarre that afterwards you sort of talk yourself out of it?
You start to doubt that anything that retarded could really have happened.
No one could have made something THAT stupid!

This is my experience of reading the comic book, The Dark Knight Strikes Again.

History lesson, comic fans-
Probably the most influential Batman story ever penned was the Dark Knight returns, created by Frank Miller in 1986.
It told the story of an aging and retired Batman putting the cowl back on to face the forces of evil and anarchy that were threatening to consume Gotham city.

The book was dark, psychological and down right fucking awesome.
This is a comic book that took our preconceptions and kicked them in the bat balls, such was it epic badassery.
Every Batman story that followed DKR would be influenced by it, as it effectively created the modern Batman as most of us know him.
Without this comic there would be no Animated Series.
Scary thought, I know!

But it was not without its flaws.
As the comic went on it got more and more…odd.
Weird stuff started happening without much explanation (the joker flying around on flying talking dolls?) and the plot started to move into the cold war message that all comic in the 1980's were contractually obliged to deal with it seems.
The art also became increasingly cartoony and strange.
Now it was all still really good…but the later parts of the story were not as good as the earlier stuff.

Interestingly, Frank Miller was not happy with the repercussions of what he had created. His work had spawned the “Dark Age” of comics, where every super hero had become shadowy, angst ridden and brooding.
Miller wanted to take us back to lighter, more carefree times, and along with it the silliness inherent to many earlier super hero stories.
He aimed to do this by making a sequel to DKR.
Effectively he was setting out to make a comic to deliberately undermine what people had liked about his first comic.
You an probably already guess how this is going to turn out.
The answer is- Not well.

Just as DKR had a gradual slide in quality and common sense, DKSA starts from the level of quality that that DKR began with and continues an ever more rapid decline into total and complete insano bullshit.

This is my second attempt at writing this review, because the first time I simply found I had too much to complain about.
This comic is so fuck backwards retarded that almost every page has something on it that makes me want to pull my eyeballs from my head and throw them at Frank Miller.
Trying to pick out which parts of it are stupid and why it like trying to pick out individual bits of rubble from the middle of a hurricane.

In order to try to make some kind of sense of this abomination of a comic, I need to just pick out a couple of features to focus on to give you an idea of why it fills me with sooo much hate.

1- Treatment of Superman.
I like Batman more than Superman.
Batman is cooler and more exciting to me.
I don't like Superman stories very much either.
But at the same time I know that some people like Superman, and I recognise that he is a classic and iconic superhero (the original superhero in fact.)
Dark Knight Strikes Again takes a rather different view.
Superman in this comic is Lex Luthers minion, being easily blackmailed into helping an evil tyrant take over the entire world. Superman considers anyone who tries to oppose the evil regime to be foolhardy and dangerous. He is sent by the regime to stop Batman's efforts to rally super heroes against Luther…and gets completely owned.
Batman has the other superheroes run rings around Supes, then Batman beats him senseless with kryptonite gauntlets (don't know here he got those…but anyway) .
Batman dismisses the pathetic weakling Superman by telling him to-
“Get the hell out of my cave.”
This depiction of Superman is just down right pathetic.
It feels like Frank Miller had a nerdy argument about which hero was better with someone he knew and went and wrote some angry bitter fan fiction to ‘prove’ himself right. Of course he proves nothing and just drags down his own comic by making Batman seem like a Mary Sue and the comic feel like an angry rant.
Insulting Superman does not boost Batman, it just diminishes them both.
Superman goes on to have sex with Wonder Woman that causes earth quakes and typhoons all around the world.
No really, that happens.
Superman and Wonder Woman cause natural disasters by doing the nasty.
The evidence seems to be mounting that Frank Miller is eight years old (at least mentally at the time of writing this.)

2- Plasticman turns into a toilet and flushes a bad guy in himself.
Nothing really more I can say about this one.
I think it speaks for itself.

3- Too many damn Superheroes.
This story is desperate to pile in as many different super heroes as possible.
Initially it seems like Batman is going to put together an elite team of heroes to help him fight Lex Luther….but unfortunately the membership starts to spiral out of control.
Let's list all the ones who pop up at one point or another-
Batman
Catgirl
Superman
Wonderwoman
Lara- Superman and wonderwomans daughter
captain marvel
Martian manhunter
The Creeper
The atom
The flash
Elongated Man
Green Arrow
Plastic Man
The Question
Green Lantern
Hawkboy (son of hawk man)
Saturn Girl
Hawk and Dove

If you came in to this Batman comic wanting to read to read about, I dunno, Batman then you are shit out of luck.
Because of the way they have to be shoe horned in so rapidly, many of them get such brief appearances that the depictions of them seems down right insulting.
Martianman Hunter is a washed up loser who has lost all his powers.
Creeper and Guardian are both killed in the first panel they appear in. I am barely aware of who these chuckle heads are, but this thing tells us nothing about them other than that the author views them as totally disposable.
This is not just treating characters like shit, its treating the rules of story telling like shit.
Am I supposed to be upset when these people die? Characters who I didn't know were in the story till they died? Am I supposed to fear a villains who spends one panel killing a loser I've never seen before?
This comic has no restraint or self control. It just hurls things together in a maelstrom of unintelligible chaos.


4- Treatment of Robin.
Most people don't like Robin.
I don't really like him much.
He's pretty lame.
Let's face it, Batman is generally cooler without him.
Robin tends to open the door to a lot of Adam West style camp goings on.
But as with the treatment of Superman, this comic book comes out with such a moronic take on Robin that even for people who are not big fans of him, but enjoy Batman, will find this horrifyingly offensive and insulting.
There is a subplot about a guy who looks like the Joker murdering super heroes throughout the story.
The uncomfortably rushed and disjointed story telling makes this subplot entirely forgettable and it seems to have no connection to the main story.
Also it is made even less significant by the fact this “Joker” is killing absolute nobodies like the aforementioned Creeper and Guardian.
I want to assure you that the sequence of plot revelations I am about to tell you are true. I am not exaggerating or making any of it up.
It turns out the new Joker is actually Dick Grayson, ie- the former Robin.
He can now change his shape and is able to regenerate from damage, making him virtually indestructible.
Batman isn't upset by this revelation that his former best friend is now an insane mutant super hero. In fact he doesn't even seem surprised.
He laughs at Robin, telling him that he fired him for incompetence. This seems a bit weird because robin has never been described as incompetent in the comics before, but for some reason Batman now reveals that he always thought Grayson was a loser.
Batman also makes a few comments that seem to imply he is mocking Dick Grayson for being gay (made all the worse for the fact that Dick Grayson tells Batman that he “loved” him.)
Batman chops off Dick Grayson's head with an axe, but Dick catches it and carries on (due to his regeneration power.)
In the end Batman activates a self destruct in the Bat cave that floods it with lava, killing Dick Grayson.
Again, Batman is not upset at having just killed Robin, despite having just murdered his former best friend AND having broken his own code against killing.
He just cheerfully jokes and is on his way.

What…the….fuck?

It is as if all characterisation of Batman has been caste aside for that Frank Miller can show how shitty he thinks Robin is.
I might not like Robin much, but Batman does!
A plot where Robin turns evil should be an absolutely land mark event in the history of Batman, but here it is thrown in as an irrelevant after thought.
Batman's casual attitude to this situation drain it of any emotional impact at all.
Batman doesn't care about this betrayal, so why the hell should we?
And Batman KILLS HIM!
After making GAY JOKES!
This is all so insanely stupid that I cant actually think of a way to make fun of it.
You cant ruin a turd!
You cant fuck up a plate of vomit!
You cant make Frank Miller any more of a retard!

The sad thing is, I just picked out three of the most retarded moments, the rest of the comic is just as ass backwards stupid!
Louis Lane dies off camera!
Lex Luther looks like a shaved gorilla!
This comic is just….ARGH!!!

This comic deserves to be places in a self destructing Batcave and destroyed by the rising lava!

watch these, they are hilarious. It's a three part review by Linkara about this same comic. He despises it too.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I read the dark knight returns, I didn't find it had that much of a decrease in quality, but it did get harder to follow during the second half.

I am one of the aforementioned superman fans. I loved his portrayal in Dark knight returns. not so much in strikes again.

I have seen the Linkara review before.
I did find it funny, but Linkara always gets on my nerves a bit.
His voice is annoying and he's not as funny as other reviewer doing that kinda thing.
Also, keeps letting his right wing biases slip into his reviews (which is fucking weird for a guy reviewing bad comics!)
Linkara is Spoony's bitch!
Haha, I just did a review of a a reviewer! Awesome!

right wing biases? I always found him rather left wing.

ooooh, wait. I just remembered something from comparative gov.

our wings are reversed.

… or is it our liberal/conservatives that are reversed?

is there a difference between the wings, and the conserv/lib?

crap I'm confused again.

something is reversed, so we may be agreeing without knowing it.

I still like him though, and find him hilarious.

When I say right wing I mean he seems pretty conservative.
He generally complains about left wing things (like Michael Moore and Keith Olberman) and thinks like how bad socialism and high taxes are.
He is entitled to an opinion, but slipping that into a comic book review is pretty lame.
To paraphrase Linkara-
“This reviewer SUCKS!”

Alright, I'll admit when he goes “It's Miller Time” that is pretty funny.

There seems to be a lot of bits in this comic where things happen off camera and we are just sort of told after the fact that stuff happened.
For example, Lex Luther is revealed to have a data base that allows them to know everything about everyone on the planet…AFTER Batman has destroyed hte data base.
This is meantto show that Batman is awesome, I guess. But shouldn't we have seen how powerful the database was BEFORE, rather then being retroactively told how great it was when it was already destroyed off panel?
Hell, shouldn't we have seen its destruction?

Later on it gets worse when Batman is suddenly revealed to have been captured.
Yes, just like that.
We turn the page and suddenly he is captured and Luther (in a vest and boxer shorts…don't ask me!) is beating him up.
Turns out this is part of a plan that Batman wanted to be captured so he could see Luthers face when his plans fail. Putting asside how retarded that is (yes, I have to skim passed one retarded thing to get to another here!) this is all written like when little kids are writing stories and they just skip over boring bits to get to the section they want to write about.
“Can't be bothered to write a scene with Batman's capture…I'll just skip ahead.”
It left me turning back the page to see if I missed something.


Another minor point that irritated me…
Brainiac is meant to be an all powerful alien super computer, so why does he keep talking in such a casual, chummy way?

“You're tough, Kent, even in your dotage, you're tough. Killing you is going to take some time. Not that I'm complaining.”

Do those read like the words of an all cold hearted machine based purely on uncaring logic?
Also he looks like a giant frog with circuits….what the fuck?

Sounds pretty horrible.

Let's just watch Alyas Batman en Robin instead.

Let's be afraid of God….


….and of Frank Miller making more comics!