Batman Dark Knight Strikes Again Frank Miller Interview
Gotham is saved, the future finds hope, and the Dark Knight has returned. But when the earth is at its worst, it's 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 Dark Knight Returns
Comic volume sequels are kind of historically disastrous. For every Secret Wars 2015 or Nighttime Victory
Consider everything that happened in the time between The Nighttime Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again, both in comic books and the larger world around them.
Tim Burton and Michael Keaton turned Batman into a blockbuster, which was followed by three sequels that flamed out. The Soviet Wedlock, a major factor in the political tensions of DKR, collapsed. Ronald Reagan, lampooned in those same pages, had left the presidential part, with three more presidents following. Frank Miller gave Batman a new origin in Twelvemonth I only to get out DC Comics for Hollywood and then Dark Equus caballus for Sin City, 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 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, but The Dark Knight Returns seemed to loom larger than it ever had over the industry. And when Miller signed a bargain with DC to return to the story that helped alter comics, DK2 became one of the about highly anticipated comic books of all time. Simply anticipation and reality are two very different things.
Reception to The Night Knight Strikes Again was negative, to say the least, with the comic quickly condign infamous for beingness 1 of the groovy disappointments in the history of DC. Only it was, financially, a hit, selling close to 200,000 copies of issue 1 and problems 2 and iii staying at over 150,000 sold each, with a $7.95 price tag for its big prestige format pregnant that DK2 has made DC Comics around $5 million when including its collected reprints. When you put a name like Frank Miller together with a vision of Batman that's famous worldwide, you lot get a lot of coin, especially in 2001 when Miller was however a respected and active author.
And this is why Dark Knight Strikes Once again is infamous in the world of comic books. This is non a series that no one cared near. It was hotly predictable and widely read, quickly turning vast amounts of readers sour on Miller. Decades and several follow-ups subsequently, and DKSA is still autograph for comic book disaster. Simply why?
How does Miller endeavour to follow up one of Batman's about iconic stories? What is The Dark Knight Strikes Once more really 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 Once again, warts and all, in the ongoing Batman saga?
Returning to the Return
The Dark Knight Returns is nearly the residual of hope and despair in a hereafter dystopia, but information technology's as well about Batman transcending humanity and condign legend, moving from an quondam man who struggles to defeat a broken Two-Face to a hero that can go toe to toe with Superman. So what can a sequel practise to challenge the transcendent? It must become larger than life in every attribute.
The hereafter of The Dark Knight Returns is dystopic in a sort of "humanity'due south worst impulses proceed" sort of style. But the future of Dark Knight Strikes Again is a total-on constabulary country, with the authorities controlling every element of the population. The president of the US is a hologram controlled past Lex Luthor, wars and invasions ravage the planet, superheroes continue to be 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 old TV show. Just how lame all the stuff had go. This fourth dimension, I'm finding that I'm playing effectually with DC's whole pantheon of characters and trying to testify them off in ways that characteristic the joys backside them."
If Miller'due south original was a stiff middle finger to the forces that control the world, DK2 is all-out war against them as Batman gathers an aged Justice League to destroy Luthor and his forces. Only what starts as a state of war for freedom violently devolves into nonsense every bit Miller slams more and more plot developments downwardly on the reader. Boom! Braniac assail. Bang! Superman-Wonder Woman love kid. Kersplat! New shapeshifting joker. Blammo! Superheroine stone band protest.
And at the middle of this hopelessly shattered narrative lies a real world tragedy.
A few years before writing Strikes Over again, Miller and then-wife Lynn Varley had moved back to Hell'southward Kitchen in New York, and in the midst of writing his return to Batman, the September 11th terrorist attacks happened – the smoke and death visible from Miller's home. While issues 1 and two came out in December 2001 and January 2002, all of issue 1 and some of issue 2 had been written before September 11th.
Whatever Miller had originally planned was waylaid by his horror at the devastation. Instead, consequence 2 diverges into an extended destruction of Metropolis every bit Superman is rendered powerless to stop Braniac.
There'south a hitting double-page spread that direct evokes the aftermath of 9/xi in outcome 3 of DK2, published in July of 2002. The rubble of Metropolis echoes first responders in search of survivors in New York, just information technology's all made perfectly clear as Superman and his daughter fly off, the smoldering urban center separate in half behind them. It'south 1 of the few images in the entire series that Miller bothers to requite 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 approach to Daredevil and Batman in the '80s, 9/eleven would break Miller in the 21st century. The author'southward Libertarianism, frequently on display in his individualist Batman, would morph into the hard right wing Islamaphobic viewpoint of "Holy Terror," originally planned to exist a Batman comic but disavowed past DC in 2006. And then "Strikes Again" sees Miller in the midst of a personal political crisis, one that's pushed through a psychedelic lens of conspiracy, superheroism, and justice, all embodied in a gleefully vehement Batman.
In Miller's easily, Batman is a monomaniacal furious ball 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 once again transcends his bloodshed, substantially asserting himself as across historic period by the cease. I don't know how or why, he only does.
Miller seeths below the surface of the comic, with Superman'due south calm reason seen as the encapsulation of everything wrong with the modern hero. Nigh the cease, Superman finally snaps, destroying multiple fighter jets and probably killing their pilots. But this isn't framed every bit the fall of The Man of Steel, it's his rise. Now, Batman condones killing, aiding Hawkman and Hawkgirl's son in murdering Lex Luthor. And equally Superman becomes a furious god, a new religion forms around him, exalting a savior you tin can run into and touch over one you tin can't.
"Strikes Again" is a mess. I can't deny that. Simply I find it to exist a fascinating mess. And a much better experience when you lot immerse yourself in its madness instead of flipping through its pages. These panels hurt the eyes without adjustment. And while it's not as bad as staring at the sun, it does help to let the pupils dialate appropriately.
DK2 is a pop art speedrace, hitting the gas immediately and carmine-lining earlier the start issue is over. Every installment is a mega-sized chunk of pages, but even with and so much real manor, it seems similar there's never enough time for whatsoever of Miller's ideas. Major characters of Returns, like Gordon and Yindel, are given no more than a single panel as the increasingly manic story vibrates with a billion screaming thoughts. By event iii, the narrative is leaping tall buildings in a single bound, flashing back to forgotten moments and refusing to found time or place.
Rage-filled rebels fire guns at unseen hordes as increasingly cartoonish talking heads gawk and groan like some sort of voice 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 autonomously. And when the President is shown to be a hologram, the people just shrug and accept it. If there was ever a time to use the term "sheeple," it's when describing Miller's approach to the mutual man. And Batman is here to beat some sensation into them.
Actually, despite Batman being our titular character, he's probably the to the lowest degree important. Carrie Kelley is given much more to do, acting out her mentor's plans while the various returning members of the Justice League like The Atom, Plastic Man, The Elongated Man, Light-green Pointer, Green Lantern, and more than have upwardly the fight. Merely if this is anyone's story, it'south actually Superman's. His romance with Wonder Woman, becoming a parent to his daughter, and moving out of the regime stooge role that Miller is oftentimes criticized for in Returns, are the given style more than page real estate than Batman, who acts every bit puppet master here. Batman is most entirely absent from the first issue. His voiceover permeates information technology, showing united states his plans, but he doesn't appear until the very end, once over again mercilessly beating Superman to a pulp. Batman is never wrong in the pages of Strikes Again, so how can he have whatever sort of arc?
Everyone outside of Batman, and mayhap Carrie, is a moron, little more than a chess piece moved almost by The Nighttime Knight. And no i suffers more in relation to Miller'south ubermench antihero than a tardily villainous addition.
Miller'south relationship to Robin is … foreign to say the to the lowest degree, and even downright hateful at its core. At the time of Returns publishing, Jason Todd was nonetheless alive in the main Batbooks and Batman's allusion to Todd beingness dead predates that character's phone call-in mandated murder. Years later on DK2, Miller would team upwardly with Jim Lee for All-Star Batman and Robin for the origin of Dick Grayson, with Miller making him a violent fiddling psycho whose training past Batman largely consists of verbal abuse. I don't know if Miller intended for it to be more than that, All-Star never finished and no yous can't make me do a video on it. Carrie Kelley'south Robin helps Bruce move past the mental and physical roadblocks on his path dorsum to Batman, but she's go Catgirl by the fourth dimension Strikes Again has started.
Returns never makes anything explicit, only it seems every bit if years of disillusionment and trauma have dissolved whatsoever semblance of the Bat Family. Where is Dick Grayson? It doesn't matter initially. But in Strikes Again, the fate of Robin is disquisitional, and it paints the dynamic of this duo in a terrible calorie-free.
Throughout these pages, a new Joker begins murdering heroes, revealed at the finish to exist Dick Grayson, seeking revenge against Batman for his abuse and firing years earlier. It'southward completely unnecessary and is apace solved by a decapitation and some lava. But why should we intendance? Miller has done nothing to give the states an emotional connexion to anything in DK2 beyond a twist for twist's sake.
Who are these people? What are their relationships? Every character'south friendship, love, or hatred toward i another is only established through us knowing traditional status quo established past other comics.
Alongside its critique of political powers, Strikes Again also interrogrates our burgeoning human relationship with technology. The homo-estimator interface is taken to an farthermost through a abiding barrage of information. A hologram president is the ultimate connection of political manipulation and technological abuse. Having a character like Braniac, covered in nodes and constantly irresolute shape, exist the ability behind Luthor'southward control takes the critique to another level. Layers and layers of engineering manipulating the globe at big. All the while, Varley uses burgeoning engineering to haphazardly slam layer after layer of Photoshop color down on the page, colliding Miller'due south frenetic inks with a swirl of digital color.
And speaking of the art, DK2 is full-fledged belatedly-stage Miller. Later on his evolution in conjunction with inker Klaus Janson (who didn't return here) and his push into the heavily inked noir of Sin City (gone completely psychedelic past the final installment of Hell and Back), Miller moved into a much more sparse line work with harsh geometric interpretations of the body. Here, Miller's panels are almost entirely devoid of backgrounds equally each character floats through the void. The Gotham of Dark Knight Returns is famous for beingness a instance for a more grounded, gritty realism in superhero stories. Miller, Janson, and Varley'southward world in that original story was made up of cold hard concrete and battered modernity.
What does the Gotham of Strikes Again expect like? I couldn't tell you. Information technology doesn't exist. It's all merely harsh colors and screaming heads. A howl of high tech horror that bears no semblance to the world we saw previously. And maybe that's the cardinal to understanding this comic. This is not a true sequel to Returns. There's little here to connect the two outside of some returning characters. This is a dissimilar Frank Miller and a unlike dark future.
Miller's fine art works all-time in splash pages hither, creating 1 large image for the biggest impact and sometimes breaking it up with a handful of modest panels that requite greater context. But it'south at it'south worst when trying to create a truthful sequential arroyo to action or emotion. All the detail is lost. The context is missing. The movements and desires of characters are most impossible to parse at times every bit in that location's no sense of pacing or flow from console to panel.
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 issue 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 adrift in an uncanny completeness.
In the midst of all this pop art backlog, Miller tries to reassert the ability of the superhero. Merely 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 information technology has given me a much different perspective. I'thousand much more than able to arroyo it like I'thou 7 years one-time than I used to exist able to."
And there's something both fun and thickheaded almost that approach. Seen one mode, 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 face all the heavy existent earth bug that Miller infuses his story with, colliding an immature approach with recent tragedy.
There are loads of ridiculous moments throughout Strikes Again. But comics tin be ridiculous and nonetheless work. It's all about establishing a globe and tone and and then working well within it. If the entire world is ridiculous, then ridiculous things can happen and feel right.
The problem with Strikes Once again is that it never quite understands how it's trying to operate. While Returns had elements of satire in how it portrayed the media and authorities, everything in DK2 is ridiculous to the point of unintentional self-parody.
Superman and Wonder Adult female having globe-shaking insta-pregnant MEGASEX highlights simply how outlandish Miller is willing to get. Everything hither is cranked upwards to its virtually extreme caricature. The greek chorus of talking caput reporters are slammed into any scene at random, with highly sexualized women giving the news in the nude. In fact, every woman, even 16-year-old Carrie Kelley, is sexualized, it's just that Miller's coarse geometric shapes lack whatever sort of human sensuality. Right wing controlling politicians are now all puppets in a sort of conspiracy theorist's ultimate fantasy. Batman is now the perfect human being, always 10 steps ahead and never wrong in his cess of the globe around him.
In Miller's 21st century eyes, the world is 1 large, ugly cesspool of corruption and it must, at all costs, being violently cleaned up. Is this righteous anger? Non really. More like decades of pent upwards rage given life in a medium meant to inspire. Yet Miller would later dismiss the furnishings 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'm just throwing my stuff against a wall to see what happens. I don't think anything I'm doing could touch things on such a broad basis. I don't think everyone doing fiction could."
Mayhap that's partially true Frank, but art is the gateway into a greater worldview. Maybe no single comic has ever changed a person's entire belief system, simply it's likely caused them to consider a different viewpoint. Given plenty reinforcement, and their beliefs tin change. Of course, any sort of beliefs Miller had well-nigh politics and art would exist tossed out in the days of "Holy Terror" and a one human cartoon state of war on those he hated.
If DK2 left bad taste in your rima oris, don't read this book.
In response to "Holy Terror," Grant Morrison would later say, "Cheering on a fictional character every bit he beats upwardly fictionalized terrorists seems similar a decadent indulgence when real terrorists are killing existent people in the real world. I'd be and then much more than impressed if Frank Miller gave up all this graphic novel nonsense, joined the Army 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, "Night Knight Strikes Once more" is the reassertion of the superhero, bending dorsum the totalitarian leanings of the world through sheer strength 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 world paranoia.
For all its loopy political ideaology and mid-writing identity crisis, Strikes Once more is actually a hopeful book. I that presents a global crisis of staggering proportions that collides decades of man'south worst impulses with the failings of our political arrangement and believes that we tin can all the same pull ourselves out of the muck. Information technology just may take lopping off your genetically modified shape shifting old ward'due south head to do it.
Dissimilar and then many elements of Dark Knight Returns, Strikes Once more 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 old Batman, and then many iconic panels that were created by Returns take been reinterpreted by other comics, movies, and boob tube shows, the inventions of Strikes Again accept bounced off popular culture and have never really been reclaimed. Its immediate rejection gave it no chance to permeate the larger culture. And you know what? Thats ok.
It would be another nearly 15 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 Once again influence part three, similar Superman and his daughter, the entry largely ignores information technology.
Only what could y'all really practice to extend DK2's world?
The Nighttime Knight Strikes Once again is a work of pure anarchy. Anarchy in content as superheroes embrace their outlaw nature to topple the secret rulers of the world. Anarchy in course every bit Miller and Varley throw away any traditional structure in favor of pure thought brought to life on the page. The result is a sloppy, foreign, insulting, captivating, confusing, brilliant, and braindead, all at in one case.
And despite some changes in political idealogy and art in the decades since, The Dark Knight Strikes Over again was the decease of Frank Miller's career.
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https://vocal.media/geeks/the-dark-knight-strikes-again-not-a-flop
https://www.avclub.com/frank-miller-1798208243
https://www.comicsbeat.com/the-lives-and-death-of-jason-todd-an-oral-history-of-the-second-robin-and-a-death-in-the-family/
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Source: https://www.comicbookherald.com/understanding-the-dark-knight-strikes-again-frank-millers-self-destructive-magnum-opus/
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