Customer Reviews

Dark Knight Strikes Again, The - Volume 1

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Just to let you know where I stand, I'm a former comics collector who tired of the excesses of the medium and its perpetual recycling of characters and storylines. However, I admired Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns" for its cinematic storytelling, sharp wit and unexpected vision of a world that no longer wanted superheroes. Set three years later, "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" presents this world in an even more nightmarish fashion that I found both intriguing and repellant. Here, a grotesque Lex Luthor has quietly siezed control of the presidency (for what ends, we're not yet sure), Superman plays his pliant pawn, and the exiled Batman decides he must upend this future society drunk on prosperity and a soft form of fascism. This first chapter begins as Batman and a band of Bat-themed revolutionaries free several imprisoned heroes. And as an old fan, I found Miller's reimaginings of stock DC characters fascinating. The Flash now is bitter and cynical. The Atom, long a third-tier character, is recast as a gutsy tough guy. And I was pleased that Miller allowed Superman to state a convincing case for siding with the despots (which still fit the character's more simplistic, utilitarian philosophy). What I found even bolder--and, in the end, most difficult to swallow--was Miller's deliberately crude drawing style. He no longer delineates characters as much as simply suggests them with scratchy etches and thick blotches of shadow, and pays only lip service to realistic perspective. At its best, this style brings a weighty and disquieting quality to the book that you rarely find in comics. I occasionally was reminded of Picasso's late-period pen-and-ink work. And it certainly is appropriate for capturing the corruption of this future world and the moral ambiguity of these characters. But I also found that this jarring style impeded the storytelling; I often had to puzzle over panels to figure out what I was looking at or how one image related to the next. (And I don't even know how to address Miller's apparent fetish with humungous shoes.) However, I have to admit that I want to pick up the next issue. To find any work in the superhero medium so original and deeply unsettling is, in the end, a compliment.

I remember picking up Dark Knight Returns when I was 13 and loving it. I remember rediscovering it when I was 17 and realizing it was true art. A masterpiece, my favorite comic book of all time, and I have read thousands.

So, having not bought a comic in about 4 years, I ventured back into a comic book shop and bought DK2. After reading the 80 page book, all I can say is "Eh"...

The Good:
Miller does continue the story very well. You learn some of the secrets hinted at in the first book, and see what happened to other characters in the universe. Carrie, AKA Catwoman, is portrayed well as a real ...(butt) kicker in the Bruce Wayne tradition. The futuristic world is done well, with realistic political and social observations. The Flash and the Atom are written well. Creative cameos by Jimmy Olson and Lana's daughter.

The Bad:
The art. The art sucks period. Lex Luthor looks like a monkey and Carrie is so anatomically perfect as to make her a barbie doll. I thought the Batboy uniforms were lame. Not enough writing and dialogue. No Batman. Dumb battle at the end. I liked the portrayal of Superman in the first book, but this is stupid. Superman has fought crime for 60 years and he just walks right into a Batman trap? Please. Guess how Batman beats him? Kryptonite! Didn't see that coming! I'm no fan of Supes but I know he's no pushover.

Conclusion:
If you love the first book you will like this one. The series does show promise however, with Batman actually in the book now. All in all, an ok book that will hopefully get better.

Frank Miller's much-anticipated sequel to his 1986 classic The Dark Knight Returns has its moments, but is unable to match the fierce sturm and drang of the original. (I've read DK2 volumes 1 and 2 already).
This work is considerably lighter in tone than DKR. It considerably plays up the silliness and goofiness of the comics world and plays down the angst, grittiness and psychological drama found in DKR. DK2 is drawn in a cartoonier style and has a cartoonier story.
We do not see as much of the Dark Knight himself, as this story features many of the other D.C. JLA superheroes. Bats, while still grimly determined, seems more a caricature of himself this time around, and loses something of the dark magnificence that made DKR so cool to begin with. We just can't take him as seriously.
This said, DK2 is fun in a cartoony sort of way, and features some clever satire and keen observations in what appears to be a commentary on the late-nineties/pre 9-11 zeitgeist of frivolous hedonism and material prosperity detracting from growing big-government tyranny. But while clever at times, Miller's jests and jabs seem to lack the focus needed for great satire, choosing to half-heartedly poke fun at everything.
In short, DK2 never really flies as humorous satire or as grim drama. The raw, savage passion of DKR just isn't there, but if you're a die-hard Miller fan, this still may be worth checking out.

The whole story is only in three parts. Each chapter is a fraction of the size of the first mini-series. Yet, with all of those constraints, Frank "I forgot how to draw" Miller wastes pages on single pictures spanning 2 pages apiece. If it's the bat-plane-something hovering or Superman impregnating Wonder Woman, it's given it's own spread.

The story is too slender for his epic style, the drawing too crude and the guest cast too generous. This is a BATMAN book, not The Atom or Plastic Man. Yet these guys get more of the story than Bats.

I don't see the point to this except a sell out to get fanboys to spend their hard-earned moolah on this crapola. Yeah, I also am a sucker who bought it in the hopes it would be a worthy follow-up to a classic original. But, like Superman 4, get it only if you are a completist.

This latest offering by Frank Miller is an absolute disgrace!
One can't help wondering why he bothered to produce such a piece of poorly-scripted, badly drawn utter tripe as DK2!
The first series was marvellous, magnificent even, with a darkly sombre mood and a revelation behind what makes Batman tick.
We see the almost spiritual symbol of the Bat that drives him beyond the endurance and capability of his body.
We see his obsessive quest for justice and the way it draws others into its web.

In short, we see probably the most mature and best rendition of the Batman mythos ever produced.

And, then there was the sequel...
The story is so far beyond ridiculous that it is painful to read. (
Even the art was bad! The first series was gritty enough to impart a sensation of realism and believability. The art was stylised in such a way to emphasise physical aspects - such as larger fists etc - which made for some interesting images but it worked!
The art in the sequel is just [awful]! It is badly drawn and honestly looks like it was done in an amazing hurry to satisfy some impatient editor.
There are so many examples I could give of why this was so bad but it would waste precious time and I would hate to have to relive those terrible moments.
The 'beating up of Superman' was a poor rip-off of the first one which was inspired, emotional, and...fantastic.
Oh, it's just too terrible to relate...

Do not buy this! Re-read the first series and try to pretend he never did a second.

A bad, bad, sense of "contractual obligation" is passed by this. Frank Miller "writes" (and I use this term loosely) an adaptation of something much better done in "Kingdom Come."

What is Batman's motivation for the ultimate carnage in issue three? I don't know. Where is the art that made "Dark Knight" the treat that it was? I don't know. Why does Plastic Man's hair keep changing color? I don't know.

For those of you gluttonous enough to purchase this anyway--I'll avoid a spoiler and say that the threat to Carrie Kelly in issue three (which appears out of nowhere and is not referred to in either of the previous issues) is the most ridiculous "deus ex machina" of any that I've ever read in a comic book. (A field full of them.)

If Frank Miller didn't want to write a sequel to "Dark Knight" he should have refused rather than spreading this swill on toast and calling it a sandwich.

I beg you folks, re-read "Kingdom Come," a much worthier sequel to "Dark Knight" and force DC to send unpurchased copies of this [junk] to the shredder.

You'll find this in cut-out bins in 3 months at less than cover price....

When Frank Miller unleashed The Dark Knight 15 years ago, he took the world by storm with his nihilistic view of Batman and Gotham City. The World's media took notice, and Comic Books were thrust into the Mainstream of American culture.

The Comic industry isn't in such great shape right now, so it's only appropriate that Miller revisit The Dark Knight. (Except The Dark Knight makes barely a cameo appearance in the first book, but that's neither here nor there.)

The story in the first issue mainly concerns Carrie Kelly, the young female Robin from The Dark Knight Returns, now known as Catgirl, as she leads a team of young Batmen in a quest to free a group of Imprisoned heroes. (I won't spoil their identities; that's half the fun.) Miller keeps Batman under wraps until the end, and whan he finally makes his grand entrance, it's very impressive.

The problems I had with the book are mainly artistic: The original Dark Knight was lushly illustrated by Miller; the smallest background nuance was lovingly rendered. The Dark Knight Strikes Again has little more than character art; It seemed like Miller wanted to give Lynn Varley a blank canvas to computer color, which I found kind of cheesy, to be honest. And on the writing front, faithful DC Comics fans will see the Lex Luthor twist coming a mile off....Frank, in the current DC Universe, Lex is the President of the United States! Making him the puppet-master of a hologram President isn't much of a shocking plot twist.

I don't know if this book isn't as good as the original, or if I'm just more mature than the 15 year-old that devoured the Dark Knight the first time around, or what...I just know that I kind of felt let down. The book was good, but nothing special. I'll stick around for the conclusion, though....I think Catgirl is the cat's meow.

Like many others here, the Dark Knight Returns turned me onto comic books. Its tight panels, with their amazingly detailed artwork, and how they compressed a huge and complex story into a mere 200 pages, I'd just never seen anything so cool in my life. Afterwards, I instantly started buying comics in the form of the trade paperbacks, until I got Knightfall Part One, and decided I still liked them, but just enough to pay the kind of bucks it takes to get them.
Let me say, DK2 is quite possibly the worse thing I have ever spent money on. The fact that the average right now is four stars makes me extremely cynical about everything I read on Amazon.com. Maybe the people who scored this high were just too exuberated and happy to get their hands on the thing to realize this, but this book was terrible. First off, the plot is ridiculous. They take the Anti-Gov. undertones from the first book and magnify them by about fifty times and then pound them into your face. The idea is that Batman has sat back, and watched everything go to straight to HELL! (as he says) Apparently, Batman thought three years would be a good amount of time to wait. In those three years, Lex Luthor became president and forced Superman, who now loves Wonder Woman, to do his bidding, and Robin became the next Catgirl just for kicks, and now Batman has an army, and he goes and starts liberating old superheroes.
Basically, this thing is filled with plot but all of its fruity and paper THIN. The first DK was packed, there was a ton of dialogue and the story moved at a nice pace and was very coherent. None of that is here. This book is a sloppy incoherent mess. All it is a show piece for a bunch of old super heroes to get together and basically get drawn once or twice.
And on top of that, this thing looks so terrible I don't know how they got anyone to even print it. There are parts of this where you literally can't tell what the hell something is suppossed to be. In one scene, I was looking at a gun for a moment before I realized it was a guys fingers. There are many scenes where characters are drawn without faces. In one scene, a mechanical frog appears in a panel out of fudging nowhere and then we never see it again. Its like Miller just drew whatever the hell he felt like and then pushed it out the door. It has absolutely none of the polish of DK, it all looks like a first draft. Add to that absolutely terrible coloring. This thing looks like it was coloer by Frank Millers kid, not by the same person who performed so brillantly in the original DK. There are times where there is actual pixelization, but it looks terrible. Lots of the computer effects look like screen savers or something that could've been performed on the SNES.
Add to that, SPOILER ALERT! but old Batman himself doesn't show up till the very end. This brings me to the last point I'll make. This thing is filled with splash pages (I think that's what the're called, when there's one panel that takes up the whole page). In the old DK, these always wound up being excellent. But here, they're just laughable. When we finally see Batman, its in a splash page, but he looks so...poorly drawn, that I was almost started laughing... until I realized the joke was on me. All I got then was angry. The only good thing I can say about this is that it doesn't ruin DK. Probably because its so different and spastic looking that its impossible to imagine it as the sequel to that rich, colorful world that old Frank Miller created. And by the way, hate to ramble on, but having the first issue end just like the last book of DKR is pretty weak. Umm, I think we've all seen that before.

I can't think of a graphic novel I've looked forward to more, nor can I think of one that disappointed me more bitterly. Garish colors, clunky art (with dayglo two-page spreads), and a plot that defies all logic. It seems that Miller's goal was to squeeze in as many DC superheroes as possible, but if you haven't followed all of their rampaging plotlines for the past decade or so, you'll be constantly wondering who's who and who's doing what to what. I expect Kitchen Sink Man to show up any minute. I love the first DK graphic novel, and have enjoyed Miller's other work, but this is more like Bizarro-Miller than the creator whose work I've admired in the past. For fanboys only.

Let me start by saying Miller's original work, "The Dark Knight Returns," is one of the best pieces of Batman literature. It was a fantastic alternate-future story and its art was beautiful. Now we've got a sequel (with a [bad] title, I might add) that takes place three years later. The time setting is irrelevant because the art is so ugly, you can't even tell this is Gotham City. Somehow or another, Braniac and Lex Luthor have taken control of the world with a US President who is really a hollogram. All of the heroes, except Superman, have gone into hiding or imprisonment. Did I miss something? This obviously didn't happen as a result of Dark Knight Returns, so what gives? Superman gets a major beat down from the other heroes and even though I'm not a big Superman fan, I don't understand why he's being beaten up by Batman and the rest. I am only giving this [...] three stars because this is issue #1 and the first time I read this, I thought issues 2 and 3 would be better. I was so wrong.