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101 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I expected, December 19, 2001
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.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Alright...but, December 28, 2001
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.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Its unbelievable that anybody would even agree to print this, May 11, 2002
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.
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