The sequel to Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again has arrived! Can it do better than Miller’s last Batman stories?
Creative Staff:
Story: Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello
Art: Andy Kubert, Klaus Jansen
Colorist: Brad Anderson
Letters: Clem Robins
What They Say:
The epic ending you never saw coming is here because you demanded it! The Dark Knight rises again to face the dawn of the master race!
Content: (Please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Frank Miller has struck again, bringing us the next leg of the saga started by The Dark Knight Returns. After the disastrous book that was The Dark Knight Strikes Again, it seemed like no one was going to touch upon the revelation at the end of that book, where Superman’s daughter Lara asks her father whether it would be a better idea for them to rule over the Earth. This book’s title alone says it’s going to be about that plot point, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Our story opens with panels depicting the Batsuit in a cave two unknown men narrate over these first few panels in blatant “text speak”. The first one claims, “I Cn him.” this oddly written dialogue reveals that after a 3 year absence at the end of the last book, whoever these two men are, one of them has apparently seen Batman again. The other guy calls him out on this, noting that it couldn’t be Batman, as no one has seen him for 3 years and that it could have been someone else.
These odd panels seem to show us Batman saving the man who first gave narration, the guy saying Batman splattered the cop’s brains. After this is a 2 page spread of Gotham City at either sunrise or sunset, with a multitude of talking heads in front talking about Batman. This isn’t really made obvious until the last two heads though, who talk about how the GCPD do their jobs and how anyone could look at Batman as a hero. We cut to a scene after this where a woman hired by the Mayor to help the city with P.R. gives the New commissioner, Yindel, something to read off of, which apparently contains a statement from her, though she claims otherwise. Just as the Commissioner gets up to talk, the book cuts to a forest, with narration over it talking about fear and death. The natives of the area appear to be attacked by some odd cemtaur looking creature, which is swiftly brought down by Wonder Woman. The narration here appears to be a critique of Batman of an uplifting of Superman, though it’s sort of hard to really tell.
After Diana returns to her village with a baby son in tow, one of her subjects (apparently she’s queen now) tells her that Lara has disappeared again, to which Wonder Woman gives an exasperated line of, “Again, Lara? Can’t you leave him be?” This would suggest that something happened to Superman in between the events of The Dark Knight Strikes Again and this book. What exactly this is, we don’t learn yet, as the only thing we get to see is that Superman is frozen in ice, sitting on a throne made of ice. Superman is sadly still way to bulky and oddly proportioned in this book, taking the design used in the last book but only slightly cleaning it up a bit. It still looks bad and kind o hilarious but this was one of my favorite panels. Lara asks an dormant Superman why he “let the ants knock [him] from the sky”. This implies that Superman was doing something that caused people to attack him, and that he let that happen, possibly. This scene ends as the Bottled City of Kandor is discovered by Lara, displaying the words “Help Us”.
We switch scenes again to find Yindel kneeling in front of the Bat Signal, wondering where things went wrong, when a subordinate tells her they have found Batman. Then we get several panels of the GCPD chasing Batman until he grapples away. He returns a minute later and begins beating the daylights out of every cop he can see, but eventually, after a bullet grazes him, the cops get the upper hand and appear to start beating Batman to death. One cops goes for the arrest, but Batman uses the opportunity for pushing the cops back. Just as it looks like this will be a Frank Miller bloodbath, Commissioner Yindel shows up demanding that Batman stop. we then get the biggest surprise of the book when Yindel asks where Bruce Wayne is. As the cowl is removed, we learn that the Batman we’ve been seeing the whole time was never a “he” to begin with. It was Batman’s old partner in the series, Carrie Kelly, the whole time. This twist is weird, but surprising in that it works pretty well. Kelly only responds with a cryptic message proclaiming that Wayne is dead.
In Summary:
The majority of this book is devoted to rapidly moving to different characters and locations, not really focusing on anyone. The only character that really gets any sense of development in the whole thing is the new commissioner, Yindel. The story never explains to new readers why Gordon isn’t here. I assumed Gordon had died by this point. That aside, we only get to scratch the surface of each character, showing a small bit of where Wonder Woman is, a cryptic look at where Superman is, and how things have progressed since Batman was last here. Nothing is really explained very well though. There are more questions and answers, an the art in this is, quite simply, bad. It keeps the puffed out, blocky, and oddly proportioned models for characters like Batman and Superman, and characters like Wonder Woman look slightly better but still like something is off. It looks ok in places, but is overall not very nice to look at. The story, co written by Fank Miller and Brian Azzarello, is better than the last outing of the series, but is still really confusing, even knowing the events of last time. things just move from scene to scene, characters giving either haughty dialogue or commenting on how things have changed and Batman shouldn’t have come back. Honestly, it’s better than what Miller has done before recently, but not by that much. It’s a mediocre story at best, and it’s confusing and atrocious at worst. I recommend only giving this a try if you’re really a big fan of Frank Miller or just want to marvel at something bad.
Grade: D
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: DC Comics
Release Date: November 25th, 2015
MSRP: $5.99
