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    Retro Review

    Retro Review: The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1 (February 2002)

    Matthew PetersonBy Matthew PetersonFebruary 13, 20225 Comments5 Mins Read

    Turns out that The Batman’s final adventure wasn’t so final after all… Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1 awaits!

    You can purchase this issue via our Amazon affiliate link

    THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN #1

    Writer: Frank Miller
    Artist: Frank Miller
    Colorist: Lynn Varley
    Letterer: Todd Klein
    Editor: Bob Schreck
    Publisher: DC Comics
    Cover Price: $7.95
    Current Near-Mint Pricing: $8.00

    Previously in The Dark Knight Strikes Again: After retiring from the vigilante business, Bruce Wayne became a recluse, living in the wreck of his family manor after the loss of Robin. After ten years, though, Gotham City had devolved into an even deeper cesspool of crime and nonsense, leading him to return to the streets. A fifty-five-year-old Batman isn’t quite the same as a youthful one, however, leading him to resort to previously unthinkable means (such as big ol’ guns) to bring the new criminals to heel, attracting the attention of Superman and staging his final gambit. After facing the Man of Steel, Batman died in the gutters of Crime Alley…

    …at least, according to the official record.

    We open with the State of the Union address, during which President Rickard announces his latest programs, while Jimmy Olsen watches and remarks in horror. Each new insult leads Jimmy to protest louder, while his co-host cautions him to watch out, for the sponsor’s sake, ending with Jimmy literally looking into the camera (and thus, directly into the readers’ eyes) and crying out “Where are our HEROES?”

    The story then sets out to answer his query.

    After a harrowing sequence where a nude man is trapped in a strange wilderness, forced to fight monster after monster, he raises his hand to catch a familiar red belt switch. Growing to colossal size, he steps out of the “ocean” to discover he’s been living in a petri dish. Carrie Kelly greets him as “Professor Palmer,” but before they can do much more than that, the security alarms go off, triggering a huge fight between Carrie/Catgirl and armored security forces, with The Atom in her mouth. Escaping, she accidentally swallows him but manages to vomit him up before setting off to their next destination. More news bytes pop up, including several naked and semi-naked women for some reason, while Jimmy attacks the President, revealing him to be a computer image. Fortunately, there’s someone who believes in his mad conspiracy rants.

    As for Catgirl, she’s ready to lead a group of Batboys (ostensibly the former Mutants that Batman took under his wing at the end of the previous series) into action to find another one of the heroes that Jimmy is wishing so hard for. Much like The Atom, his prison is an unusual one: A dynamo that powers a large portion of the future United States.

    As much of the country goes dark, it becomes impossible for the powers that be to ignore what’s happening. Superman, for his part, calls for help from Wonder Woman, who meets him and Captain Marvel at the Justice League’s former headquarters, where we find out who’s REALLY calling the shots.

    Lex Luthor.

    And he’s got Paradise Island and the Bottle City of Kandor and Mary Marvel to keep the most powerful heroes in line, proving his villainous nature by executing an entire family from Kandor to show Superman how serious he is. A broken Man of Steel is dispatched to the Batcave, but the combined assault of Flash, Atom, Green Arrow’s Kryptonite arrows, and a lot of explosives knocks Superman down. That’s when Batman makes himself seen for the first time, with hew new Kryptonite knuckles.

    What follows is an unnecessarily brutal beatdown that makes the battle from The Dark Knight Returns look even-handed, leaving Superman a bloody mess, as Batman snarls, “I’m through talking. Get out of my cave.” It’s an echo of the last pages of the original Batman: The Dark Knight Returns debut issue, but instead of making me feel exhilarated at seeing a hero return to action, I’m just disgusted. This book came out just before All-Star Batman and Robin debuted, and the one-two punch of these books so close together was my final realization that Frank Miller’s work was no longer for me. The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1 is the work of a creator who lacks restraint, a comic book of pure excess from the garish coloring to the intentionally stylized and blocky faux-digital art to the nonsensical belief that what a really good Batman story needed was more of the rest of the Justice League, and it almost defies the star rating for 0 out of 5 stars overall.

    This book is part of the downward spiral that leads to the Islamophobic and visually brutal Holy Terror a few years later, which was the comic book I liked the least until I sat down with seventy-odd pages of this book. There are moments in TDKSA #1 that actually work, but each of them is balanced by an equally bad idea, such as Barry Allen’s short-sleeved costume with comically large sneakers or Green Arrow’s new robot arm. The work of Todd Klein is an important, successful part of the storytelling here, but the story being told is a parody of the kind of ridiculous sequel pitches you might hear on Saturday Night Live, and Miller’s intentionally ugly art is the visual equivalent of Brecht’s dialectical theatre. Like those works, it is designed to make us all look and see the terrible world around us reflected in the escapism of a superhero story, which ends up being as muddled and retrograde a combination as it sounds. As with any narrative, your mileage may vary, but there’s little of value here for me, as a reader, a reviewer, or as a comic historian, other than a cautionary tale of a creator who doesn’t realize that they have devolved into self-parody.


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    THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN #1

    0%
    0%
    Insult To Injury

    The sequel nobody needed, executed without subtlety or restraint, taking the best parts of the original and undermining them with hyperbolic plotting and some of the dumbest tough-guy dialogue I've ever read.

    I'm truly annoyed that Miller used Prez Rickard's name in this.

    • Writing
      0
    • Art
      0
    • Coloring
      0
    • User Ratings (1 Votes)
      0.4
    Batman Bob Schreck dc comics Frank Miller Lynn Varley Retro Review Review the dark knight returns The Dark Knight Strikes Again Todd Klein
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    Matthew Peterson
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    Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.

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    5 Comments

    1. Jarmo Seppänen on February 13, 2022 4:38 pm

      You really read this? I’m so sorry, Matthew…

      Reply
      • Frank on February 14, 2022 8:22 am

        ^This. I read it year back. It was probably one of the worst comics I read in a while. It was a waste of time and money.

        Reply
      • Matthew Peterson on February 17, 2022 6:34 pm

        Naah, it’s cool. I’ve read enough terrible comics that I’m inoculated.

        Reply
    2. Dan on February 17, 2022 3:02 pm

      Weirdly, this isn’t the worst Frank Miller/Batman or Batman-adjacent project. That has to be Holy Terror. Not the elseworlds story, this Holy Terror was formerly “Holy Terror, Batman!” before DC wisely decided to distance themselves from the project. But it’s basically a very Miller TDRK Batman-like character….sigh….fighting Al-Qaeda. And it’s even more problematic than you might imagine it to be.

      Reply
    3. Dan on February 17, 2022 3:05 pm

      Whoops, that’s what i get for jumping into the comments before finishing the article. Strike these comments from the record!

      Reply

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