Word: millers
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...appeal spills way over the bounds of its predictable audience and becomes a monster hit. Around fifteen years later you decide to come out with a three-part sequel that becomes one of the most anticipated new series of the millennium. No, your name is not Lucas, it's Miller. Frank Miller, author of the remarkable 1986 comicbook "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns," has finally completed a three-issue sequel, "The Dark Knight Strikes Back...
...Dark Knight Returns," about an older Bruce Wayne bringing Batman out of retirement, helped change the way America thought about comicbooks. By examining the dark psychology of an American icon, and presenting it in a sharp, funny parody of our over-mediated world, Miller won praise from even the most adamant of non-comics readers. His "grim 'n gritty" take on old Bats created a sub-genre in the comics press, inspiring the movie series as well. But like Lucas' follow-up to the first "Star Wars" series, Miller's return to his past success doesn't recapture the magic...
...more secondary characters get piled on, reducing the Dark Knight to little more than a small part in his own book. Worse, the vast majority of these appearances will mean little to anyone not already familiar with the "DC Universe." Reading the book becomes too much like watching Frank Miller play with someone else's dolls...
...only has the focus shifted from the first "Dark Knight," but the tone as well. Incredibly, Miller has become more cynical. The theme of the book seems to be peoples' need for "heroes," or rather, their mindless need for leaders. There are few heroics in this supposedly "superhero" book. Even Superman, famously incorruptible, undergoes a massive change of character that, at the end, turns him into a fascist. Seeing Miller handle characters this way has the same empty appeal as watching a sandcastle get kicked over. The Batman of the first series personified a man on edge: cruel yet tempered...
...always enjoy the art. As with the first "Dark Knight," Miller does the pictures as well as words. His style has gotten goofier in the intervening years. He mixes traditional superhero tropes like broad shoulders and rippling muscles with absurd caricature elements like giant feet and hands. Lex Luthor looks like a Mr. Potato-Head who wears nothing but boxer shorts and hi-top Converse sneakers. Miller shares top billing with the colorist, Lynn Varley, who mixes digitized effects with traditional coloring in clever ways. One scene has Superman standing amid the ruble of Metropolis, where even the colors have...