[ The Dark Knight Strikes Again (Turtleback School & Library) Miller

Frank, there was just no need. Even if there were, why would you go and spoil the original Dark Knight Returns, one of the most influential comic stories of all time, with a follow-up composed of complete drek? I'm sure the motivation was pure money and I'm sorry that you now have mine.

Television brings edited shows to us, and sitcoms of the caped crusader are no exception. Sitcoms give us a mental image to go by whenever we think of a special episode. This dark knight is a mental image of nightmares. This is the way Batman as a series would be shown late at night on a premium channel. It is filled with violence, lust and greed. A tome of urban decay that will leave you alone in the dark shaking and drooling for more. Buy it, if you dare!

This was without a doubt the absolute worst Batman story I've ever read or seen. The Dark Knight Returns was a masterpiece. Strikes Again failed in every way possible to live up to pretty much any expectation. Or be decent. In any way, shape or form. First off this isn't a Batman story. It's a Retired Justice League of America story, and a really bad one at that. The pacing of the story feels rushed, JLA main characters that would've been awesome to see more of in the story are given maybe a page or two at best. The art style is actually good on some of the pages but the majority of it is sloppy and looks rushed. In this story Superman is a complete moron, Martian Manhunter's best piece of dialogue is the phrase, "Fuggedaboutit", Wonderwoman is bland and lacking any character, both Lex Luthor and Brainiac are different sized toads. Batman thinks he's Zorro. Catgirl, rather than dress in something allowing her to be stealthy, looks like a Leopard. Batman appears less than Superman does. Dialogue for literally every character, except for the original characters to the novel, seems completely out of character and forced. It's like a bunch of kids who saw maybe a handful of JLA movies got together, plowed through a handle of Jack Daniels, then proceeded write as bad of a story as they could, all the while trying to shove sex down your throat, presented through terrible art.

I highly recommend The Dark Knight Returns, but I regret the money and time spent on The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Both the time waiting for the book to arrive and the 2 hours it took me to read it. Totally could've been doing something more entertaining, like punching myself in the face.

There are too many characters doing too many things. It is often confusing and often just ridiculous. Artwork is well done, but I skipped many pages along the way to get to the end of the chaos. Disappointed.

The art style is the same as the previous graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, but the layouts are much more up to date. There are more full page action shots and a lot fewer multipanel exposition pages that bogged down the first. This is a great read for Batman fans, but is really a great conclusion and must read for fans of the first book.

Underrated masterpiece. Deeper than the first one. A must for batman fans. This one may not be for casual fans, but who really reads Batman comics and is a casual fan? if you're into reading comics about the dark knight, then you've already crossed over into supernerddom, and you'll dig this one. Critics focus on things like "there are too many weird characters I haven't heard of before" (come on, this is a comic book--there should be weird characters. I for one am glad he didn't just use the same old characters, but instead brought out many interesting but underused ones) while overlooking the punchy, intricate storyline and ingeniously subversive social commentary. Frank's last two remind me a bit of the movie Harry Brown, or Grand Torino.

The art is horrible. Story makes little sense. I honestly can't find anything good about this book. "Dark Knight Returns" is one of my favorite batman stories and this just s***s all over it. And Batman is barely even in this book! You don't see him for like the first 80 pages! Do yourself a favor and just skip this one.

Incredible genre-bending effort by Frank Miller yet again. Remarkable storyline, pencils, color, everything. I've read and re-read this 5 times already. Will probably read again when Superman vs. Batman gets closer to a release date.

Incredible genre-bending effort by Frank Miller yet again. Remarkable storyline, pencils, color, everything. I've read and re-read this 5 times already. Will probably read again when Superman vs. Batman gets closer to a release date.

This graphic novel has been created about 15 years after Frank Miller's original retelling of the famous story about DC's greatest and darkest superhero. Right around the infamous 9-11 event - perhaps by coincidence, unfortunately.

Getting on in years, Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman decides to burn all bridges, destroy his great wealth/estate, and go into hiding - um, I mean, end his own days by duking it out with his oldest buddy, Superman (thus putting an extra pressure on his already worn-out heart - on purpose, of course.) For he has a secret mission to carry out - with the help of a precocious young teenager, who now dresses like an underage "Catwoman" in gigantic roller skates.

Together, Batman and Carrie Kelley set out to rescue a few imprisoned superheroes - much to the outraged displeasure of Superman, who wants to take things S-L-O-W-L-Y, especially in an unsettled world that no longer believes in superheroes.

But Superman is completely powerless to do anything when his beloved city, Metropolis suddenly falls into choking curtains of death, violence, and sooty dust - just like New York City that one dark day. Because his ANOTHER beloved city, Kandor is being kept under threat in a glass capsule by a couple of supervillains who have taken over the whole world à la 1984's "Big Brother" - ironically in Batman's absence.

But Batman has more than a few tricks up his sleeve that he has been working on FOR A FEW YEARS - from recruiting impressionable youngsters into his "bat" army to using old superheroes collected or summoned from beyond to save the world AGAIN - this time from the evil masterminds. And Superman has just the perfect weapon to defeat the villains and set the trapped city of Kandor as well as the whole world free: his young adolescent daughter by Wonder Woman! This fearless girl will also sacrifice herself to the bad guys in order to thwart them. And the whole thing is nicely orchestrated, too.

Not only that; Superman and Wonder Woman also put on a spectacular, literally earth-shattering show conceiving Little Wonder Jr., who would appear in the next "Batman: The Dark Knight" installment, doing nothing but suckle at his famous mother's breast, ride on her back as she does battle, and ALMOST get kidnapped by his big super-powered sister, who would become an ironic heroine in THIS second book.

I have to say this is the prettiest part of Frank Miller's Batman tale with his handsome-looking artwork soaked in dazzling cyberspace colors. And it is also extremely fetishized with all the images of big collagen-puffed lips, girls' derrières pointing upward, and objectified female newscasters posing seductively as they deliver the latest update as well as a heavy scattering of cartoonish faces crying out in protest/terror or screaming with joy at the dramatic return of Batman or Superman (usually presumed dead or missing in this universe.) There's some rather wry humor, a bit of pathos, and even a little horror thrown in along with your usual dose of action and violence.

Oh, and one more thing - the DC creators who worked on the third volume of the story (it came out 15 years later, too) have seemed to overlook the fact that the little alien city held within glass has ALREADY been freed in this second volume (Atom was enlisted to liberate the people of this city in Book Three, BTW.)

Probably because Book Two is a little too crammed with bright, confusing sequences of outlandish mugs, oversexed females, and insane aging superheroes doing cruel things?

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again is rightly reviled by all Batman fans because of how terrible the book is on every level but made doubly damning because Frank Miller wrote two of the most acclaimed Batman books - The Dark Knight Returns and Year One.

The plot is a paranoid maniac's delight: the President of the United States is a hologram created by Lex Luthor and Brainiac who're essentially in control of America behind the scenes. Superman is still their lapdog because they hold Kandor, the shrunken Kryptonian city in a jar, captive, blackmailing him into doing whatever they want. And various other superheroes are imprisoned somehow - Flash is made to constantly run on a hamster wheel-like contraption that gives the US free, unlimited power, while The Atom is held in a petri dish. The only holdout is Batman - the book takes place a few years after The Dark Knight Returns and people still believe Bruce Wayne, revealed as Batman, is dead while he's actually been secretly working underground to build a Bat-army from the former Mutant gang. And with Carrie Kelly, who in this book has discarded the Robin outfit for a ridiculous leopard-like skin tight thing with rollerskates, calling herself Catgirl, by his side, the Dark Knight is ready to strike - again!

The worst thing about this book by far is easily the art. The character designs are absolute garbage. Lex looks like a melange of Miller's Sin City characters Yellow Bastard and Marv, ie. ridiculously warped with gi-normous hands and a thick, grotesquely wide body that goes beyond cartoonish, while Brainiac looks essentially like a cybernetic frog! These are definitely the most awful visual depictions of these characters I've ever seen. Carrie Kelly's outfit is awful: a skin tight leopard outfit complete with cat-head ears and whiskers - with rollerskates?! Those are the worst offenders but going beyond character design, the pages are so poorly drawn, you won't believe this is the same guy who gave us some truly iconic panels from the 80s for characters like Wolverine, Daredevil and Batman.

Miller's still using the television pundit trope to explain plot points but whereas they were arranged in grid-like fashion in The Dark Knight Returns and said things that were relevant to the plot, in Strikes Again they panels are scattered haphazardly around the page and none of them are worth reading - they're just random idiots saying gibberish like "woah baby!" and "hubba hubba" around revealing shots of Black Canary and Wonder Woman. Women are going to hate this book the most as Miller presents every single woman here as an object. Hips jutting to the side, super-pouty lips, bum poking outwards - in every panel they're in! It's just so derivative, it's unbelievable - but there it is!

If the art is messy as hell, the story is handled just as poorly. Ideas are thrown in undeveloped and just left there. Black Canary hosts some kind of sex call in show on TV? The Joker is somehow alive but turns out to be someone from Batman's past who has, for some reason, chosen to dress like the Joker? Not to mention the plot is a libertarian's dream: Batman literally goes to war against the US government! Superman is presented once more as a one-dimensional boy scout while Wonder Woman is little more than an aggressive Superman groupie. I didn't know what to make of Green Lantern as he's just floating in space silently for most of the book while Elongated Man is a super-crazy nutball. The only consistent character was Barry Allen who remains as white bread as an old man as he was when he was a younger Flash. Why are Lex and Brainiac working together again? Why is Carrie Kelly Catgirl instead of Robin - and aren't rollerskates kind of useless if you're swinging everywhere on ropes?

And then amidst all of the chaos, 9/11 happened as he was creating the book and Miller decided to shoehorn that into the story too! So we literally have a 9/11 scene of citywide devastation, massive buildings falling down, that sits completely out of place with the rest of the story. It's just there because it happened and Miller thought he'd put it in his book. Because. Years later he would go on to make an even more polemical and nonsensical book with terrible art - which DC would see sense and deny him the use of their characters Batman and Catwoman - called Holy Terror, but that's another (godawful) story.

The Dark Knight Strikes Again is a remarkable book only for it being the product of a writer/artist who brought so much to the character only to return years later and produce such a terrible book for that same character - I don't think there exists a comic book where the original and its sequel are so directly opposite one another in terms of quality. When a book that's unreadable at best is also 250 pages long, it's an utter chore to get through, let alone make any sense out of. The Dark Knight Strikes Again is a book that, if you read it, you're going to wish hadn't struck again.

I keep picking this book up and reading the amazing opening, specifically the sequence starring Professor Ray Palmer, also known as ... no, never mind. It's brilliant and beautifully drawn. It tricks you fairly: "Somewhere on Earth". True. "Somewhere cold. Endlessly cold." Also true. "Where monsters dwell." Even THAT is true. And this man, this emaciated cave-man, who seems to be the only man in the world ("A warrior born ... His humanity all but forgotten"), must hunt these sea-monsters, risking death every time, just to eat an uncooked meal of strange meat. How long has he been trapped in this hell? He can't say: "There's no sun." TRUE! "There isn't even any moon." HOW CAN ALL THIS BE TRUE?
The payoff is brilliant and comes too soon. I wish this sequence lasted longer. I wish the other sequences were half as good. What they did to Barry Allen, formerly known as the -- no, it's not important -- was nearly as good, but even shorter, and over with faster.
And it's all downhill from there.
You'll remember (or you should be told, at least) that they killed The Joker in "The Dark Knight Returns". Killed him dead. He was never superpowered, and he was as old as Batman, at least, and he's dead now. Broken neck, broken spine. Dead. Corpse was burnt up. He's gone. Honest.
But Frank Miller *wanted* a Joker-like character for this story.
And what Frank Miller wants, Frank Miller gives himself -- even if he wrote himself OUT of having it in the last book. So Frank Miller gives himself a new Joker-like character to play with, one with POWERS this time (imagine going BEYOND Wolverine's "healing factor", to a near invulnerability, an apparent immortality) setting up an honest-to-God MYSTERY ... and the payoff ... makes ... no. Sense. None. Who this character is, who he turns out to be, makes no sense. The surprise ending makes no sense. The end of the book makes no sense. It's the end of a story that wasn't TOLD, in all the preceeding pages. It's a "But how did we get HERE?" moment, and then the story's over. It's inexplicable. It's nothing but pandering to a small minority of readers who will close the volume and chuckle, "Haw, I always hated that guy anyway."
The spoiler has probably been spoiled all over the Internet by now, but I cannot bring myself to ruin it, even though it's THE STUPIDEST DAMN "SPOILER" IN COMIC HISTORY.
Taking a story from the great heights of early Part One to the nonsensical insult that is the conclusion of Part Three can only be a long, deep slide down the "quality" scale. And it is. On the way down, you'll be asked to accept a Plastic Man who is "like a baby born without any skin, like a soul puked up from Hell ... He could kill us all. For him it'd be easy". (Wow, Frank, couldn't you just have, somehow, arranged to BUY Jack Cole's CORPSE and take your venom out on it PERSONALLY?) And a Martian Manhunter who drinks, smokes, and whines that "My powers crapped out on me after my third kidney went tits-up." Come on, I'm not the biggest JLA fan, but even I know THAT'S NOT J'onn J'onnz! You'll meet a pathetic Ralph Dibny (wow, what a bold move, making Elongated Man look lame ... yes, dear, that's sarcasm), and a Captain Marvel who, although he IS treated with the dignity he deserves (come on, who doesn't love ol' "Shazam"?), he doesn't seem to accomplish much before his untimely demise. Considering this is a guy who could once go toe-to-toe with Superman (I'm not even gonna get STARTED on Superman), you'd think he could do a little more than search-and-rescue during the "basic billions-in-peril" scenario that eventually costs him his life.
Actually, I WILL speak a word on Superman: Don't let the outraged Superman fans distract you. There are PLENTY of other good reasons to despise this book, such as the fact that it really spits on almost everything that's good or fun about the DC Universe. But Superman is not abused, misused, or misrepresented. Remember, it's a whole different universe, a whole lot of years later, and THIS Kal-El's been through a LOT. The fact remains, he gets a whole lot of the story to himself (we even get to see him bang Wonder Woman, if that's not too much of a spoiler for ya), and the big-bad villians (except for Mr. Invulnerable Joker-Thing) are HIS big-bad villians (if you were expecting the Riddler and the Penguin, you're sadly out of luck!) In many ways, it is ... A Superman Story. It's a story that acknowledges, any world with a Superman ON it is going to be HEAVILY INVOLVED WITH him. However much he suffers, even if it makes him cower and cry, he is still very much a major character in the book, and the Superman fans . . . Oh, hell, I can't blame them for complaining.
It starts off so good, and ends so bad . . . there's only one way for the rest of it to go: DOWN.
Exception That Proves the Rule: Previously, Miller's "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder" very effectively made a real doofus out of the Green Lantern, Hal Jordan. I felt guilty laughing at that, because I know that (in mainstream continuity, at least) Hal has saved all of humanity and more, many times over. If you are a fan of Jordan's, you'll find he gets ALL his due respect back in this volume, and in fact, he is depicted as probably THE VERY mightiest hero in all the universe, a living lantern of pure willpower, beyond Superman, perhaps even an immortal. Batman needs him, more than any other hero, in a book loaded with heroes. A few truly awesome moments for GL fans.
Other than that, the book is a long rush downhill.
Why would you want to do that to yourself?

Honestly, this is a huge waste of money. If you’re new to Frank Miller and just finished Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (further referred to as BDKR), then just leave the series there. This “sequel” is really hard to digest with I completely different art style and story style that really left me feeling physically ill and angry.

This is not a Batman story, this is a Justice League story that barely relates to the universe of BDKR with truely horrific design choices for characters and some art cells are truly awful in their designs and characters seemed disfigured in some instances.

I bought at a local comic book store (support local businesses when you can) at full price and hoping it would a wonderful expansion from BDKR but it left me feeling ripped off and had me saying WTF a lot while reading this.

TLDR: don’t waste your money. It’s real bad.

Parodying a joke Stephen Hawking once made about Sheldon Cooper on his second guest appearance in THE BIG BANG THEORY, “What do Frank Miller and an egg have in common?”

Answer: “They both rot, as they grow older” (laugh; that one’s good enough for the Riddler or the Joker)!

Frank Miller is one of the most phenomenal comic book writers in history. He revolutionized the comic genre, with his seminal work BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, which not only proved that comics were capable of being a literature, but also was my second favorite Batman comic of all time. The reason it was such an astonishing success, was because it abandoned the Adam West version of Batman, and reinvented the character into the vision Bob Kane had on the character when he first created him in 1939. Batman was never meant to be a campy, goofy, and cartoonish crime buster having action bubbles accompany him whenever he beat up bad guys. No, he was meant to be a dark and tragic figure, who had lost his parents to crime, and now fights to eliminate the crime that murdered his parents, and preys on the innocents of Gotham City. Frank Miller understood who Batman was supposed to be when he wrote THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, a story where a 55 year old Batman returns from retirement to fight against the scum of Gotham, in a society plagued by corruption, sin, and despair. That work not only portrayed the dark knight’s true nature, but also displayed how the public and government would respond to vigilantism in real-life, done through the use of talking news heads (reporters) who debate Batman’s every move. I also enjoyed his work on BATMAN: YEAR ONE and 300, but THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN, the infamous sequel to TDKR, fails to meet the grandeur of its predecessor, as well as his other works

This wasn’t the first book by Frank Miller I’ve read, that showed a decline in the quality of his work, as ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN: THE BOY WONDER, purely damages the image of Batman that Miller once knew. But that book was bad enough to the point of enjoying it, as you could laugh at its flaws. This one however, can be just plain horrible at several points. The execution of the book is awful, not that it’s absolutely terrible, but it’s definitely not matching up to the work of a man once considered to be, “a Shakespeare of Comic Books.” The divided into three acts (unlike it’s four act predecessor), and while it starts out decent in the first act, the writing just goes falls flat from the second act onward. I wanted to avoid reading this at first, due to the negative criticism I’ve seen towards this book, but I decided to borrow a copy from my local library in order to see how awful it could be. After reading this book, all I can say is that I understand where negative reviewers are coming from, and this book deserves their criticism.

The story takes place three years after the events of TDKR, where Batman’s army of former mutants (gang members from the first book) are being led by Carrie Kelly (once Robin, now Catgirl) to recruit superheroes for a dangerous mission. The mission is to overthrow a corrupt government that dominates the USA, ruled by Superman’s arch foes Lex Luthor and Brainiac. The idea for the plot is well set up, and Miller’s writing on the first chapter is reminiscent to his days on TDKR. Even though I found the first chapter to be relatively exciting, it still some “what the heck was that?!” moments. For one thing, how on earth does Jimmy Olsen find out that the President isn’t real, but just a hologram created by Luthor? Did he sneak in to their head quarters, or have the CIA keep tabs on him (but that’s unlikely as America is a totalitarian police state in this reality). Kind of plot hole if you ask me, but that’s only an appetizer for the mess of plot holes this book rapidly transforms into. Once the second chapter, all of the focus in the book is regulated to random fights and news reports that appear to serve no purpose. Batman is rarely seen in the book, as he works behind the scenes, using others to do his work for him, which by itself isn’t a bad thing, but the heroes that work for him provide scenes that are pointless and distracting for the reader.

The second and third acts make no sense, and are extremely disorienting for the reader. New superheroes continuously appear out of nowhere on page after page, and interrupt the part of the story I was already reading. This just added on more and more individual stories for me to read, and I honestly don’t want to go back and try to understand them. They were just headache inducing, and got boring after a while. The narration and dialogue is awful in comparison to TDKR, and it makes the reader wonder what was going on in Miller’s head when he wrote this. The dialogue continuously bounces around the page, and makes the characters act like the opposites of themselves. When Batman rallies his army against Luthor, he exclaims, “Children, put on your tights and give them HELL.” Seriously, that’s the best line Batman would come up with to end a speech? Also, when Superman and Wonder Woman make out in the air, Wonder Woman thinks to herself, “I’m pregnant again,” which I felt was where the book truly went downhill.

As for the superheroes Miller puts into his story, they are all completely out of character. Acting as an omen for “the Godd*** Batman” Miller would later bring lose in ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, the dark knight comes off as a jerk in this story. Batman casually enjoys striking terror in his enemies, kills corrupt Gov. agents, and is willing to let millions of innocents die in order to bring down Luthor’s reign of terror. Also (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT), when Dick Grayson returns, Batman openly announces his hatred for him, and is prepared to kill him (why Dick becomes a villain is explained in ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN). These traits make Batman look less noble, and somewhat of a psychopath who enjoys bringing pain to others. Plus, the Dick as a villain scenario comes out of nowhere, and has little leading up to it, undermining the seriousness of the plot twist. I hate the relationship between Superman and Wonder Woman, as it they are not meant to be a couple. Wonder Woman is traditionally an the store, and considers herself independent from the world of men, but Miller makes her look bipolar, as one moment she hates men, and the next she’s making out with Superman. Their relationship was disrespectful towards Lois Lane in my opinion, and Superman appears to love her as equally as Wonder Woman (what a cheater).

As for the artwork, I’m a bit mixed. In TDKR, Miller used a gritty, yet effective style that was blended with watercolors, which worked perfectly with the setting. But in TDKSA, Miller’s illustrations seem to fall downhill along with the writing (though not as steeply). The characters can either appear to be too gritty, ugly, cartoonish, or just plain weird looking. The illustrations started off with potential, and I particularly liked his drawings of Catgirl. However, the artwork appears to be more rushed as the story progresses, as Luthor looks like a withered fat slob in his underwear, and Wonder Woman has the appearance of a man. There are no backgrounds, which makes it difficult to tell what location the characters are in. The art also aids in disorienting the already jumbled up plot, because you can’t even tell who some characters are. Another bone I have to pick with the art is that Miller over sexualizes the appearance of almost every woman in the book. All the costumes worn by women appear to either be too skin tight, or spray-painted on, making their appearance almost anatomically correct. That, along with an inappropriate news channel, felt sexist towards women in my opinion. It’s all right that women are sexy in comics, but what Miller does here was pushing the limits of how far comics should go with that matter.

I didn’t hate the book, but I cannot call it a book I enjoyed. The opening act was passable, but for the rest of the book, it’s like a tornado comes in and mixes the plot up beyond repair. I don’t recommend this for people who found BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS to be a masterpiece, as you’re likely to find this book disappointing. However, if you still want to check it out, I strongly suggest borrowing a copy from the library, rather than buying it. It’s not worth buying, even as a collectible in my opinion, as there is no sense of plot or emotion in this story whatsoever. Reading this is starting to make me cautious about reading other books by Frank Miller, as misses the hoop by a long shot here. This is most likely my least favorite of the books of his I have read. Misses the mark of being a worthy sequel to TDKR.

“[Frank Miller] was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be [TDKR Miller] and became [TDKSA Miller]. When that happened, the good [writer that] was [Frank Miller] was destroyed.”
-Parody of Obi-Wan’s statement about Darth Vader in RETURN OF THE JEDI

This book was the most ridiculous, poorly created batman novel i have ever read. The entire story was just absolutely terrible and bonkers. Like seriously whack. None of it made sense. At all. Im sad to see it written by the great frank miller. It was not his best work. The story was all over the place and had no real meaningful dialogue. I planned on continuing reading the third story, the master race, but i had to put the book down and take a mental break from reading this atrocity to batman novels. 0/10

The Dark Knight Strikes Again, the sequel to the classic The Dark Knight Returns, was written and drawn by Frank Miller and colored by Lynn Varley. It was originally published as a three-part series in 2001 and 2002.

The story picks up three years after the events of The Dark Knight Returns. The world has become a police-state, led by Lex Luthor, and Batman is at work trying to free superheroes the government has imprisoned and take down the corrupt government.

Strikes Again is thirty pages longer than Returns, and it feels much shorter. In Returns, every panel was carefully arranged. Here, panels are strewn about the page, and there are a lot of full-page spreads that are neither artistic nor helpful to the plot. Miller may have been trying to create a chaotic ambience for this one, but it all feels like filler.

On the subject of chaos, Strikes Again feels slapped together. There's plenty going on, but there's little development of any character other than Superman. Nothing that happens here is particularly exciting, and the ending is anticlimactic and ho-hum.

Miller's art is significantly different here than it was in Returns. It's more grotesque, it's sloppier, and it's less detailed. Many characters look like monsters. There's a profound lack of background art, and this, combined with the lack of detail and the computer-colored backgrounds that Lynn Varley quite obviously got carried away with, makes it perfectly understandable if the reader has trouble figuring out what's going on. About the only bright spot here is what Miller does with Plastic Man.

The Dark Knight Strikes Again feels sloppy and thrown together. It is mediocre in its own right, and looks even poorer when compared with the classic that spawned it.

I read this right after finishing The Dark Knight Returns for the first time and and I would say this felt like a continuation of the first work right through the first part of this book but as soon as part two commences it felt like I was viewing the events in the book through the eyes of a madman.

It was unsettling at first and I thought this must be the reason for all of the negative reviews. That and the fact this book came out 20 years after the first one. And the first one came out during the greatest decade this planet has ever known, the 1980s, an epoch of invention and innovation, and that there is no way the second book coming out in the decade after history ended and people's imaginations had atrophied and dried up could live up to the expectations of a generation that had come to expect more, but the same.

Finally, some days after finishing this book it hit me, The Dark Knight Strikes Again is the closest description of reality as it actually is. I don't know how Frank Miller and Lynn Varley accomplished this, but this they did.

Okay, I didn't really get the Robin subplot. But I did. On one level, it seemed to erupt out of nowhere but on another level, I knew it was Robin long prior to the reveal therefore there must have been something in the story to suggest it, even if I only picked up on it subconsciously.

It also leads me to the theory that when the perspective of the story shifts in part 2, we are seeing events unfold through Robin's eyes. But we could also be seeing the story unfold through the deceased Joker's eyes. Perhaps he regrets having killed himself and misses out on tangling once again with his old foe. Who knows?

I do know I will be reading this series again and I do suspect that I may change my mind upon a second reading. But for right now, at this moment, I judge this to be a work of madness that verges on genius and like the ancient cathedrals of France and Europe, it changes the reader whether the reader understands the underlying symbolism or not.

The Dark Knight Strikes again is a significant disappointment when compared to its predecessor. Though Frank Miller is rightly recognized as one of the best graphic novelists of our generation, The Dark Knight Strikes Again is a jumbled mess. The amount of dialogue in the novel is rather limited, and replaced with a number of splash pages, and pages featuring almost entirely images with no spoken words. This makes any attempt to follow the plot of the story tedious and removes the reader from the story multiple times, making for a much less enjoyable experience than other Miller pieces. Nobody's perfect, so it's to be expected that Frank Miller would produce a dud at some point in his career, and this is definitely it.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (TDKR)was a watershed moment in my life. I had never really read comic books as a kid, but as I flipped through Miller's 1986 masterpiece at a friend's house I became engrossed in this larger than life archtypal myth and its central character, the tormented and driven Bruce Wayne.
Thus started a lifelong love of the Batman as a literary character. I have since become a TDKR evangelist, pushing the book on people who would never have picked up a comic book on their own, assuring them that it would be one of the 5 best STORIES they would ever read.
So one could imagine my surprise when I first saw Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes again in a comic book store 15 years later. Of course I bought it, but I had bad feelings about it from the start.
First, TDKR is the capstone of the Batman mythos. The story ends the legend so perfectly as, finally after 40 years, Bruce Wayne conquers the obsessive demon within himself that drives him to such extreme behaviour. He's finally successfully integrated the pain/trauma of his childhood into his personality and has found some measure of lasting peace. As such, Wayne should NEVER don the cape and cowl again.
If Miller wanted to write a story about Wayne, and his army of former street toughs to "bring sense to the world," THAT would be an acceptable storyline. But the Batman is dead. GONE. Never to arise again. Wayne & crew live "beyond the burnt remains of a crimefighter who's time has long since passed."
Second, I'm just not into the whole Frank Miller government paranoia thing. A critical element to TDKR was that it was not really the government, as such, that demanded the decline of the superheroes. It was the American public. It was, in Clark's words, "The endless envy of those not blessed..." that doomed the uberfolk. Society changed. It wasn't that the big bad government forced the superheroes out of their roles.
And with the introduction of the whole evil government element, you've eliminated what made Superman so cool (or frightening) in the first place. Clark saw that society was changing and that, as such, his role would have to change. He made an affirmative decision to become an agent of the United States government and to work for it as a "licensed superhero." He made a moral choice which stands in contrast to the choices made by Wayne.
But in DKII, all moral choice is removed from the superheroes. Clark isn't working for the government as a result of the decisions he's made. He, and all the heroes, are being held hostage by the "big, bad government." In DKII, Superman is absolved of any guilt that he must bear because he has no choice. Otherwise, people in the bottle city of Kandor will suffer. This makes him a much less interesting character, and diminshes the heroic nature of the Batman's moral decision to resist.
... Clark's defeat at the hands of Wayne at the end of TDKR works because it is the climactic battle of the storyline. It's not simply a fight between Superman and the Batman, but it's the final struggle between two ethoses, between law and justice and between the conflicting elements of Wayne's own personality. And, once resolved, the Batman's raison d'etre vanishes and he dies.
And on a mere formal level, Wayne is able to defeat Clark because he's clever and has a lot of unexpected tricks up his sleeve.
I find it difficult to believe that Superman, having had his ... handed to him before, would be quite so cavalier about confronting Wayne again. (He is supposed to be a genius you know)
On top of that, Miller has seemed to have lost any gift he had for storytelling. TDKR builds to the appropriate climax. But DKII just seems rushed. And one of the great things about Miller in TDKR was his innate sense of filmic style. There are classic film-style *edits* in TDKR which move the story brilliantly. Like the sequence where the last frame on one page contains a newsreader claiming that "the sightings match the description of the Batman. Or at least the impression he was known to make..." Then, forcing you to turn the page, Miller hits you with a full page image of the Batman leaping through the air. Truly "the impression he was known to make..." But DKII is just a mish-mash of images with no contrast between them to move the narrative forward.
Perhaps it was inevitable, given the success of TDKR, that there would be a sequel, but Miller should have left it alone.

This book's predecessor, Dark Knight Returns, puts a very different spin on the Batman Legend. It also changed the comics industry at the time, both from a format and a content perspective. Frank Miller has talent overflowing and his mainstream and independent comic work shows it.

THIS BOOK, however, shares little with that.. The art and layout seem rushed and sloppy. Full page panels are great when they are integrated into the story telling...but these seem designed to just fill pages. To me, even the coloring seemed...lacking, giving a look into the weaknesses of digital coloring or maybe the skills of the artist.

I'm sorry to say that this is a book worth borrowing as a curiosity as opposed to buying.

Perhaps Frank Miller was unaware of how highly anticipated his sequel to DK was; perhaps he was completely aware and to prove he's moved since the first, just blew off the second. Either way the first installment to the Dark Knight is everything that its predecessor was not. Gone are the psychological asides within the main character's heads that gives the reader a sense of their anguish. Miller's Batman mythos is reduced to flat dialogue and even flatter art panels.
Indeed the greatest let-down is Miller and Varley's handling of figures and colors. Gone are Varley's memorable gritty tones and in their place is art-student Photoshop Day-Glo colors. She purposely bit-maps and streaks colors to no other end but to come off as sloppy and amatuer. Its probably the worst example I've seen of digital inking since the process was made industry-standard. Miller's forms are stiff and lifeless and seem to just float in background-less voids.
The story itself is the only saving grace to DK2 so far, but Alex Ross did the whole cynical-world-turned against-superheroes thing much better in "Kingdom Come". Okay, we know the world of the future will be an angst-filled mess. Miller does little to present this idea in a new way. Bats + Co. led by a perky Catgirl free some superheroes trapped and misled by the government. A government, in turn, being controlled by Lex + Co. who makes it clear to Superman + Co. that he is in charge.
Miller proved to us before in his great previous works (300 / Sin City) that the world is eager to sell out. Never before has one of his works been so obviously on the other end.

I agree with several other reviews, I almost did not pick up master race because of this one the art is terrible and the story is a mess or maybe the art was so distracting i had trouble with the story. Read a synopsis and pick up master race I loved it. Just for reference I bought this originally off the shelf in the 3 parts when it was originally released

This first chapter (in a three chapter sequal) to The Dark Knight Returns doesn't really measure up to the originals briliance. The central theme of "Where are our heros?" gives Miller license to use other Justice League members, but it detracts from Batman's presence in his own story. This theme has been tackled many times over, so what held me (and what I believe this story is all about), was Miller's takes on the different characters. I don't want to reveal the characters used and how they're ifferent, but it's big thrill for long time comic readers to see their heros in this new light. This type of story doesn't lend itself to the deep character study and reinvention we got with DKR. The Dark Knight Strikes Again seems designed as an adrenaline rush for fans of lot's of action and the Justice League characters rather than for the larger mass audience that DKR reached.
Aside from the not to original story, I also didn't care for the drawing and coloring styles. Miller's rough, sketchy drawings take some getting used to and I had to ponder over a few panels to figure out what they were depicting. What makes it even harder is the computer coloring that overpowers and distracks from many of the drawings. The contrast of the orgainic feel of the drawings and the percise, mechanied coloring does comment on the story, but unfortunately it's not attractive to look at. The warm, pastels of DKR worked much better with Miller's drawing style.
I plan on reading the other two volumes of this story in the belief that it will be entertaining to see Miller's takes on the Justice League characters. But overall, my expectationcs have been taken down quite a bit. DKSA feels like Miller taking advantage of the idea of a sequal to produce a rush for comics fans rather than truly having something to say about the Batman character (and comics in general). Something that could reach out beyond comics to touch a mass audience. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not nearly as grand as DKR.

The original Dark Knight books broke heavy ground in comics. They turned me on to Frank Miller's art and the story took a fabulous look at Batman. The story was gritty and exciting, the art had flavors of Japanese style with Miller's distinctive feel.
DK2, book 1, jumps right into the story. If you haven't looked at things in a while, its a bit disorienting but soon you're zooming along with the action. Batman is busy with big schemes and the world's makeup has changed.
An interesting look at how things could shake out if all these superheroes did actually populate the world we lived in, or rather, one like ours with the serial numbers filed off. What comic fan hasn't thought that men would find a way to cage superheroes for study or profit? In much the same way that many stories assume vampires or wizards hide out to prevent the "mundane" world from acting on their natural fears and wiping them out, this story postulates that so-called super-heroes have human enough weaknesses that they are not altogether immune from control.
All in all, it measured up to my expectations and I'll be picking up the rest of the series. It hasn't yet, however, thrilled me the way that the original did.