THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN (DK2)
Frank Miller and Lynne Varley
DC Comics
Sequels, sequels, sequels.
Hollywood today is all about the sequel. Part Two of this, remakes of that. They just can't leave things alone. It's become a clich� in recent years for the biggest Hollywood movies to be picked up for sequels even before the original films have premiered.
And while this can, occasionally, be a Good Thing (it says here), more often than not, it's just an excuse for rehashing well-worn ideas. Aiming for the Cheap Buck.
Goldmember: take a bow.
This happens in comics, too. Popular-yet-dormant brands, and tried and tested formulae are revived and revisited all the time. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.
Hello, readers of BLADE: the Comic. Both of you.
From my perspective, at least, DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN (DK2) is a sequel that works.
Oh Lordy, does it work.
DARK KNIGHT RETURNS (DKR) was a seminal and groundbreaking comic. It was highly praised and constantly imitated, for years after its original release. Along with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, it was largely responsible for the darkening of superhero comics.
Because everybody.
Missed.
The bloody.
Point.
People latched onto the surface of the story, rather than its emotional core. They saw an angry, noir Batman, set against the backdrop of a dark future in which even boyscout king Superman had been ground under the heels of Big Government, and missed the point. They took the gurning and the Big Muscles and the rest of the window dressing, but left the storymeat in the shop.
DKR was really about a Bruce Wayne who couldn't cope. Too young to cope with middle-age and retirement, he became Batman again. Then, finding himself too old to cope as Batman - the young Batman - Bruce Wayne was forced to find a third way. Leave both Bruce Wayne and Batman behind, go underground, and become something�else.
Ultimately, DKR was about hope. The sort of hope intrinsic to superheroes: that no matter how desperate the situation, there's always a way out. Or through. Or under.
DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN continues this theme. It's an interesting paradox: the grumpiest, most cynical bastard in comics is the also the one with the greatest sense of hope.
But unlike other sequels I could mention, DK2 isn't a simple reworking of old themes. Where DKR was a tight character study, DK2 is a much broader story, with a larger cast.
And it's big. By god, it's big.
DKR was a story of tense, quiet beats amongst rolling, explosive action. It was widescreen action before "widescreen" was even comics terminology.
And if DKR was widescreen, then DK2 is Imax. It's Henman Hill.
It's Batman's face on the surface of the Moon.
The pages seem bigger than they really are: intellectually, you know it's the size of a regular comic, but the artwork explodes beyond the confines of the page. It's truly epic, and would work brilliantly in the extra-large format used for European comics albums.
DK2 is punctuated by moments of Big Battles, Big Love, Big Loss and Big Wins. It also contains some slightly obvious, but acutely-observed satire, of what the media has become since the days of DKR: staccato, glossy bursts of nearly-news wearing the face of vapid newswhores and vanilla ice-cream, and endless blinkered political harpies, screaming so loud that they can't be heard.
It's obvious, but far too close to the knuckle.
When reading comics, there's sometimes a synaesthetic effect: the layout and pacing of the artwork, combined with the emotional core of the story, contrives to produce an almost musical effect. DK2 is such a book. It's orchestral, almost operatic: Aaron Copland meets Wagner, without the fascist overtones. Strident, brassy drama, punctuated during moments of crisis with a chorus of desperate voices.
Miller's art, an abstraction of the style he used on DKR, and certainly as extreme as any of his Sin City work, is mad, inky fun. It's naughty and infectious. From the young man's smile beaming out of an old man's face, to the Greek legend in the sample jar, this is a serious piece of work. It's not your father's Batman. It's not even your mad uncle's Batman.
It's Jackson Pollock's Batman.
Lynn Varley's colours, while a little�experimental, compliment Miller's artwork perfectly. It's unique and beautiful: glossy, bitty colour, a 21st century reincarnation of the four-colour palette.
DK2 is hammers and nails, angry joy in printed form. It'll bring the house down, have you on your feet and cheering, and then blow you away with the best closing line I've read this year. It's a sequel, yes. A continuation of a theme, sure. It's Frank Miller, revisiting the story that made him a worldwide name.
But it's new. It's improved. And it's everything you should demand from a sequel. When Miller trots out his much-anticipated tribute to the turning point of DKR (a fight between Batman and Superman), he pulls the rug out from under the reader. Instead of delivering a bigger, louder scrap, he goes smaller, harder,
nastier, producing a rapid, vicious, and quite hilarious demolition of the Man of Steel.
Getting this out of the way as soon as possible frees Miller to tell the story he wants in the way that he wants.
Where DKR was, essentially a small story - Batman saves Gotham by saving himself - DK2 is bigger, in that Batman saves the world by saving his friends. One could argue, of course, that where DKR was about saving Bruce Wayne, DK2 is about saving Superman. The beauty of this big, big story is that both statements are utterly true.
While I'm sure people are going to argue for years about the need (or otherwise) for a sequel to such a groundbreaking comic as DKR, and while I'm sure that the same people are going to whine about the seemingly unconventional art style, I loved DK2 to bits.
It's the best kind of sequel - the only kind that works: it's informed by the first
installment, but it doesn't hold on to it. It hits the ground running, and doesn't look back. It takes the story that much further. It does more.
DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN is supreme comics. A satire. An adventure. Revolution in tight spandex, sexy and vulgar as nightclub romance. The acme of superheroes.
And people will miss the point of the exercise, just as they did with the original:
That it's supposed to be fun.
What the hell else should it be?
Review Text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist