MEDITATIONS ON MILLER

I don't have any plans to review THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN, Miller's 2001 follow-up to the 1986 DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. However, with the help of Google I see that I did insert one observation on the messy sequel in my 2010 essay LEAD US NOW INTO TRANSGRESSION:

It's a little harder to talk about narrative or significant values in TDKSA because it's something of a jumble of Scenes Frank Miller Thought Would Be Really Cool. 

But I felt I should make a few comments on the 2001 work, given that I, like many fans, probably expected more of the same when Miller teamed with Brian Azzarello on the 2015 DARK KNIGHT: MASTER RACE. I don't know what the critical consensus on MASTER RACE was, though Wiki asserts that it received more "positive reviews" than TDKSA. But for me, reading MASTER RACE was like reading a thirty-years-later sequel to TDKR in terms of the continuity of theme and content. True, MASTER RACE used a lot of stuff from TDKSA, but I almost felt that Miller and Azzarello were simply obliged to pick up on story-material executed by some other bozo, the way (say) Roger Stern might concoct a good story based on some moldy, half-forgotten plot-thread.

Of course, that's just an idle fantasy, since I know that TDKSA wasn't an exception in the Miller oeuvre. There's also HOLY TERROR, to which I gave a negative review despite my tendency to condemn all the politically correct hand-wringing I saw from most critics at the time. I faulted TERROR for its many narrative failings, but Miller also produced a number of lame projects that had no connection to his ostensible political leanings.

For instance, there's the 1994 one-shot SPAWN/BATMAN, a monumentally stupid crossover that combines the worst excesses of writer Miller and artist Todd Mac Farlane. Whereas TDKR had been basically respectful to the Batman mythos despite pushing some of its characters to extreme positions (Batman has sadistic tendencies, Catwoman becomes an implicit prostitute), SPAWN/BATMAN seems to be the birthplace of the near-parody known as "the goddamn Batman."

Speaking of which, about eleven years later Miller and Jim Lee teamed up to produce an even more acidulous version of the Caped Crusader, in the form of the 2005-08 serial ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN.

Yet, even though I think all three of these are mammoth wastes of time, I feel that they aren't simply the work of a disinterested hack. All three spring from Miller's distinct creative impulses, which include (1) a conviction to move the reader with any number of visceral appeals, and (2) a tendency to defuse all the intense visceral stuff with sprinklings of absurdist humor. When I look upon these three Miller misfires, I see them as Miller letting his taste for absurdity overrule all of his other creative propensities.

That said, 2001's TDKSA, while it sometimes seems like Miller's love letter to the craziness of Silver Age DC (right down to a gratuitous reference to the Legion of Super-Heroes). does have a few inspired moments, which is more than the other three have going for them. I've forgotten a lot of the silly shit in the rambling storyline, but I must say that I was amused by the idea that some weird version of Robin-- less a DC creation than the "Burt Ward Robin" of television-- becomes immortal in order to take down Batman, and even has conversations when his head's been separated from his body.

 Happily, though, MASTER RACE didn't continue in this dubious direction-- more on which later.