DC originally published Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in 1986. At the time, this was pretty much a shot in the dark, despite the fact that a lot of what was being tried out for the first time then is standard industry stuff now.

Mini-series, "prestige" or "square-bound" format, (which in its infancy was actually briefly called "Dark Knight format"), high design standards, not to mention creators being given greater creative freedom with established characters (and The Batman finally reassuming his rightful place as the greatest comic character of them all), all of these owe their existence to Miller’s Dark Knight. It was always going to be a tough act to follow…

For reasons that are not clear to me (although the rumoured two million US dollars he got for the project may have had something to do with it), Miller decided to produce a sequel to The Dark Knight Returns. This time around, we are getting a three-part story, with a total of two hundred and thirty story pages, as opposed to the four-parter of the original, with one hundred and eighty four story pages. I’m always uneasy about follow-ups written solely because of public demand, and had a sense of foreboding about this particular project from the beginning.

The Dark Knight Strikes Back takes place three years after the events of The Dark Knight Returns, which in turn takes place ten years after Batman’s "retirement". At that point Batman had successfully faked his own death, and had retired deep into the caves under the ruins of Wayne Manor with the remnants of the Mutant Army and his new Robin, Caroline Keene Kelley. Carrie Kelley has now changed into Catgirl, and the story opens with her rescuing Professor Ray Palmer, otherwise known as The Atom, from a Petrie dish in a government laboratory. Inevitably, they are almost caught, but get away in the end. This proves to be but the first of numerous rescues of various superheroes, all of whom seem to have been either cleverly imprisoned or, through some form of blackmail, forced to work for the new regime, which is being run by Lex Luthor, along with his old comrade-in-arms, Brainiac. Within a short period of time Batman's acolytes have gathered together Plastic Man (who is being put forward as &Quot;immeasurably powerful&Quot;) the Flash (that’s the Barry Allen Flash, of course…), the Green Arrow (now with a prosthetic left arm to replace the one Superman caused him to lose), the Question (it’s all right not to have heard of this one…) and a supremely powerful Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. Ranged against them, for various reasons beyond their control, are Superman, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman. This inevitably leads to another big fight scene between Bruce and Clark.

The fight scene between The Batman and Superman in The Dark Knight Returns is still capable of making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s a clash between two titans, both of them legendary and iconic, and done with, it always seemed to me, huge love for the two characters involved. The fact that The Batman won is as much about the triumph of the human spirit over adversity as anything else. In contrast to this we have all of Batman’s mates ganging up on Superman in what is really a dirty street brawl. Batman comes in at the end to kick seven colours of shite out of poor old Clark, but it all lacks a single shred of dignity. Like much else in this work, it seems as if Miller is just going through the motions.

The book is more of a rag-tag ensemble piece than a Batman book, and in fact the title character appears rarely. The character who appears most often is Superman, although it seems as if Miller can’t make up his mind how he feels about him. We do learn that Clark now has a daughter, courtesy of Wonder Woman, although I was so unimpressed by this book that I frankly couldn’t bring myself to care. I suppose I should point out at this stage that it all works out in the end, and the baddies are defeated, and they all live happily ever after.

I didn’t like this work, as you might have gathered. There are quite a few reasons, which I’ll try to get more or less in the order they came to me. My immediate dislike was Lynn Varley’s colouring. In the excellent The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide the reviewer refers to Varley’s "extraordinary subtle, unusual and effective colouring" in The Dark Knight Returns. Several words come to mind when trying to describe the colouring in The Dark Knight Strikes Back, but 'subtle' was never going to be one of them. Garish, disturbed, and, like much else about this project, rushed, would probably fit the bill, and that’s if I’m being nice. Next up is the art itself, which is rushed and unfinished, particularly as the series reaches the third volume. Miller goes back to the technique of various talking heads, which he used so effectively first time around (and which he’d in turn borrowed from Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg), but this time is brought to ridiculous extremes, and serves only to annoy, as far as I’m concerned. The worst thing, though, is the way in which Miller treats a lot of his characters. Superman is presented as a fool, and Miller manages to kill off both Captain Marvel and the Martian Manhunter, almost as an aside. What I can never forgive him for is causing Batman to exult in the killing of Lex Luthor by one of his minions. One of the things that is at the very heart of the mythos is Bruce Wayne’s reverence for human life. If you remove this, everything else falls apart.

I was badly disappointed by this series. I should have known, though. After all, I've seen enough really bad sequels to good movies to have had at least an idea what I was going to get. It's so sad when your gods insist of showing off their clay feet, all the same. If you’re a big fan of The Batman, you might want to leave this one on the shelf, and go home and re-read The Dark Knight Returns instead. It’s still the second best graphic novel in the world, ever.

Publisher: DC Comics
Format: p/b, 3 volumes
Price:: $7.95 each


Review originally on The Alien Online