So I decided to reread the entire saga again. I always found the first one to be very overrated and nothing really has changed. I also feel like he switched gears in the middle of the fist one, as the feel of the first two is very different than the last 2. Maybe an Alan Moore influence?

Anyway they all have some decent moments but overall they stink.

The second series, the DK Strikes back, was really awful, hard to read, a giant F U to Superman, along with other problematic characterizations.

The Master Race had some moments but again, very sloppy and little to no understanding of what makes the heroes great.

The prequel was a waste and Golden Child was just messy garbage.

Remember boys and girls, it's fun to start threads about comics you hate!

I liked The Dark Knight Returns well enough as it was coming out--and also Crisis on Infinite Earths and Watchmen about the
same time. But, only a couple of years afterwards, I started to regret all three titles. All of them, in their own way, heralded
(and encouraged) the end of a comics era that had been a large part of my life up until then. I don't think I finished DK Strikes
Back as I found it rather yucky throughout.

I did get around to watching the animated version of Dark Knight last year, and, once again, I was rather liking it.

Loved (and love) the first one, but anything after that I regret reading. Ugly art, cynical story. I'll say DKR is in my top 10 all time and unlikely ever to fall out.

The original was one of my favorite comics when it first came out - my 16-year-old self absolutely loved it. I think I've read it to many times, because now it's like Hotel California - sure it's great, but I've heard it so often that I don't ever need to hear it again.

I've never gotten tired of Miller's Daredevil or Sin City, though.

For most fans, I think the "innovation" of the The Dark Knight Returns was the creation of the modern Batman as the gritty, hyper-competent master planner / control freak who has an iron will far beyond any other superhero.

For me, and I believe true students of the medium itself, the innovation of the book was the narrative style and approach -- the way the story itself was told. The plot isn't really the thing that makes it great, it's all the storytelling and recurring motifs that make it something special. For me, it was more about the execution and ambitious nature of exploring the medium that makes it memorable, not the story itself.

In my book, the fact that it has Batman in it only serves to make the general comics audience to pay attention to it. It could have been done with just about any vigilante superhero and it could have been ground-breaking. It's a continuation of the techniques and style Miller experimented with in Ronin.

The 16-panel grid, the pacing, the media sound bites, the political subtext and overt political commentary, etc. It feels like the majority of American comics done up to that point had two key priorities in the narrative style -- clarity and efficiency. They had to ensure small children could understand the books and they had to pack in as much plot as they could in 18-22 pages (and in the silver age, even less since many books featured 2 or 3 stories). Now, this isn't all bad and many great comics were created this way, but it is nice to see an artist be able to open things up and play with the narrative a bit to create more emotionally impactful scenes that an older audience can appreciate. The scene I think back to is Bruce's flashback to his parents' murder --




YMMV, but that's a very powerful way to depict an awful moment in a person's life and I personally feel a greater degree of emotional realism from that than just about any other retelling of Batman's origin. It feels "cinematic", to borrow a term from film.

I like Batman and everything, but at the end of the day, he's just a cartoon character. I personally feel advancing the visual language of comics storytelling is more important than any individual character and I do think the original DKR is an example of that. It really hit like a tidal wave at the time. This series of blog posts does a better job than I ever will delving into it all --

https://ditto004.wordpress.com/2013/02/ ... t-returns/



I have an unusual relationship with this one. At first, I genuinely hated it and thought it was a creator who indulged his creative muse to the point of losing the audience and a cohesive narrative. Later, I found myself returning to it again and again as some bizarre punk-rock oddity. I didn't think it was "good" but I did find it to be interesting and would daydream about what a "good" version of it could look like. Now, I see it as just one of the steps in Frank Miller's downfall as a relevant (and good) creator. His work has become increasingly broad, incoherent, and sloppy. The last thing he did that I found genuinely great as a visual artist is 300 (likely more due to Lynn Varley) and the last thing I liked as a writer would probably be either the first Martha Washington series or the Big Guy & Rusty one-shot.



I don't really even consider these truly Dark Knight Returns material since they weren't fully done by Miller. Like Before Watchmen, I see these as cash-in attempts by DC comics, who just can't seem to come up with anything innovative or interesting anymore.

Don't say that! They're publishing a mini-series about Sergeant Rock fighting zombie Nazis even as we speak!

But seriously, I can sort of understand, when I see it presented the way you do above, why Miller's original Dark Knight story seemed so groundbreaking at the time. Even though I have absolutely never shared the attraction myself. It does seem to have inspired a lot of more ambitious storytelling in comics. Too bad so much of it ended up being half-baked imitations of Miller. As for Miller himself, he seems to have believed his own hype and, once he had become a big enough name to be freed from editors, pretty much creatively self-destructed into self-caricature.

I still love his DD and find Born Again to be one of the greatest comic arcs ever. Also love Sin City, though struggle following the scratchy art at times.

And agree with DKR. I also thought it was so cool as a kid, but less impressed the more I read it. I still like the firs two issues.



I think the plot in the first two issues were pretty good, superhero-wise.



Interesting but you're right.




I see what you're getting at but for me it's painful to read.




Agree

Yeah, that's part of the fascination for me, just the pure oddness and awkwardness of it. If THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN was a fan comic done by a teenager (which is how it reads), I could wrap my head around it and just enjoy it awkwardly -- a "it's so bad, it's good" kinda thing.

But because this bizarre train-wreck was done by one of the masters of the medium, I felt a fascination with it. This guy did some of the most brilliant comics of the 1980s -- what the hell is going on with this? Is there some avant-garde hidden message or technique here? Is this some sort of weird commentary on the genre or state of the industry? Some people even thought it was a "fuck you" to all the fans nagging him to work on Batman again since the late 80s.

But now, I don't really feel that fascination anymore because we've seen the work he's done since then -- it was just the first step on the way down and I wouldn't be surprised if he has mental health / long-term illness issues that contributed to the strangeness of his work in the 21st century. (I've heard he's had serious issues with substance abuse.) He's still an all-time favorite for me because of his work in the 80s, but I think anything after 300 should be taken with a massive grain of salt.

Meanwhile I re-read his Holy Terror and that was just awful. I know he regrets it and people say it was offensive, but I don't see how fighting fanatical Muslim terrorists is offensive. What was offensive was the writing and painful art

I haven't read it, but I've read that Miller goes beyond just insulting terrorists and insults the religion of Islam (again, never read it).

I will have to look again

Scioli looks at the black and white version and it looks a lot better, IMO. It's not great, but I do find it visually appealing in some ways.