The final tragedy of Harvey Dent in Miller and Janson's "The Dark Knight Returns"

[about_faces]

When people talk about some of the greatest Batman comics of all time, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is usually listed as number one.

I used to agree, but the older I get, the more I find TDKR to be unbearably ugly. Conversely, I find that Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One gets more powerful and humane with each passing

Comments

[surrealname]

I still like DKR. I don't like what it did to comics, but I like it. I'm also pretty sure that Miller himself has stated that he doesn't like where other people took things via his ideas

[thehefner]

I feel like the DKR and Reagan stuff hinders the work as a Batman story and very much dates it as an 80's story. It's not like Watchmen and, in a different way, V for Vendetta, which get more leeway by being alternate realities. DKR is set in a future that's now very much our past, and uses timeless characters to tell that story. I'm having a hard time making words. Am I making any sense?

[surrealname]

you are making sense. And i feel it's okay for stories to date themselves in a way that it is not okay for other media to. I like the DKR has that context that you can put it in and examine.

I also just live to hate ronald regan. I think that's really what this comes down to, actually.

[box_in_the_box]

You make perfect sense, but once again, this was the problem with the '80s - the apocalyptic zeitgeist was running so strongly that both Moore and Miller were literally incapable of imagining that the world might still exist after Ronald Reagan.

[lego_joker]

Goddammit, all three of you are making me feel like a foolish, starry-eyed idealistic young whippersnapper that has no idea how the world really works. :(

Put me in the camp that prefers Year One; I think that the art is what really sells it - David Whatshisname's Gotham is seedy and corrupt, yes, but it doesn't REVEL in it. The humble, minimalist artwork conveys a city that knows what it is, and is neither ashamed nor proud of it, and just tries to plod along the best it can.

Well, that's the deepest amount of discussion my tiny brain can take. Time to list the best and worst Bat-works of random writers! First up: Doug Moench!

Best: "Prey" (LOTDK #11-15); "One Night in the War Zone" (Batman #514); "Riddle of the Jinxed Sphinx" (The Batman Chronicles #3); "The Penguin Returns" (Batman #548-549)

Worst: "Masters of Fear" (Batman Annual #19); "Frozen Assets" (Batman #525) "The Face Schism" (Batman #527-528); Crimson Mist.

[abqreviews]

I mostly agree with that list, but what's so bad about "Masters of Fear"? I thought it was great up until Crane started killing people that were kind to him, as it destroyed all of the pathos Moench had been building up (I've wondered if he did that so that he wouldn't be accused of indulging in revenge fantasies like some writers of the era *COUGH*Brian Pullido*COUGH*). Even then my only real problem with it was how rushed it was.

Otherwise, good list for Moench. I'd do one for Denny 'O Neil, but right now I can't think of many he did that were bad so much as just extremely disappointing. Let me go dig through my box...

[lego_joker]

You know, now that I think about it, I think that Michael Green actually writes a damn good Scarecrow (or, at least, a damn good Jonathan Crane). No raving, ranting "Fear fear did I mention fear" nutcase - his Crane is composed, snarky, and carries an undercurrent of... unbalancedness, I guess. Actually, he's quite a bit like Hugo Strange.

[box_in_the_box]

Quick question: How old are you?

I'm sure that sounds condescending as all fuck, but if you weren't there for the '80s, I'm not sure you can grasp how bad it got under Reagan.

[lego_joker]

"Masters of Fear" might have been Scarecrow's first "real" origin tale, but it's so... unoriginal. It's the same problem I have with Brubaker's The Man Who Laughs - all the historic elements of the character are there, but the story doesn't seem to have a soul, and just winds up looking lazy.

And honest to God, Moench cannot write schoolyard bully dialogue to save his life.

And as for your question, Box... what is this "eighties" you speak of? Is it the time of rock that my older cousins talk about every now and then?

I GIVE YOU CONCENTRATED EIGHTIES:

[box_in_the_box]

[box_in_the_box]

And I think you meant to direct at least half of this reply to abqreviews, who is in no way me.

[box_in_the_box]

... So, you know, you probably want to reply to them directly, so that you all can continue that dialogue. :)