Let’s be honest, Frank Miller is one of the comic book greats. “Batman: Year One”, the “Sin City” series and “The Dark Knight Returns” all prove his mastery of art and storytelling that so personifies his work. So everything that he does is great – right?
Erm….
Well frankly (no pun intended), no. There is the odd clunker in his work, and I’m afraid that I now have to review one of them, and just to add insult to injury it follows probably his best. I refer of course to the sequel to his seminal Batman classic “The Dark Knight Returns”, called “The Dark Knight Strikes Again”, or “DK2”.
I read this straight after I read DK1, an obvious move that had the unfortunate effect of highlighting all of the problems this book displays. Miller’s story is OK, but it lacks depth, and sometimes feels like it began life as a convoluted script device to bring as many DC characters into it as possible. In DK1 there is a sense of the future decaying, and we feel empathy with Bruce Wayne as he sees his city brought low by crime and events, but in DK2 there is no sense of this, or anything else for that matter. In truth the story seems a bit chaotic, probably because of the sheer number of characters that have to be managed by the unwieldy events that ensue. It’s entertaining, but it doesn’t grab you in the same way DK1 does.
That would be forgivable, if the artwork made up for it, but it doesn’t. I usually love Miller’s graphic art style, but here it seems lost and out of place. I think primarily the problem is Lyn Varley’s colouring – as I’ve said before Miller has a very “graphic” kind of style which suits flat colours, but Varley’s 3d gradient style just doesn’t mesh well with it, creating a pseudo psychedelic mush which grates on the visual cortex. I really believe that DC should give this book another colour job – it would improve it no end.
The end result then is an OK story, encased in a multi-coloured garish soup. Sadly, ultimately unsatisfying.
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