The Dark Knight Strikes Again Green Lantern

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, too known as Dark Knight 2, was a three issue Batman mini-series written and illustrated past Frank Miller with Lynn Varley in 2001–2002, the sequel to 1986's Batman: The Night Knight Returns.

Set three years after the events of The Dark Knight Returns, the globe has managed to go downhill since then—the President is a fake, and the police force state of a world is run by Lex Luthor and Brainiac, who has many a hero enslaved.

Of course, Batman won't be having that, then he and his allies—Catgirl, the Green Arrow, and his Batboys—set out to change the world past judicious application of violence. But first, they need allies—and they need to deal with Superman, who is still in the thrall of the government...

Overall, information technology goes further off the deep end than The Dark Knight Returns, nearly to the indicate of beingness a Deconstruction of the Darker and Edgier nature of the first story though, naturally, not everyone thinks that makes it any proficient. The color palette is much more varied than The Dark Knight Returns' muted colorization, taking it to an almost garish degree, that takes a little getting used to (many reviewers termed information technology ugly). It was eventually followed starting in 2015 by Nighttime Knight III: The Master Race.

---

This miniseries contains examples of:

• Adaptational Ugliness: Nobody is peculiarly good-looking in this comic, but Lex Luthor takes the block: while rather presentable-looking in the primary comics continuity, Luthor here is fatigued every bit a morbidly obese hunchback with a pointy, crooked nose.
• Ambiguously Gay: Dick Grayson of the Depraved Homosexual variety
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: At least one commentator regarded News in the Nude with incredulity, plain being unaware of Naked News . At the very least, though, the latter'southward a paid subscription service.
  • The sex activity work industry becoming more than or the mainstream, especially amidst the sexy Cosplay of superheroes, seemed ridiculous for the time both in and out of universe.
• Art Shift: When searching the ruins of Metropolis, Superman discovers a locket containing Golden Age pictures of him & Lois Lane.
  • The art in general is likewise very different from the first book. The coloring is the most obvious change (from muted and dirty to garishly brilliant) just everybody has really exaggerated figures either in terms of proportions or angles. Lex in particular looks like a shaved gorilla.
• Author Tract: Plainly Miller doesn't similar trends the media are taking.
• All-time Her to Bed Her: Wonder Woman.
• Beware the Superman: At the cease of the series Superman rules the world with his daughter, Lara.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lex Luthor and Brainiac, with New Joker as The Dragon.
• Blood brother–Sister Team: Hawkman and Hawkwoman'due south children.
• Butt Brand: One issue features a adult female with the House of El sigil stamped on her ass.
• Butt-Monkey: Superman. It really gets to the bespeak where you lot think Miller has something against the character.
• The Cameo:
  • Alfred Eastward. Neuman appears as one of the talking heads in issue 2.
  • In a blink-and-you'll-miss information technology moment, Kara Zor-El makes an advent ◊ leading the Kandorian rebels. In that scene Brainiac gloats over property Superman's cousin hostage.
• Cat Girl: Carrie Kelly, the former Robin.
• Grapheme Development: Of a sort. In All-Star Batman & Robin, the Male child Wonder, Batman was a gruesome individual. He treated everyone in the story like dirt, insisted that Dick eat a rat for dinner, threatened Alfred for feeding him a proper meal, slapped Dick for crying over the loss of his parents, and gleefully killed (dirty, some willing to murder kids) cops chasing him and was overall a deranged, loathsome maniac who ironically gained some humanity from Grayson.
  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns could be interpreted as Bruce Wayne beingness older, wiser, and struggling to hold on to his humanity and/or sanity. By The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Bruce Wayne probably reverted dorsum to his personality in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. In brusque, what you accept hither is one seriously messed-upwardly man who is non as rational and logical equally he thinks he is.
• Coitus Ensues: Superman and Wonder Woman had several pages dedicated to them having sexual practice for no reason other than to make Superman feel amend.
• Comic-Book Fourth dimension
• Crazy-Prepared: Naturally enough, Batman. To the point of having glowing light-green boxing gloves.
• Creepy Child: Saturn Girl.
• Decoy Leader: The President was a decoy for Luthor.
• Defiant to the End: Batman, when captured by Luthor.
• Depraved Homosexual: It's unsaid that Dick Grayson had the hots for Batman, but was rejected past him, which led to Dick becoming a villain. At the end of the comic Batman taunts him with all sorts of quasi-homophobic euphemisms relating to his supposed "sissiness". And since Dick is the villain, apparently Miller thinks we're supposed to side with Batman hither.
• Destructo-Nookie: Superman and Wonder Woman accept sex and so over-the-top it alters the globe'southward weather condition patterns.
• Distracted by the Sexy: More or less the point of "News in the Nude".
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hawkman and Hawkgirl, ingloriously nuked off-panel. Captain Curiosity had a longer sequence where a giant building was dropped on him.
• Expy: A weird inversion, or something. This story's The Question is basically Rorschach from Watchmen, and Rorschach himself was a Captain Ersatz of the original Question, and so this makes this version of the Question closer to the original Ditko Question and oh no, we've gone crosseyed.
• Apartment "What": "It's about to blow! ◊"
• Gang of Hats: The Batboys.
• Gonk: There are some seriously ugly graphic symbol designs here, especially Lex Luthor, an iconic Diabolical Mastermind, Übermensch and Man of Wealth and Sense of taste who for some reason is depicted as a cigar-chomping, hulking neanderthal with huge hands and a hunchback, to the point that it looks as though his hands are physically weighing him downwards, forcing him to walk with a hunch and thereby making him a literal knuckle-dragger, causing one to wonder if he is actually meant to exist physically plain-featured. The Gonkishness is generally limited to the elderly males of the cast (which at that place are a ton of) but even the ostensibly pretty females take weirdly angular faces.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: This is what the Flash has been up to lately.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: One of the cooler bits of the series is that Miller really woke people up to but how utterly, insanely ''powerful'' Plastic Human is. A lot of comics released afterward this seemed to run with Miller's description of Plas as a Crouching Moron, Subconscious Badass of ballsy proportions.
• Hypocrite: Catgirl berates ane of the 'Batboys' in issue one nearly killing some soldiers and even beats him up for it. Yet in issue three she clams to have killed the Joker imposter "without an ounce of remorse" and "without a shred of regret" with an arrow through the head. True he couldn't die from that, but she didn't know that at the time.
  • The chirapsia itself at to the lowest degree is justified past the fact that the Batboy himself reverted to his more psychopathic attitude and threatened to break her bones get-go. Now the whole killing only not killing on the other hand...
• Intimate Healing: Superman is completely healed of his injuries after having sex with Wonder Woman. Co-ordinate to Miller himself, this was washed to highlight the fact that women are "nurturers and life givers".
• Invincible Hero: Batman. Past the time anyone comes up with anything he'due south already twelve steps alee of them. Superman heading for the Bat-Cave? No problem! Merely use the gigantic Kryptonite gloves over in that location! Got captured? No biggie! It was part of Batman'south plan all along. It gets and so bad that Batman can literally storm into Luthor's base of operations, beat him upwards, cut his confront, and merely exit with admittedly zippo consequences. In the page image, he spells out why—he wanted to inspire terror in Luthor, to let him know that his empire was aging. And he wanted to requite Hawkboy the honour of killing Luthor.
• Kill It with Fire: Dick Grayson has become a Nigh-Invulnerable Monster Clown super-assassinator that can survive all attacks, but is finally destroyed once and for all when he falls into the Lava Pit that formed in the destruction of the batcave.
• Kryptonite Ring: More than a ring—attempt Kryptonite napalm, Kryptonite ability fists...
• Losing Your Head: Dick Grayson. He reattaches information technology.
• Monster Clown: For once, in that location was a reason to highlight this. It'southward not the Joker, it's Dick Grayson.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Hot Gates, the porn star who dresses as Big Barda, is a shout out to the recurring theme of Thermopylae that appears in Frank Miller'southward work. She was also name dropped in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, so it's too a Call-Dorsum.
  • The President has the last name Rickard, as in Prez.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Luthor's nanites removed all the Martian Manhunter'southward powers except his ability to see the future. A power he'due south never actually had before.
  • Superman can now absorb free energy from the Earth to heal himself and replenish his powers. It was ever the Power of the Sun before.
• No Name Given: We never acquire the names of Hawkman and Hawkwoman'south children. Only that their son is called Hawkboy.
• No One Could Survive That!: Saturn Girl has a vision of Catgirl being murdered by the New Joker. Catgirl isn't too worried, every bit she shot the New Joker with several explosive arrows, and then went to work on him with a hatchet.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Happens to pretty much every graphic symbol, skillful or bad. Batman is at his sorriest-looking land ever by the end, going well past "beaten up" and into "disfigured."
• Former Superhero: Pretty much the entire cast, with a few exceptions, such every bit Carrie Kelly, or the new Supergirl (daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman, the fan-ship of many an Elseworlds author).
• Our Wormholes Are Different: A throwaway line during Hal Jordan'south journey back to Earth nigh the wormhole being where he however left information technology implies he tin can create or motility them.
• Physical God: Wonder Adult female calls Superman this.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: It'due south implied that Carrie doesn't really know what the Zorro Marking is, just that it ways something to Batman.
• Power Dynamics Kink: Implied if not outright stated to be the case of Superman and Wonder Woman's relationship. Her response to Superman feeling downwardly about Batman chirapsia him (again) is to punch him in the face and say, "Where is the human who threw me to the footing and made me his prize?".
• President Evil: Really a hologram controlled by Lex Luthor.
• Puny Humans: What Lara Kent believes.
• Retcon: Of sorts. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns treats the absenteeism of superheroes (and Superman having "sold out") as a consequence of a Super Registration Act, with the unnamed president strongly implied to be Ronald Reagan, who'due south super-aged and losing his sanity. Here, it's revealed that the whole scenario is due to Lex Luthor and Braniac holding the world (and Kandor) hostage via orbiting cannons and a hologram of the president (whose name is stated to be "Rickard", a reference to the comic Prez).
• Retraux: Superman looks more like his Gilt Age version than the one used in DKR.
• Sacrificial Lion: The Guardian, the Creeper, and the Martian Manhunter all dice in horrible ways to prove how unsafe this "New Joker" (Dick Grayson) actually is.
• Sexposition: Part of the arc's Bad Futureness is "News in the Nude," the only news worth watching. Guess Frank Miller had never heard of Naked News.
• Sibling Team: The original Hawk and Dove are inspired to outset fighting injustice again by Batman's spoken communication, only they're a flake out of shape (even if that probably won't affect their powers much), and Don argues that they spent most of their time as vigilantes arguing with each other.
• Signature Style
• Strawman Political: The Question is a radical Libertarian, Greenish Arrow is a radical Marxist. Miller didn't give us whatsoever clue which he agrees with, and which, if either, is meant to exist right.
  • Simulated Dichotomy. Both characters are shown to be ridiculously over the top in their antics. The Question refuses to use anything more technologically advanced than a typewriter (though that could exist Properly Paranoid given the setting), and Green Arrow is a hypocritical billionaire Marxist hippie who presumably spent a fortune to go a cybernetic arm when the world is in the throes of a nuclear winter.
• Swallowed Whole: Carrie accidentally swallows Ray Palmer early on, leading to a Vomit Indiscretion Shot.
• Accept That!: Word of God says the book as Frank Miller's reaction to the Dark Age Dork Age he helped inspire.
  • Which leads to some Fridge Logic when combined with All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. For instance, this comic lauds Greenish Lantern (Hal Jordan) specifically equally a noble hero exiled by the petty people of Earth, but who is shown to be absolutely worthy of godlike power. In dissimilarity, the Goddamn Batman once lured Hal into an ambush and vanquish him savagely with little provocation. The beating occurs canonically before he entrusts Bats with a ways to summon him, just was written afterward.
• Technical Pacifist: Batman at this signal is only one out of keeping his give-and-take. He clearly does not care nearly killing enemies anymore, letting subordinates use lethal force liberally, and actually shows a disturbing amount of glee over Hawkboy brutally murdering Luthor. Eventually, he opts to suspension his code altogether when he happily kills Dick Grayson himself.
• Together in Expiry: Hawkman and Hawkwoman were killed in a armed forces strike ordered past Lex Luthor, embracing each other in their final moments.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Batman.
• Villain Decay: Brainiac and Lex Luthor aren't nearly every bit smart in TDKSA as they are in other stories. In fact, some of the decisions they make are downright moronic.
• Nosotros ARE Struggling Together: Light-green Arrow and The Question, in that one wants Marxist Socialism, and the other Randian Objectivism.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Mary Marvel? It was never revealed if she was rescued or not.
• Wife Husbandry: Dick Grayson implies that this is what Batman is doing with Carrie, though Give-and-take of Miller denies this vehemently. Too, Dick Grayson was batshit insane at that point, and had but spent a good amount of time mutilating Carrie out of psychotic jealousy. He is an unreliable source, to say the least.
• Willfully Weak: This is manifestly Batman's (and Miller'south) principal trouble with Superman, as he stops being treated as a Butt-Monkey once he starts taking the mental attitude to match his ability as a Concrete God.
• Winged Humanoid: Hawkman and Hawkwoman gave their children wings while living in Costa rica.
• Yous Killed My Father: Luthor killed Hawkman and Hawkwoman. Their children, Hawkboy and his sis, want revenge.
• Zeerust Canon: Published 15 years later, but only takes identify 2 years subsequently.
• Zorro Marker: Batman carves 1 onto Lex Luthor's face.

  Catgirl: "The Boss leaves his mark. [we see Batman apply a batarang to make the three quick slices] Information technology must mean something to him... "

---

dingeraffiriplent.blogspot.com

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/TheDarkKnightStrikesAgain

Share this post