Holy Terror, Frank Miller!

In 2006, Frank Miller announced a forthcoming publication called Holy Terror, Batman! in which the Dark Knight would go to Afghanistan and get in a fistfight with Osama bin Laden. He claimed it would hark back to an earlier era in comics history when, for example, Superman would marshal his many powers to annoy Hitler:

All well and good, except DC didn't think the Batman brand would be enhanced by being aggressively associated with the worst elements of the Bush administration, and so the world was spared Holy Terror, Batman! Until a few weeks ago, that is, when Miller published Holy Terror, a book about a Batman-type vigilante who teams with a Catwoman-type thief and a Commissioner Gordon-type chief to defeat a series of terrorist attacks against a Gotham-type Empire City. (Miller's roman à clef is so obvious I believe DC might be able to sue for copyright infringement.) Let me begin by warning you:

This book is more terrible than I'm leading you to believe it is. It's Batman as written by Pam Geller after she and Glenn Reynolds split a box of wine. Only worse. Where the art isn't muddled it's obscured by a dense bank of unnecessary Eisner spritz. Human proportions—especially female proportions—remind anyone who may've forgotten of his directions to Jim Lee on All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder:

If you thought his sexism was shameless, you should see his xenophobia:

At least he acknowledges that Muslims belong to the human race. Generally speaking, that is, because it's not like he can tell them apart:

So these terrorists, all of whom are named Mohammed, are attacking Empire City because it stands as a shining beacon of democracy and freedom. Which means, as we all learned during the early years of the War on Terror, that we're "down with" torture:

As well we should be, after all, because we're fighting a new enemy now and have no choice but to engage in "postmodern diplomacy":

It seems strange for Miller to play jihad for a joke when he obviously believes it necessitates his adolescent diplomatic fantasy, but that's just another symptom of his declining mind. Consider this: the man who wrote and pencilled The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 decides to write and pencil another book about another Batman-type figure going to war against an invading army of blinkered idiots, only in 2006, he lacks the imagination required to have this Batman-type figure fend them off with anything short of an arsenal. What would Batman say to that?

Moreover, what would Batman do with a horde of poor kids whose misdirected aggression has left them vulnerable to persuasion by a radical ideology? He would provide an alternative:

Before you ask: that is Batman, on a horse, leading until-very-recently mindless terror-proxies in an attempt to save Gotham. Frank Miller in 1986 believed that the enemy wasn't only human, but capable of being redeemed; his 2006 counterpart, however, is having none of it.

After all, 9/11 Q.E.D.

Comments

[tomemos]

Perhaps Miller, Dave Sim, and David Mamet can form a support group for people whose talents were ruined by conservative ideology.

[Karl Steel]

Perhaps Miller, Dave Sim, and David Mamet can form a support group for people whose talents were ruined by conservative ideology.
Win.

[Adam Kaiserman]

Although I would love to see WWBD bracelets for popular consumption, I think you're conflating Miller with the character of Batman a little too much. Post-WWII depictions of the character are very clear that the character does not use guns.

I also think that Miller's work has always betrayed a conservative ideology. The Dark Knight Returns might have made fun of Reagan as a symbol of authority and a dunce, but its libertarian politics were within the Goldwater branch of the Republican party.

[tomemos]

Adam: Sure, but DKR also had the Sons of Batman as an example of the excesses of vigilante id, along with some actually well-voiced rule-of-law critiques of Batman (though the book clearly ends up on Batman's side). Is there a similar check on the bloodthirst of Holy Terror? That's what I take Scott to be critiquing, not just the conservatism in general. (See the Martha Washington books for more examples of conservatism--in that case Objectivism--ruining a Frank Miller product, and 300--which is basically fascistic--as another example of a conservative comic that still works.)

[james suhr]

I think Miller's views have less to do with a national look on how to steer the country and handle international policy, and more to do with Frank Miller being just cranky, old, and lacking in any emotional and intellectual maturity past that of the age of 16. While I have enjoyed some of his work in the past, I always leave the challenge and thought of this: If Frank Miller is so great of a writer, why hasn't he ever written (or drawn) a female character as anything more than a 14 year old male's fantasy? His women are either conflicting with the male, just to arouse him as a tease, or they are there basically pumping up how great the male character is... only to have both, archetypes of women to end up having sex with the main male character--or to be drawn in sexually suggestive pose.

[Christian von Schack]

James: In case you haven't seen it already, this will hopefully delight you as it did me:

http://www.shortpacked.com/2006/comic/book-2-pulls-the-drama-tag/06-the-drama-tag/whores/

[Adam Kaiserman]

I'm not going to defend Miller's depiction of women in any of his recent work. It's all been pretty bad. Looking at Sin City it occurred to me that all his female characters are either hookers, strippers, or dead. Tomenos has mentioned Martha Washington as a project ruined by Objectivism, but that aside, I think it also presents Washington as a strong female presence. It's been a while since I've read it, but I don't remember her being overtly sexualized. I'm open to being proven wrong, however.

[Jason]

I was just reading this discussion of Miller's recent anti-OWS screed (it's just what you'd imagine) on Metafilter, and this comment made me think of your blog. What do you think? Have we all been giving Miller's work on Batman (and, presumably, Daredevil and others) too charitable a reading?

http://www.metafilter.com/109436/Something-Tells-Me-To-Stop-With-the-AlQaeda-I-Ignore-It#4027592

[timur]

The Guardian Books blog has a link both to Miller's stuff and to some of the other responses to it. You can find it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/nov/15/frank-miller-politics-visible-comics