What is... Frank Miller's Batman: An Analysis of the Human Mind, Vigilantism, and Comics

the time has come you know it in your soul for i am your soul you cannot escape me father [Music] i'm afraid i may have to die tonight i should be exhausted i haven't slept in days but i can't get tired i have tried to be patient i've tried to wait but i have to know not on a night like this not with my pulse pounding my ears and my dear gotham calling to me like a sultry siren how father how do i do it what do i use to make them afraid you are puny you are small you are nothing a hollow shell a rusty trap that cannot hold me yes father i have everything but patience it's a beautiful night i'd rather die then wait another hour you cannot stop me but you still try still you run i've waited 18 years it's a perfect night since all since left my life you try to drown me out but your voice is weak without warning it comes crashing through the window i've seen it before somewhere it's a hunter's night frightened me as a boy frightened me every inch of me is alive yes father i shall become [Music] a bad [Music] in 1986 seven months before watchmen would be released frank miller changed batman comics forever there are at least a dozen people in history who have completely or irrevocably changed the american comic book landscape when speaking about batman specifically i believe that the two who changed him the most were frederick wertham and frank miller i don't think that comics would be where they are today if the comic code authority had not been set up after the 50s senate subcommittee hearings wortham effectively neutered comics for nearly two decades causing the fever dream stories of the silver age and the more child-friendly aspects superhero books only came back into popularity after the industry itself and all the other genres had already begun to die off but if that never happens then the whole comic book world as we know it could be entirely unrecognizable i believe that the biggest influence the comic code authority had in the long run was batman without the code batman might not be as recognizable as he is today think back to the 50s and 60s i've covered one of these comics on my channel in which he fights a telepathic gorilla in others he's a zebra man in another he runs into little green men without this already built in camp factor i doubt the popularity would lead to an adam west led campy batman show and subsequent animated appearances and if there's no adam west show to for lack of better words pollute the public's mind as to who batman is then there's nothing for frank miller to go against and he may have never created the dark knight returns because he would never have had to bring batman to his original darker roots leading to little to no inspiration for burtons and pop culture at larges dark batman we've got to keep in mind that the main image people have of superheroes is the is adam west playing batman on the old tv show that's what had to be overcome but the idea itself is is valuable and it's also um held a lot of fun to write and draw you know you go back to when when batman was was a vigilante who carried a gun on his hip back in the 30s again you you start seeing what a strong chord they can strike much of the stuff that that clint eastwood charles brunson and others are doing now is kind of a right-wing version of those old comic books and uh dark knight was really an attempt to take it back a lot in terms of in terms of his base the basic meat of the material at the same time bring it forward in terms of the world it lives in the kind of fiction that you could that you can do now the interesting thing about frank miller's batman is that it's all one universe the miller verse earth 31 i think it is which means that all of these books take place in the same universe but i find that this can sort of ruin some people's experiences with these books which is why i associate frank miller's batman with at least two different timelines the first is the miller heavy timeline which is batman year one all-star batman and robin the boy wonder batman last crusade spawn batman the dark knight returns the dark knight strikes again dark knight 3 master race and more recently dark knight golden child and superman year 1 is in there somewhere and then number 2 the miller light timeline which is batman year one and dark knight returns as you can see the first timeline is filled with other insanity it's to the brim bruce goes from a relatively normal man in batman year one to a utter lunatic and psychopath in all-star batman and robin then we don't see him for a couple decades and he's back to being a relatively normal man after his retirement in dark knight returns before he falls back into insanity in dark knight strikes again and the subsequent sequels which is why today i'm going to look at four different periods of bruce wayne's life why does batman change so drastically what happened to frank miller's vision for batman after the immense success of the dark knight returns in batman year one it is my personal belief that frank miller decided that the dark and gritty nature of batman was just taken way too far and so he crafted it into a satirical commentary on the type of person who would become batman you know the guy who dresses vaguely like a bat and fights people in the middle of the night he took everything comic fans grew to love about the dark and edgy realness of batman and began pushing it to its utter extremes it's not like miller writing satire is unheard of he did it in dark knight returns with the therapist and the tv hosts and reagan and he wrote robocop 2 oh jesus we're heading back to the station that's all there is too [Music] go [ __ ] a refrigerator [Music] oh better put five cents in the meter no policeman is going to give the batmobile a ticket no matter robin this money goes toward building better roads we all must do our part good citizenship you know [ __ ] a refrigerator and subsequent robocop comics and hey check this out look at this satirical comic that he made in alan moore's arg check that out on my channel as well so with that in mind let's revisit frank miller's batman and see what kind of message it holds we interrupt this self-aggrandizing comic book philosopher for important news destructo boy number one the era of alpha cardinal part one of two is now on sale in physical and digital release a fun sci-fi tale about a little robot called destructoboy suitable for all ages the first issue of a five-issue miniseries is now on sale at etsy.com forward slash shop forward slash blake t wild make sure you capitalize bt and w links in the description below the first story in the miller verse features a primary subversion of the world traipsing realistic batman of the 70s and the campy child friendly batman of the 50s and 60s miller's critique of bruce wayne's psyche is present from page one but overall it's not the focal point that it will become later in the series bruce wayne's very first monologue the first thoughts in his head when we are introduced to him are those of death he never thought that he would survive his career as batman and as such he's become undone we see him drinking alcohol at various points in the story he believes that his crash in this race would be a good death but not good enough he's nice suicidal at this point frank miller's meta commentary on batman also begins from page one take note of the news anchors dialogue following this scene a spectacular finish to the newman elimination as the ferris 600 pinwheels across the finish line a flaming coffin for bruce wayne or so everyone thought turns out the millionaire bailed out at the last second suffering only superficial burns frank miller immediately begins this story off by by saying that this won't be the batman that you're all familiar with this this is a batman who is returning to his roots as a dangerous borderline psychotic stalker of the night a dangerous mystery man who hasn't been seen in nearly 40 years but that's not to say that he's completely gone the structure of batman has remained as a masked vigilante and the utter dystopia that is gotham city uh he's fighting criminals that's always been there it's never gonna go away but his public image at large has become damaged by the likes i hate to say this by the likes of adam west and the super friends show no offense batman but i can get us there faster than your batmobile that's okay superman i can get more miles to the gallon this way hence the comment on bruce wayne's last second escape and only superficial burn frank miller tells you right here plain as day that he is using this story to save batman the batman the batman he loves from comical and psychedelic obscurity but that's not the only obscurity he's saving batman from it's also popularity this is also the first example of a frank miller batman book of some jabs being made at others taking a look at comic cron's 1986 list of top selling comics by month from the now defunct capital city distribution we can see that seven months out of the year the x-men were the top-selling comics now i don't think it's a coincidence that the villainous gang that has been terrorizing gotham and amassing their numbers calls themselves the mutants and is led by a cyclopian brute miller's introspection into what kind of person would become batman is most prominently featured in issue one it comes from when bruce and gordon are toasting to batman on the 10th anniversary of the last time he was cited gordon says that he's grateful batman survived retiring to which bruce hesitantly says that he didn't only bruce wayne did his pause in the sentence is like someone speaking of a former abusive relationship bruce's mind has left behind the indomitable desire to bring utter justice into the world through force at least he's thought it has but now he's just a drained man or as he puts it i'm a zombie a flying dutchman a dead man 10 years dead miller and by extension bruce treat batman as almost another personality the living embodiment of all the turmoil and hatred and fear and desire for revenge that has embedded itself inside of bruce since he was a child and over the course of this first issue the batman begins resurrecting itself bruce's hatred of his normal life has finally reached a climax he's at the tipping point he's about to lose his sobriety token for vigilantism the dark knight returns is about relapsing into addiction his nightmares and darkening inner thoughts slowly overcome him as the book continues hell he doesn't even realize that he shaved off his own mustache like a werewolf the batman is coming out at night and a full moon featuring a certain symbol is fast approaching the night skies of gotham the escape of batman from whatever dungeon bruce locked it away in occurs one evening at wayne manor as he drinks a glass of wine and watches television the mask of zorro comes on and bruce's entire demeanor shifts between panels as does his inner monologue just a movie that's all it is no harm in watching a movie you loved it so much you've jumped and danced like a fool you remember you remember that night like dr jekyll and mr hyde the following sequence plays out in a suspense building heart tightening panic attack fueled nature in which we see just how little bruce has truly moved on and matured from himself as a child when his parents were killed he flips the channels over and over again grimacing and turning away like a child would if they were scared of a monster movie an afraid child who can't stop seeing his mother's pearl necklace fall to the disgusting slop of a dark alley as the blinding and deafening gunshot rings through his memory until he's turned this should be agony i should be a mass of aching muscle broken spent unable to move and were i an older man i surely would but i'm a man of 30 of 20 again the rain on my chest as a baptism i'm born again the batman has finally made his reappearance police are on alert criminals are afraid and his bold choice of coloring will soon become outdated as over the course of these four issues the batman the true batman will become darker not just in tone and demeanor but in costume as well so much so does he return to his original self that batman wields a gun multiple times in this story the dark knight acts as an almost condensed history of batman up until that point a form of modern day scrying and divination with frank miller acting as the oracle in the first issue he is emboldened by the traditional elements of crime gang wars thugs street crimes etc his colors are bright his ferocity is thuggish this is the golden age batman in issue 2 his suit grows darker the blues are barely present in a now fully gray suit the giant yellow emblem encompassing the batman is slowly removed he resembles the batman by artists such as dick sprang his adventure focuses mostly on the dynamic of being alongside a fun-loving teenager dressed in a skimpy outfit that calls to question the mental faculties and sexuality of both characters this is the silver age batman issue 2 is also chock-full of bat-themed gadgetry and colorful villains issue 3 embodies the grittiness of neil adams and daniel neal's batman so much so that the joker makes his return as the primary antagonist this is reminiscent of batman number 251 notable for the return of the dark murderous joker in place of the prankster he had been since the silver age coincidentally both stories involve joker escaping from the care of a psychiatric hospital returning to a psychotic life of murderous mayhem a circuitously joker-esque scheme that is eventually undone by batman and a final confrontation that leaves batman standing over an unlaughing joker this is the bronze age batman issue 4 however is where frank miller becomes prophetic batman's costume is now encompassed in total darkness the story has become brutally violent following the death of the joker a swot is immolated in the first page explosions and violence rock not just gotham but the whole world when a nuclear missile detonates killing superman batman and superman like so many comic characters who have come and gone face each other off in a fight but this time it's not a misunderstanding or some imaginary tale instead it's a brutal grotesque and almost disturbing knock-down dragon fight batman's new followers have become demented gun-wielding vigilantes who believe that simply being dark like batman is what makes them good issue 4 is comic books of the 90s the sons of batman can easily be re-labeled as the sons of miller the image founders hell one of them is actually named rob superman's death is foreshadowed as is his return via aliens physiological healing batman has finally reached a level of animosity here 2 4 unseen in the character's history the oncoming darkness of comics that began in the early 90s and continued to reign near supreme until the mid-2000s is shown literally when an emp completely blacks out gotham and the entire eastern seaboard a darkness has overcome comics and it won't go away by the simple blow of a super breath or activation of a bat light with the dark knight returns miller stationed his place upon the batman mythos but even though he succeeded in what he set out to do which is to bring the batman back this had some unforeseen consequences that i believe miller would come to greatly regret within the next decade but for now batman is simply a man with delusions of vigilante grandeur and the ability to make them a reality batman year one released in 1987 is the crux of frank miller's batman series ignore the fact that it came out a year after the batman dark knight returns i am speaking chronologically when compared to other books in the miller verse year one is far more subdued in its handling of both bruce and batman it makes sense as this is the early stages of both bruce's and frank's batman careers batman year one depicts an obsessive emotionally traumatized man becoming this vigilante dressed vaguely as a bat his parents deaths haunt him day and night his obsession with bringing justice is all he can think about his first monologue is bruce flying in a plane and lamenting the fact that he chose this route because this way he won't get to be up close and personal with the quote-unquote enemy batman's belief in a one-man war is an overarching theme in miller's batman books and it very well exhibits the paranoia of batman's character taking this all at face valley without outside and retconned information all we know about bruce wayne is that he's returned to gotham after having spent several years training abroad whatever that means we don't know he's just a rich man who left the country and has now returned but his instability is clear from the second he gets out of the car at wayne manor upon looking at his childhood home his immediate thought is that it's built as a fortress followed then by memories of his mother and father that's his mental hierarchy of how he sees the world he's overconfident in himself he has to be after losing every ounce of innocence when he was a child he has to be delusionally overconfident to put himself in that danger each night the trauma inflicted on him makes him just vengeful enough to fight a pimp in a slummy street that leads to him nearly bleeding out not to mention his lack of regard for the two police officers who arrest him we'll see this again in future editions of the millerverse but bruce had no way of knowing if these cops were going to survive a head-on collision with a semi-truck once he's clambered his way out of the ruined squad car and half-consciously drives himself home in his corvette or whatever the only thing he can possibly think about at that time is how he has to make people fear him fear him like he feared the man who killed his parents pet yourself into the shoes of a seven or eight year old child whose parents were gunned down in front of them in a dark and scary alley by a man with hollow eyes and a voice like glass being crushed those same defining characteristics could be given to another frightening man who prowls the night imagine just the turmoil bruce faced the mental destruction of watching the life fade from your parents eyes until they're no longer your parents no longer the waynes no longer humans two loud shrieking bullets in the night rendered these people you loved with all your heart into inanimate objects that are growing increasingly colder in expensive clothes 18 years of never moving past it 18 years of desiring for a vengeance 18 years until he finally conceptualized some way of taking back what he lost and making sure that no one else would ever lose it either but really that's just an excuse that he's doing it to help others he's inflicting this fear into criminals because the faceless man who killed his parents could be any one of them that's the beauty of batman not knowing who has killed his parents he can inflict the pain done to him onto each and every thug and drug dealer and mob boss in gotham and he does the bat that crashes into the study brings into question bruce's very sanity he's bleeding out after being stabbed which he's very lucky that holly did not stab him in his femoral artery um he's also been shot in the shoulder and wayne manor is at least a 20 to 30 minute drive from the inner streets of gotham he's delusional we see this he's he's speaking to a bust of his father directly like he's having a conversation with it his body is pumping blood out of his wounds as his brain is just trying to make sense of what is happening to it we clearly see here that bruce's memories are flashing before him but if this page is clearly a memory coming back to him who's to say that the bat isn't either it crashes through the massive study window in a cacophony of broken glass the panel that introduces the bat is rendered in the same black and white as that of thomas and martha wayne's deaths but bruce remarks that he has seen it before look at the coloring of this panel the explosion of black and white from the bat destroys the yellow light coming in through the window these shattered bits of glass reflect the yellow light somewhat as a way to symbolize this bat breaking through reality the bat takes the form of a bullet shooting through bruce himself it's not really there it's just a hallucination bruce is experiencing as he's dying in his father's study the reader is never granted a scene after this showing like alfred sweeping up the glass or trying to get the bat caught in the net or something we never see anything that happens after this how do we know that any of this even existed and this is the snowball that leads to the avalanche because it's the straw that breaks the camel's back other proverbs about small things leading to unpredictably large outcome now there's a multitude of folklore and myths about what it means for a bat to enter your home gary f mccracken writes in an article on batcon.org that folklore from nova scotia relates that if the bat alights in the house a man in the family will die this can foreshadow both alfred's death and bruce's death and resurrection in the dark knight returns it also provides a visual cue to signal that bruce wayne is effectively dead at this point any last ounce of becoming a normal member of society has left him completely this point on he's batman mccracken continues bats in buildings have also been seen as omens of lesser evils than death various myths relate that bats in houses may bring bad luck or pretend that someone in the house will go insane become blind be missing the next day the first speaks for itself the second can be construed as batman's sense of justice being as painfully blind as lady justice's it's herself and the third is he's missing the next day obviously because he's the god damn batman did frank miller know all this weird obscure folklore regarding bats absolutely not but as batman year ones continues he does depict batman's journey into gross theatrics militaristic methods of intimidation and vigilantism and a chronicling of a deteriorating mind that batman has upon bruce over the course of these books the audience is presented on a surface level to a batman who is dark and gritty and a vigilante hero that always comes out on top no matter what problem he faces take note that every section of the story that follows batman is from his point of view there is no exterior narrator like most comics would have it's a complete first person monologue we have to just take all this at face value that bruce wayne portrays to us as it actually happened but as you'll see in subsequent stories bruce's psyche becomes more and more deranged by the lack of sleep the injuries he sustains god knows what kind of drug cocktails he has to take to deal with the damage and pain looking past the surface level of batman ave doing bad ass cool stuff going on adventures just being awesome and a hero the reader finds that our reliable do-gooder narrator may not be as reliable as we once thought this is his first year so you know he still isn't too sure of himself we see him nearly fail to stop three robbers from stealing out of an apartment on a fire escape he allows himself to take failure he doesn't hide behind a masquerade of darkness and aloofness and dealing justice that the regular systems cannot instead he accepts that he is learning himself and that he will one day be better the batman personality grows stronger and by the third issue bruce has accepted it he welcomes the batman into his identity when he's shot twice look at how the batman ruthlessly takes down the murderous swat teams and accomplishes his goal of inflicting fear not just on degenerates but those who may be falling to degeneracy itself the bat swarm is not just a method of escape it's a message a signal of his arrival in gotham like goddamn dracula frank miller's noir sensibilities seeing quite well in batman year one uh bruce is he gets his ass kicked he he can't really fight that well or he does but he he still fails he doesn't accomplish everything he sets out to do then he is not a great character just like in a noir film the detective lead is the least worst character out of all the bad characters gordon cheats on his wife the villains are mob enforcers who kill people and abuse people and sell them drugs selena kyle is a dominatrix who plots to murder uh the mafia they're all bad people batman like i said earlier selfishly induces a vigilante coma over gotham and frank miller just takes it from there and runs with it batman year one was the post crisis on infinite earth's origin for batman under a new darker leaning batman direction by editor denny o'neal batman became something new something realistic and gritty something noir batman got dark and dc saw the immense success of miller's two batman stories and they wanted to keep that money pony a chugging cause that's definitely a real phrase this led to stories such as death in the family the killing joke and subsequent year of the bat and batmania from 1989 to 1990 with the release of batman batman movies batman shirts batman shorts batman toys wham bam zowie right in the wallet big buck movie merchandising our inside story for this tuesday march 21st 1989. foxy at 10 times i love batman i've always had a crush on him ever since i was a little girl right now we have about um 26 different kinds of t-shirts nice outfit the buttons have started and they're very popular now uh we're expecting in batman boxer shorts next week there's an alarm clock with a bat signal that goes like this there's pens where batman chases the joker through some some flu now a lot of these bat fans were first introduced to their square jawed champion of justice in 1966 with the batman tv series on the series is great you know the pounds and the stars [Music] [Applause] the movie won't try to be quite so camped the producers hope to explore the deeper psychological nuances that make batman tick another batman related series was created following this darker version of batman called legends of the dark knight it took the realistic dark and gritty inspiration from miller and put it into an initial five-part series called batman shaman legends of the dark knight continued with various creative teams on various stories all of which featured the now trademark grim and gritty aspect of the one and only masked man hunter following the release of batman in june 1989 batman and legends of the dark knight were the top ordered comics from diamond for seven months and they were the top ordered from capital city for nine months this top seller spot continued until may of 1990 and we all know what happened to comics in the 90s live from the world's financial capital new york city this is moneyline with lou dobbs good evening i'm bill hardly sitting in for lou dobbs marvel entertainment fell three and a quarter today closing at 49 and a half the reason some people say is because of what you're about to see this is out there youngblood he's the man behind the nation's best-selling comic book folks creator rob lightbelt the entire series will bring it out for you todd here in the studio we're going to go ahead and offer this deal to you at the most amazing price ever the guide to comic collecting let me tell you about it because your children will absolutely enjoy this america's number one comic book thanks to you so i started this company to make the toys that you asked for superman died wednesday the ultimate sacrifice could be profitable for collectors books are a business so they want to generate as much sales as they can and anything they can bring in to generate the sales in terms of story lines or things of that nature they'll do it it is an opportunity for you to get in right now on the ground floor one of the fastest growing collectibles in america and that is of course the comic book series well it's kicked the sales up to about two and a half million uh copies we just had a line that just was about 200 people went around the corner and it's just been non-stop business for about three days spawn violator i hear the competition spying around it could be any place america's love affair with the comic book is bigger now than ever before and it's definitely not just for kids the main reason where superman is dying is that in our story conferences we came up with a story that was too powerful not to do comic book collecting is at an all-time high comic shops are springing up around the country while conventions attract more and more crowds kids and adults i think it'll be worth it if it's just a cheap gimmick to sell a lot of comics it saddens me it wasn't you know marketing didn't come to us and say we'll sell a million copies if we kill him off you know and then just bring him back the next week we're not going to do that the debt is proving to be a rebirth in comics fail the death of superman edition comes double-sized free bag with a pull-out poster and a daily planet obituary i want you to buy this and get it for a child that's going to enjoy it you have 50 protector boards you have the guide to comic collecting book that is included you get this black limited edition storage container so the children's gonna be organized right off the bat everybody stays dead and superman is the second most successfully merchandised character in the world right after mickey mouse he's not going to stay dead they're very solid investments they always go up about 10 a year or better i hear all the time that parents coming in wanting to put books away for their for the students for college all right well right now comic book is the next frontier we're offering the deal to you at the great price tag of only 29.75 i think i remember him best as a friend because that's how i knew him not as the hero but as someone who i fought with it's not only fun it's an investment they're cool and something i know they're kind of supposed to be worth some being a fan i'm sad to see it happen um i've been a big superman fan and a fan of comics since i was very little if you're collecting the books or you want to see the value of anything you happen to find in your attic go to a shop and right next to the spawn right next to spider-man asking for the wizard asking for the overstreet guy i just don't know if this is the option for slumping sails regardless of how the masses feel there's one special breed of expert who knows the true bottom line the serious investor i don't know i don't i don't know if it's like good or bad because well it doesn't really matter about the the um the comic or like the person this matters of how much money it cost it costs and how much money it's worth batman wasn't the only hero struck in the knees by the lead pipe that was the edgy extreme and dark nature of comics the only hope for batman when it became that dark and gritty was that it was a dark and gritty commentary on how dark and gritty comics had become and were going to be with the arrival of a new dark batman who is now comfortably situated upon the steps of dc's mythology frank miller decided to return to the character with a new mission in mind a mission against that which he created like goddamn frankenstein [Music] okay fine you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain it's well known the effects that 911 had on uh frank miller and what that did to him emotionally and mentally so i won't be bringing that up in my discussion of the dark knight strikes again the dark knight strikes again really brings bruce's mental deterioration into play the art style becomes experimental and resembles that of a fever dream or a hallucination ironic because this day glow wacky batman is the exact thing that frank miller wanted to distance batman from back in the 80s i personally believe that after years of seeing batman become what he brought him back to a dark and violent vigilante miller decided to push it as far as he could and make it a commentary on vigilantism and all of the extreme dark characters that were coming out of comics who were clearly just ripped from the mind of frank miller the dark knight strikes again becomes miller's most cultural satire of all of his batman series it's like robocop on steroids starring a now fully insane batman that's why it's great miller is making his comeback with this book and like batman and his giant pair of kryptonian boxing gloves he's not pulling any punches just take a look at batman's opening monologue and read it as though it was frank miller saying it it's been three years since in the eyes of those who lived above i died i've been very patient i trained my students and honed my skills i've waited i've waited and watched the world go right straight to hell my patience is at its end the time has come history repeats itself and the dark and brooding disciple of the shadow had once again returned to his start line of grime and grit before evolving back into childish nonsense and stark colors this is a world that is holy in the miller verse we see the outcome of everything that he has been building up to bit by bit this is the beginning of miller really showing bruce's effect not just on himself but on others in particular his child soldiers dubbed sidekicks slash sons of the bat these sons of the bat have become a paramilitary force of stormtroopers who live in fear of their masked leader bruce is no more different than the mutant leader once was only bruce isn't outwardly killing people until he does miller confines the issues of batman after his first two books into this characterization the batman being depicted here is not one that would be blaz black and white in his crusade nor would he be as perfect and capable of rational conversations as george clooney everyone in this book has been flanderized to the 1200th degree but why why is everyone in this book so ridiculous could it have something to do with bruce wayne facing a complete psychological breakdown again and in the midst of a heightened paranoia he literally doesn't leave his cave for three years what rare times he does sleep he does so to the unending hum of fluorescent lights the bat computer machinery and the training regiments of his growing soldiers he's fashioned himself from the status of a vigilante hero into a paramilitary cult-leading dictator the dark knight strikes again is when bruce admits to who he really is he doesn't bother hiding behind a righteous fighter for justice who is standing up against evil all by himself he is just a vengeful hateful person who wants to hurt people because he was hurt when clark is reluctantly forced to take down batman or risk the lives of the only survivors of his home planet the bottle city of candor he does so by angrily smashing into a cave fed up with years of putting up with batman's goddamn [ __ ] clark then returns to his dark knight strikes again version he calms himself he realizes that this isn't the way to go about things they don't need to fight again and he speaks rationally to bruce but bruce kicks the [ __ ] out of him he gets his followers to kick the [ __ ] out of him he gets clark's old friends to beat his ass down and then during superman's complete beat down bruce makes the sarcastic remark it's nothing personal clark sure i'm enjoying every second of this but it's nothing personal and after having his brain rampaged through by a almost brainwashed atom miller brings back what the fans want to see and like a pro wrestler returning from retirement to appease the crowds of bloodthirsty audience members he brings to life everything that comics had become at that point the batman's personality has finally reached a point of no return a complete moral and psychological event horizon like i said this isn't about helping people anymore this is about creating fear and control bruce wayne in the dark knight strikes again has become this boogeyman that he himself was afraid of for so many years the demonic monster who would haunt his mind in the place of a lowly man who killed his parents when batman carrie and his sons assault lex luthor they maim and kill first by sending his flying car through a crowd of at least 13 like secret service agents the bat swarm that we saw in year one has been replaced by these wrist mounted automatic launchers of razor sharp batarangs his inner monologue is now completely gone of any semblance of the man that we once knew as bruce wayne life doesn't get any better than this oh god i love my job what is all of this for to destroy lex corp databases and carve a massive z into the elderly and fat face of lex luthor this is immediately followed by a panel of batman and carrie leaving in which batman he he kicks up his feet and says striking terror best part of the job remember when i said that it would become sort of obvious that our narrator is unreliable this is his inner monologue how are we supposed to trust anything he's telling us how do we know for sure that lex luthor actually is behind all of this we have to just take everything batman is telling us in a bat book at face value the dark knight strikes again takes everything that batman himself has become and just spills it out to readers like a rabid dog's froth spills from its mouth that man isn't someone who would be looked up to aside from like very fringe members of society he is inherently cruel and violent and malicious whether he admits to it or not he is a man who forcibly enlists child soldiers into his regime and keeps them locked in a cave to be batman you would have to be depraved completely careless and utterly selfish the argument has been made time and time again oh bruce wayne could use his money to help gotham uh he could he could volunteer his time this or that blah blah blah but there is a reason he doesn't because that's a logical way of dealing with the problem and bruce wayne is not a logical person no one would be logical if they were batman they would be a grimacing drug-addled brute menace with a superiority complex big enough to devote an entire batcave to nowhere else in this book does frank miller depict the utterly rotted mind of batman and bruce wayne then on pages 22 23 and 69 of issue 3. i had palmer leave a little something behind when he did the hokey pokey around in your inner ear that's why you see me and hear me right now don't ask how it works you wouldn't understand you're not smart enough let's get this much straight clark from here on out we don't debate a damn thing we don't discuss a damn thing you tell me what i want to know and you do what i tell you to do from here on out you work for me this scene also acts as a pretty good commentary on what dc comics has become ever since the dark knight returns and year one came out batman is the brand batman is what sells the books batman is who everyone has to look up to he himself is the all-encompassing character of dc superman flash wonder woman they're all just pawns shallow little peons who who get a book here and there if batman permits it but batman he is free reign to do as he pleases he has book after book series after series label after label he can do whatever he wants similar to miller in this book where dc just let him do whatever he wanted and batman uses this power to spread himself through the published universe ensuring that he always stays on top even laura clark and diana's daughter is under his command she's a new character or a new book in this scenario she can be cancelled at any time replaced with something bat related but when laura argues against this insane man saying that he can't treat them like this who should go and defend batman but his old pal clark this is frank miller's subliminal message to readers that in mainstream books and to their readers even characters as great as superman aren't enough to keep people interested hell just a year prior to this book's release joe kelly wrote what's so funny about truth justice in the american way as a way to fight back against the argument that superman had become boring and was basically a useless character who should be violent like those in the authority or the characters from image this is frank miller doing the same only on a more meta textual level batman is clark's only hope his only hope of surviving is batman because batman has always been that one dark constant there's a reason that national allied publications name themselves dc comics the other instance i spoke of was batman's confrontation with his former child soldier dick grayson who at this point has undergone this radical gene therapy to make him just gives him a healing factor and he can't be like harmed very much or something he he can't die he's like deadpool or wolverine and dick has taken to calling himself the joker batman chastises ridicules and just humiliates this guy saying that he didn't even have what it took when he was a child he was just a pathetic coward who couldn't cut the mustard as i previously mentioned the dark knight strikes again gives us the best example of bruce's effects on his wards primarily the broken and destitute dick grayson it shows the insanity of a man who'd kidnap a child and a man who would be raised by batman both of these people are terrible because of one another dick makes a vague threat that he'll kill batman after he has his way with batman's little piece of jailbait and batman can't even say robin correctly they're both completely out of their minds their fight concludes with the lord of the rings esque takedown in which batman tackles the now undying dick grayson into a volcano that is located beneath the bat cave and as he falls batman thinks the same thing he did as when we were first introduced to him this utter lunatic in his final moments can only think this would be a grand death couldn't ask for more but i'm in no mood for dying again frank miller shows bruce's hypocrisy in his actions as batman he's willing to die for his cause to become a martyr for his jalopy brand of justice but he'll never do that he'll never accept that because just like the fictional character present in our world this 2d asset located in a pocket dimension of miller's sardonic creation will always be around he just can't do it because he's riding so high and mighty on his own confidence and superiority that he refuses to let himself die miller's meta commentary makes a pretty great appearance this is possibly one of my favorite parts of the book in regards to everything i'm talking about here it's after hawkman kills lex luthor when barry allen the progenitor of superhero comics in the silver age let's not forget that superhero comics were dead until dc brought back the flash and recreated him with barry allen he is the beginning of all of it he finds his old pal batman who has become a dehumanized wretched [ __ ] in a disgusting suit cheering on the brutality of hawkman and barry can only say jesus bruce get used to it barry these youngsters play it rough it's a whole new ball game the adventures of batman with robin boy wonder the edge and grit and darkness of comics particularly those of batman continued into the 2000s with greg rucka's detective comics bru baker's batman and i think would culminate in jeff lobe and jim lee's hush because after that grant morrison took over and was like i'm experimenting with the form here every single issue of batman from 1939 has been canon in some shape or form but that's another story for another time because by this time the comic fandom was they were still loving the edgy grittiness of comics it just wasn't from dc because the edgy gritty comic book of the 90s was going extinct and like a virus it had to find a way to mutate and continue its life onto a whole new host ultimate marvel comics the comic fandom would be infected with this new brand of edgy grit by people like mark miller who were running at the top of marvel comics but in 2005 frank miller would return to his batman universe for a 10-issue unfinished prequel called all-star batman and robin the boy wonder you know robin quite often people choke on a piece of food they're eating right what can you do for them well if i were choking you'd stand behind me wrap your arms around my waist piss and press in and upward [Music] you might have to press and push up more than once try it again it's important to get it right someone's life may depend on it frank miller took what he saw comics had become and infused it 110 into this book the overused tropes he had helped found in the medium had been used against him whether it be through commentary of his own work or simply knockoffs with the release of sin city back in the early 90s frank miller's newly grimy dark angularly pragmatic style had become an influence for multiple generations everyone from joey shmoe in kerry walker illinois to jim lee in malibu california were making their own frank miller rip-offs but miller at this point was an older man now with a chip on his shoulder he wanted to re-examine batman in a way he hadn't done before again history would repeat itself originally miller released the dark knight returns followed by batman year one this time he'd released dark knight strikes again followed by another prequel one in which miller would explore the line of what makes batman a hero versus what makes batman a psychopathic vigilante this goes all the way back to 1986 when alan moore created rorschach to answer the question what would someone like batman be like in real life frank miller in all-star batman and robin answers that question with another question what if you took the realistic lunatic who would be batman and made him batman that man had long since reclaimed the spirit of the night the lonesome dark avenger the once fun-loving caped crusader that took part in hallucinogenic adventures had long since become a a pseudo outlaw that threatened the corrupt grip of the gotham police the mob and the costumed supervillains while he contended with himself on the best ways to take down a sex trafficking operation before he headed back to the cave to train with his newest protege and these were the expectations for the character the character miller had reinvented then seemingly destroyed in a world of pop color psychoanalysis we're brought back with the news that this would not be another sequel to that terrible dark knight strives again book that everybody hated this would instead serve as a prequel to dark knight returns and an almost immediate sequel to batman year one one in which we would see the uh introduction of dick grayson we would see what maybe happened to them to drive a stake into their relationship to cause him to become the joker everybody had hopes this book has been covered to death it's in a similar vein of discussing rob liefeld comics and [ __ ] on his insane anatomy and how he can't draw feet so like i did with year one i'll only be commenting and analyzing sections containing batman so a few years after year one bruce wayne's psyche has already been dealt severe damage the egotism in his quest to fight crime single-handedly as a vigilante is shown quite clearly where his inner monologue in year one was coherent introspective with with doubts of whether or not this is what he should be doing with his life or not in all star batman and robin it's just a jumbled mess of stream of thought and nonsense akin to the journaling of rorschach in the introduction involving the death of the flying graysons bruce upon seeing a man and woman shot down before their only son the survivor of the whole ordeal thinks he doesn't understand he can't possibly understand i couldn't when it happened to me and i don't know why this was done to him i can't know why not yet but i know exactly this much the boy has entered my world and he'll never leave it there's no way out of it there's no way out there's no way out no way out not for any of us snake poison turns out the stuff works i'm hoping it's got some nasty side effects as a matter of fact i checked it does this killer will be pulling bugs that aren't there out of his ears for a month this is what every single piece of dialogue spoken or thought by our hero batman is in this book all-star batman and robin the boy wonder is the least subtle in its process of searching of what the experience of someone who actually dresses kind of like a bat would be like but compare that with some of the writing from the earlier and mid 90s hell even the writing happening at the time in marvel there were marvel and dc and image comics all just as juvenile and absurdly mean and nonsensical in their narration and dialogue as this and because of these books aping this grittiness and meanness that came about after miller let's take a look at a letter from miller's letter column in an issue of sin city in which miller briefly discusses his thoughts on people echoing his style back into their own books too many of my colleagues are hiring other people to imitate their own style in order to turn out enough product to feel a marvel style perception of the market us artists have gotten our shot to prove what we can do and while i'm on this particular subject let me toss out a few remarks in the direction of the messers jimly tim sale mike netzer no i'm not flattered not anymore if there's anything that you should have gotten from sin city it's the inspiration that comes from seeing another artist find his own voice his own vision applying the lessons and observations that come with developing an approach that makes his own kind of art style and his own kind of comic book that was his reaction and feelings to people uh aping his art style from sin city just imagine how frank miller felt when he saw all of comic books aping his dark and dangerous noir storytelling as a whole i believe that after years of seeing people take his influence be it writing or art and just run with it wholly instead of you know taking their own directions and creating their own thing and then seeing the audience lose their [ __ ] minds and just loving it that miller decided to just push that knit and grit as far as he could and make it a commentary on comics and vigilantism and heroes akin to batman this book becomes a lot more enjoyable when you remember that jim lee was the artist on it batman forcibly shoves his beliefs onto those unfortunate enough to enter gotham city limits he treats a young 12 year old boy the same way he would to an adult man who smoked a joint jaywalked and mugged a single mother at gunpoint miller is taking years of a growingly fascistic batman and years of batman breakdowns and deconstructions and flipping it on its head the batman in this book is objectively a maniac he is simultaneously authoritarian and anti-establishment this batman is america no that's not really what i'm doing with it i just thought that would be funny i'm [ __ ] around uh batman's first words to a young dick grayson in this book are you've just been drafted into a war since the dark knight in year one miller's batman has always used these militaristic terms to describe his one-man war on crime but now he's reached the point of assuming that dick grayson due to simply their similar circumstances will be just like him how self-centered is that that is such an utterly self-fulfilling prophecy right there batman is similar to the joker in killing joke he truly believes that one bad day will cause a complete and total breakdown of who you are as a person oh uh and he literally drugs dick grayson with gas and becomes upset when dick doesn't fall asleep frederick wertham would have a field day with this book batman is so morally corrupted at this point and it's so early in his career too that he becomes irritated that his scare tactics aren't working on a young teenage boy batman wants to scare a young traumatized boy do i really need to say more about this ironically devilish take on batman it should be clear to anyone that frank miller isn't doing this to be cool or badass he's doing it to make fun of batman to ridicule the readers who clearly wanted books like this to continue happening frank miller knows that batman is insane at this point he doesn't want people to side with him or else he wouldn't write him like this he wants to show the darkness of the character in full because that's all batman's become no one else attempted to make a mark on him that wasn't in some way fashioned after frank's with this series miller exclaims this is what you want isn't it you love seeing batman brutalize guys and take action into his own hands you love seeing shitty characters who are terrible people just reign rampant in violence and extremism i know you do because i've seen the [ __ ] sales charts well here you go chew on this if you can cut the mustard and with that he signed off and sent in the script for this book even frank miller thinks that batman isn't cool or interesting just look at how every character that interacts with him reacts dick grayson immediately realizes that this psychopath is putting on a fake scary clint eastwood-esque voice when the justice league are introduced look at how they speak of batman once their partner in the fight against villainy and cosmic conquerors now he's a lone gunman a paranoid nut job who creates protocols in order to take down every single one of his so-called teammates i told you diana i told you from the first moment i heard of that maniac i knew his methods would make us all look like monsters now he's kidnapped a young boy we have to bring him in turn him over to the authorities okay so it looks bad but we've got no proof that he actually kidnapped that kid maybe he's just watching out for him sure he plays it rough he's got no respect for the law and yes maybe he's a little unhinged but that's no reason to run off half-cocked i say we find him and try to talk some sense i vote we bring him on board i think the b-man is cool he'll make us look edgier this scene which depicts three different types of audience members for dc comics is followed by batman laughing like a maniac as he runs across the rooftops of gotham laughing as he pounces atop thugs preparing to rape a woman even alfred begins to regret helping batman's psychotic breakdown he's in total denial now that bruce has kidnapped a child as he releases his pent in frustrations on a punching bag alfred notes that there was always something dark and wild in bruce's eyes even as a child and when his mother died the black-eyed demon took over the ultimate expression of miller's take on the insanity of batman comes in the infamous issue number nine in which batman and robin paint themselves and an apartment yellow to ensure that green lantern is powerless before batman completely gaslights him into submission the issue with all-star batman and robin the boy wonder aside from being a batshit nonsensical storytelling is that people at the time of the release and still to this day take it far too seriously frank miller is self-aware in his pursuit of creating the ultimate deconstruction of batman he knows what he's doing he's been doing this since the late 70s early 80s people he knows that he's completely rewriting everything people love and know about batman and making him into just an atrocity of a human being he knows that jim lee is drawing this jim lee famous for creating gen 13 and wildcats all of which featured overly sexualized women that got the readers talking one way or another another addition to miller's meta commentary in this book is the near-constant red skies and lightning any fan of dc comics crisis events will recognize red lightning and storms as the approaching sign of a crisis there was a veritable crisis in comics going on in which darkness reigned and the characters from the big two just could not escape it miller's all-star batman and robin the boy wonder began at a time when this satirical message was relevant and then for the next three years as the issues were released it got old like batman himself comics actually began moving away from the very comics miller was poking fun at they grew and the dark and gritty virus that first spread itself through the 2d world of comics for the past two decades had finally reached an end comics were vaccinated from the grit and edginess and that's what it's all about miller's obsession and familiarity with the history of comics is apparent and prevalent in every interview he ever has done he loves this medium and what it offers he knows its history and for a 20 year run he was the forefront of that history that's why i believe that frank miller's entire batman catalog should not be read with just admiration for the changes he brought forth or the seemingly corrupted sensibilities for the character i believe that frank miller's batman should be read under the light of a sometimes satirical sometimes meta textual commentary on batman pre and post miller the subtext present in all of miller's batman books elevates these stories to a new level that can be appreciated for the ridiculousness and utter insane aspects while at the same time appreciated for an attempt on commenting on the severity of psychological damages and mental illnesses that bruce wayne faces and the comic book medium frank miller's batman is a genius satire a commendable commentary of superheroes and an evolution of someone who at one point in time was regarded as one of if not the greatest comic book creators of all time for me doing dark knight was me just thoroughly exploiting and enjoying my childhood and bringing something of my own to it because i thought what if batman was old as his legend is and also what would really be the psychology of a guy who dressed up like a bat through criminals at windows would this man really be liberal um and and wouldn't he be a somewhat strange human being and uh but as far as his influence um you know yeah there was just been a lot of sort of like dreaming gritty etc but um a friend of mine once put it perfectly seeing some of the imitated stuff just said this isn't printed so instead of just making fun of it for the crazy art and colors or the ridiculous dialogue or how frank miller lost his mind or that time a seemingly naked bruce wayne hugged a small girl why not just relax and look at frank miller's batman through a new lens a lens that accepts the absurdity of these comics [Laughter] what are you serious forget it oh uh yeah okay okay well uh no no that's that's that's cool yeah no um yeah no i guess i guess it is a terrible idea i mean i mean he did make holy terror after all uh um yeah no yeah just forget all that i guess uh so anyway uh the other thing i wanted to talk to you about is uh me being on an episode of back issues uh sal sal hello hello can you hear me hello oh [ __ ] must have gotten disconnected i'll just call him back user has blocked you finally done it only took me two hours to record all that i hope you enjoyed this very different very special episode of what is it was a blast to make and i'm so glad i was able to do it everybody i want to thank you all for making this a possibility i just i never thought i would reach 5 000 subscribers let alone 33 and a half thousand subscribers nor did i ever think it would really go on for this long i don't really know what i was expecting to come out of this youtube channel i'm i'm just so glad that i'm able to create content that you all enjoy and i just i wanna i wanna thank you all for watching this video i'm gonna start crying a little bit i can feel my tear ducts swelling i just i want to thank you all cause i love seeing your comments and just this little community that we're creating i love seeing all the regulars in the comments below and i just i'm so happy that i can make stuff that people enjoy watching and just provide some entertainment for them and thank you for supporting me over these past what almost five years that i've been doing this is it's just incredible thank you so much and thank you so much to sal from comic pop for making a special appearance comic pop was a huge inspiration in both myself getting into comics and making a youtube channel i found them when i was uh graduating high school and i thought oh man i want to make youtube videos about comic books after i got into comics from their channel they comic pop is just such a [ __ ] fantastic channel it's such a great stepping stone to getting people into comic books himself sal and tiffany and ben and ethan they've just created such a great place for people old and new to the comic book medium to begin i doubt if you're watching this you're unaware of who they are but if you're not subscribed or something just go and subscribe to their channel watch their videos back issues uh the podcast the camera elseworlds exchange everything they do is just fantastic and i really want to thank him for taking the time to record that and uh you know helping me out with that even though i'm such a i don't know i i really wasn't expecting anything to come of this uh especially when i was contacting youtubers but thank you so much for this thank you so much everybody uh who watched this hopefully every you watched it all the way through or you skipped around whatever thank you for watching it as always let me know what you thought of this let me know what you thought of this video in the comments below do you think i'm utterly crazy in my weird philosophical beings and thoughts and feelings on frank miller's book probably because it's ridiculous but i don't know i i i love those batman books of his they're just utterly insane and comic books themselves are just so fantastic um stick around for next episode which is going to be another big video i imagine as always destructo boy the era of alpha cardinal part one of two is now on sale on etsy you can go check the link in the description below or if you can go check out a video that i made specifically about this book a little sales video it is about 25 27 pages long completely finished book uh it is a part one in a two-parter series or a two-parter story of a five-issue series and it follows destructoboy who is that little robot guy right there he is the hero of zephyrus space station and when the evil alpha cardinal makes his presence known and takes over the criminal underworld there's only one little bot that can stop him so check that out if you're interested i will sign it and everything else i'll make a little sketch on there and add that in there i don't know i'll do something special uh check that out 9.99 plus shipping and handling on my etsy shop uh destructo boy era of alpha cardinal part one of two on sale now and i have all the other issues completed already so i'm going to be selling this and then maybe in a month or two i'll start with the second issue follow me on instagram at not blakewild and at smokey's videos for updates on my youtube channel and my art destructo boy yeah i i hope you enjoyed this video because it took a lot of time to make and a lot of time to record and i i guess i'll see you next time for a whole new era of what is bye um [Music]

Channel: Smokey's Videos

Views: 138,194

Keywords: smokey's videos, smokeys videos, smokeysvideos, frank miller, batman, the Batman, the dark knight returns, batman year one, the dark knight strikes again, all star Batman and robin, silver age comics, dc comics, marvel comics, comic review, comic analysis, holy terror, Lynn varley, david mazzucchelli, jim lee, image comics, rob liefeld, todd McFarlane, Adam West, batman 66, comicpop, joker, ultimate Marvel, 90s comic, comic speculation, superman, justice league, two face

Id: tfHKy-JLDz4

Length: 82min 48sec (4968 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2022