A Look Back at Frank Miller's All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder

I must admit that I avoided reading All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder when it began wayback in 2005. I loved Frank Miller’s work on Daredevil and Wolverine in the ’70s and early ’80s. He almost single-handedly revived Batman as a serious character with The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. These tow seminal works continue to influence how Batman is characterized to this day. He later added his name to the pantheon of the all-time great hard-boiled crime noir authors with Sin City.

So why was I hesitant to read Miller’s latest take on my favorite comic book hero?

Quite simply, I read The Dark Knight Strikes Again in 2001 and was horrified.

The Batman in The Dark Knight Strikes Again was not the gritty, but ultimately heroic, Batman of The Dark Knight Returns. No, this was essentially Sin City’s Marv sporting the cape and cowl. The Dark Knight Returns really read like a Sin City story dropped into the DC universe with the DC Heroes absent and replaced by overblown imitations from Miller’s crime noir series. I could have accepted this, even embraced it, if Miller had decided to used his beautiful black and white art to tell the story. However, the pictures used to tell the story were so hideous as to be almost unreadable. Even Lynn Varley’s beautiful colors could not save the book. I still cannot decide if the book was intentionally bad or the result of editorial compromises.

In 2005 DC announced Miller would be teaming with Jim Lee for a new series featuring Batman that would not be constrained by decades of DC continuity. I was still disappointed from The Dark Knight Strikes Again and decided to pass on the book. The howls of fury from Bat-fans who did buy the book began almost immediately. Frank Miller was reviled by readers and critics alike for “dragging Batman through the mud”. Bad press coupled with amazingly long delays (only 1 issue for all of 2006) should have made it easy to write the book off for good. I had almost forgotten about the comic until I read a review in Comics Buyer’s Guide of All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder #7. On the surface nothing seemed to have changed. The story was described as “ugly” and undeserving of the “beauty” of Jim Lee’s art.

Maybe I’m a masochist, but I was intrigued. Could this book really be sooooooo bad as to have no redeeming qualities? I went to my local comic shop, Ssalefish Comics, and bought the complete run (ASBR #1-10). I read them over the weekend and, to my amazement, I did NOT hate it.

My expectations may have been so low that the book could only exceed them, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Frank Miller has said in interviews that the Batman in All-Star Batman & Robin is The Dark Knight Returns Batman early in his crimefighting career. Knowing this is that Batman allowed me to put aside any preconceived opinions about the character. If DC were trying to shoehorn this story into the mainstream Batman continuity, I would have been as outraged as anyone. But, this is not OUR Batman (or OUR DC Universe). This is Frank Miller’s Batman…and that is ok. Miller’s All-Star Batman & Robin operates as a much better prequel to The Dark Knight Returns than The Dark Knight Strikes Again did as a sequel.

Miller replaced hope with cynicism in his re-imagined DC Universe.

The world Miller creates in All-Star Batman & Robin is a dark mirror of the DCU. Gotham City is not just tainted by corruption, it is the embodiment of corruption. It is Hell bursting through the ground like Dante’s Pandemonium. Miller’s Batman is very much the product of his Gotham. The darkness also touches places that are much brighter in the standard DCU. Metropolis is not the shining, hopeful place we are used to seeing. Instead, if Gotham is a pit of blackness, Metropolis is a lighter shade of gray. Superman is grim and unapproachable, a god among men just barely holding back a darker instinct. Wonder Woman is an overt misandrist who wants to hunt the Batman down and put his head on a pike. The nascent Justice League seems as likely to fight one another as injustice. Miller has created this world by replacing hope with cynicism. The protagonists (they’re not really “heroes”) are dark versions of their DCU counterparts. This dark, brooding world makes the story interesting because we are drawn to fiction that examines the dystopian possibilities of our world (well, I am anyway). The dialog is problematic at points. The overuse of “goddamn” (especially when Batman is referring to himself) is almost funny and is used to hammer home the point that this Batman is not a nice guy.

Jim Lee’s art is amazing. It is beautiful to look at but wholly incompatible with the kind of story that Miller is trying to tell. I believe this is, in large part, the cause of the negative reaction so many readers have had to All-Star Batman & Robin. The message conveyed by the art is at war with the message conveyed by the words. Lee’s art is simply too clean and upbeat for the world he is illustrating. I could not look at his work and see past the Batman we all know and love. The book would have been better served if Miller had illustrated the book himself in the black and white style he uses in Sin City or the dark tones of The Dark Knight Returns.

A good comic should make you want to read the next issue. All-Star Batman & Robin does succeed at that. I mean, if the heroes in the story are this unlikeable (but not uninteresting) then the villains must be REALLY bad. I would not recommend this book to everyone. If you enjoyed reading Orwell’s 1984 or other dystopian fiction, then you will probably enjoy All-Star Batman & Robin. If you do not like heroes with questionable ethics or moral ambiguity, you’ll probably want to pass on All-Star Batman & Robin.

However, in the words another famous Miller, “That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”

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