Dark Knight Strikes Again Green Lantern

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Over again, as well known as Night Knight 2, was a three outcome Batman mini-serial written and illustrated by Frank Miller with Lynn Varley in 2001–2002, the sequel to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

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

Of grade, Batman won't be having that, so he and his allies—Catgirl, the Green Pointer, and his Batboys—set out to modify the world by judicious application of violence. Just beginning, they need allies—and they demand to deal with Superman, who is yet in the thrall of the government...

Overall, it goes further off the deep end than The Dark Knight Returns, almost to the bespeak of being a Deconstruction of the Darker and Edgier nature of the first story though, naturally, not everyone thinks that makes it any good. The color palette is much more than varied than The Night Knight Returns' muted colorization, taking it to an almost garish degree, that takes a trivial getting used to (many reviewers termed it ugly). It was eventually followed starting in 2022 by Dark Knight Iii: The Primary Race.

---

This miniseries contains examples of:

• Adaptational Ugliness: Nobody is specially practiced-looking in this comic, just Lex Luthor takes the cake: while rather presentable-looking in the main comics continuity, Luthor hither is drawn as a morbidly obese hunchback with a pointy, crooked nose.
• Ambiguously Gay: Dick Grayson of the Depraved Homosexual diversity
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: At least one commentator regarded News in the Nude with incredulity, apparently being unaware of Naked News . At the very least, though, the latter's a paid subscription service.
  • The sexual activity work manufacture becoming more than or the mainstream, particularly among the sexy Cosplay of superheroes, seemed ridiculous for the time both in and out of universe.
• Art Shift: When searching the ruins of City, Superman discovers a locket containing Golden Age pictures of him & Lois Lane.
  • The fine art in general is likewise very different from the first book. The coloring is the near obvious modify (from muted and dirty to garishly brilliant) but everybody has really exaggerated figures either in terms of proportions or angles. Lex in particular looks like a shaved gorilla.
• Author Tract: Apparently Miller doesn't like trends the media are taking.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Wonder Woman.
• Beware the Superman: At the end of the series Superman rules the world with his daughter, Lara.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lex Luthor and Brainiac, with New Joker as The Dragon.
• Brother–Sister Team: Hawkman and Hawkwoman's children.
• Barrel Brand: One issue features a woman with the House of El sigil stamped on her ass.
• Butt-Monkey: Superman. Information technology actually gets to the point where you think Miller has something confronting the grapheme.
• The Cameo:
  • Alfred Eastward. Neuman appears every bit one of the talking heads in issue ii.
  • In a blink-and-yous'll-miss it moment, Kara Zor-El makes an appearance ◊ leading the Kandorian rebels. In that scene Brainiac gloats over holding Superman's cousin hostage.
• Cat Girl: Carrie Kelly, the former Robin.
• Character Development: Of a sort. In All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, Batman was a gruesome individual. He treated everyone in the story similar clay, insisted that Dick consume 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 Night Knight Returns could be interpreted as Bruce Wayne being older, wiser, and struggling to hold on to his humanity and/or sanity. By The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Bruce Wayne probably reverted back to his personality in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. In short, what yous accept hither is one seriously messed-up man who is not as rational and logical equally he thinks he is.
• Coitus Ensues: Superman and Wonder Woman had several pages dedicated to them having sex for no reason other than to make Superman feel better.
• Comic-Book Fourth dimension
• Crazy-Prepared: Naturally enough, Batman. To the betoken of having glowing dark-green boxing gloves.
• Creepy Child: Saturn Girl.
• Decoy Leader: The President was a decoy for Luthor.
• Defiant to the Finish: Batman, when captured by Luthor.
• Depraved Homosexual: It'southward unsaid that Dick Grayson had the hots for Batman, only was rejected by 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, obviously Miller thinks we're supposed to side with Batman here.
• Destructo-Nookie: Superman and Wonder Woman have sexual practice so over-the-top it alters the earth'southward atmospheric condition patterns.
• Distracted past the Sexy: More or less the indicate of "News in the Nude".
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hawkman and Hawkgirl, ingloriously nuked off-panel. Helm Marvel 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 Helm Ersatz of the original Question, so this makes this version of the Question closer to the original Ditko Question and oh no, nosotros've gone crosseyed.
• Apartment "What": "It's about to blow! ◊"
• Gang of Hats: The Batboys.
• Gonk: There are some seriously ugly grapheme designs here, particularly Lex Luthor, an iconic Diabolical Mastermind, Übermensch and Man of Wealth and 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 every bit though his hands are physically weighing him downward, forcing him to walk with a hunch and thereby making him a literal knuckle-dragger, causing 1 to wonder if he is actually meant to be physically plain-featured. The Gonkishness is generally limited to the elderly males of the cast (which there are a ton of) simply even the ostensibly pretty females have weirdly angular faces.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: This is what the Wink has been up to lately.
• Centre Is an Awesome Ability: One of the libation bits of the series is that Miller really woke people upwardly to only how utterly, insanely ''powerful'' Plastic Man is. A lot of comics released after this seemed to run with Miller's description of Plas as a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass of epic proportions.
• Hypocrite: Catgirl berates 1 of the 'Batboys' in issue one nearly killing some soldiers and even beats him up for information technology. Yet in issue three she clams to accept 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 dice from that, but she didn't know that at the time.
  • The beating itself at least is justified by the fact that the Batboy himself reverted to his more psychopathic attitude and threatened to intermission her basic first. Now the whole killing simply not killing on the other manus...
• Intimate Healing: Superman is completely healed of his injuries later having sex activity with Wonder Adult female. According to Miller himself, this was done to highlight the fact that women are "nurturers and life givers".
• Invincible Hero: Batman. By the time anyone comes up with anything he's already twelve steps ahead of them. Superman heading for the Bat-Cave? No problem! Just apply the gigantic Kryptonite gloves over in that location! Got captured? No biggie! Information technology was part of Batman's plan all along. It gets so bad that Batman can literally storm into Luthor'south base of operations, beat out him up, cut his face up, and just go out with absolutely zilch consequences. In the page image, he spells out why—he wanted to inspire terror in Luthor, to let him know that his empire was crumbling. And he wanted to give Hawkboy the honor of killing Luthor.
• Impale It with Fire: Dick Grayson has become a Most-Invulnerable Monster Clown super-assassin that tin can survive all attacks, simply is finally destroyed one time and for all when he falls into the Lava Pit that formed in the devastation of the batcave.
• Kryptonite Ring: More than a ring—attempt Kryptonite napalm, Kryptonite power fists...
• Losing Your Head: Dick Grayson. He reattaches it.
• Monster Clown: For once, at that place was a reason to highlight this. It's not the Joker, it'south 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's work. She was as well proper name dropped in Batman: The Night Knight Returns, so it'due south also a Phone call-Back.
  • The President has the final proper noun Rickard, every bit in Prez.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Luthor's nanites removed all the Martian Manhunter'south powers except his ability to see the future. A power he's never actually had before.
  • Superman can now blot energy from the Earth to heal himself and furnish his powers. It was always the Power of the Sun earlier.
• No Proper noun Given: Nosotros never acquire the names of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's children. Merely 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 also 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 character, good or bad. Batman is at his sorriest-looking state ever by the cease, going well past "browbeaten upwardly" and into "disfigured."
• Sometime Superhero: Pretty much the entire cast, with a few exceptions, such every bit Carrie Kelly, or the new Supergirl (girl of Superman and Wonder Adult female, the fan-ship of many an Elseworlds writer).
• Our Wormholes Are Different: A throwaway line during Hal Jordan's journeying back to World about the wormhole being where he still left information technology implies he can create or move them.
• Physical God: Wonder Woman calls Superman this.
• Popular-Cultural Osmosis Failure: It'southward unsaid that Carrie doesn't actually know what the Zorro Mark is, just that it means something to Batman.
• Ability Dynamics Kink: Implied if non outright stated to be the case of Superman and Wonder Woman's relationship. Her response to Superman feeling down about Batman beating him (once again) is to punch him in the confront and say, "Where is the man who threw me to the footing and fabricated me his prize?".
• President Evil: Actually a hologram controlled by Lex Luthor.
• Puny Humans: What Lara Kent believes.
• Retcon: Of sorts. Batman: The Nighttime Knight Returns treats the absence of superheroes (and Superman having "sold out") equally a consequence of a Super Registration Deed, with the unnamed president strongly implied to be Ronald Reagan, who's super-aged and losing his sanity. Here, it'south 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 proper name is stated to be "Rickard", a reference to the comic Prez).
• Retraux: Superman looks more like his Golden Age version than the one used in DKR.
• Sacrificial Lion: The Guardian, the Creeper, and the Martian Manhunter all die in horrible means to prove how dangerous 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. Approximate Frank Miller had never heard of Naked News.
• Sibling Squad: The original Hawk and Pigeon are inspired to start fighting injustice once more by Batman's speech communication, but they're a bit out of shape (fifty-fifty if that probably won't affect their powers much), and Don argues that they spent well-nigh of their time every bit 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 the states any clue which he agrees with, and which, if either, is meant to be correct.
  • Imitation Dichotomy. Both characters are shown to be ridiculously over the pinnacle in their antics. The Question refuses to use annihilation more technologically advanced than a typewriter (though that could exist Properly Paranoid given the setting), and Green Pointer is a hypocritical billionaire Marxist hippie who presumably spent a fortune to get a cybernetic arm when the world is in the throes of a nuclear wintertime.
• Swallowed Whole: Carrie accidentally swallows Ray Palmer early on, leading to a Vomit Indiscretion Shot.
• Have That!: Give-and-take of God says the volume as Frank Miller's reaction to the Dark Age Dork Age he helped inspire.
  • Which leads to some Refrigerator Logic when combined with All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. For instance, this comic lauds Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) specifically equally a noble hero exiled by the petty people of Globe, but who is shown to be absolutely worthy of godlike power. In contrast, the Goddamn Batman once lured Hal into an ambush and beat him savagely with little provocation. The beating occurs canonically before he entrusts Bats with a means to summon him, but was written afterward.
• Technical Pacifist: Batman at this indicate is just i out of keeping his word. He clearly does not care about killing enemies anymore, letting subordinates apply lethal force liberally, and actually shows a disturbing corporeality of glee over Hawkboy brutally murdering Luthor. Eventually, he opts to break his code altogether when he happily kills Dick Grayson himself.
• Together in Death: Hawkman and Hawkwoman were killed in a armed services strike ordered past Lex Luthor, embracing each other in their final moments.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Batman.
• Villain Disuse: 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.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Greenish 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 non.
• Married woman Husbandry: Dick Grayson implies that this is what Batman is doing with Carrie, though Word of Miller denies this vehemently. Also, Dick Grayson was batshit insane at that bespeak, and had only spent a good corporeality of fourth dimension mutilating Carrie out of psychotic jealousy. He is an unreliable source, to say the least.
• Willfully Weak: This is obviously Batman's (and Miller'south) main problem with Superman, as he stops beingness treated as a Barrel-Monkey in one case he starts taking the attitude to friction match his power as a Physical God.
• Winged Humanoid: Hawkman and Hawkwoman gave their children wings while living in Costa Rica.
• You Killed My Father: Luthor killed Hawkman and Hawkwoman. Their children, Hawkboy and his sis, want revenge.
• Zeerust Canon: Published 15 years later, just only takes place two years later.
• Zorro Mark: Batman carves one onto Lex Luthor's face.

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

---

bruntheaut.blogspot.com

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

Share this post