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All Star Batman and Robin


Iann Robinson comes to Crave and he has some words for Frank Miller.



All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder

by Iann Robinson
I learned many things in the year 2007, some good, some bad.

In the realm of comic books I learned one very valuable lesson:

Frank Miller doesn’t know what he’s doing… um…anymore.
When the All Star Batman And Robin was first announced I was only semi-interested. Frank Miller has lost a lot of face with me due to the annoyingly smug and self-appreciating Dark Knight Returns 2 and the just plain boring and bad Sin City movie. Miller seems to be moving away from the freaky guy with long hair who had picked up the baton from Neal Adams and Denny O’Neil and helped to re-establish the Dark within the mythos of The Dark Knight. Now he wears a big fedora and hangs with the hip Hollywood crowd and his work has suffered for it. That being said I didn’t think he would try and ruin Batman. Seriously, that never occurred to me. I figured art by Jim Lee, story by Frank Miller, how bad could it be. Well…um, I was not prepared for what happened, I was unable to deal with what I saw on those pages when I first gazed upon this horrible tragedy that claimed to be a comic book.

All Star Batman And Robin is the re-envisioned story of Batman’s beginnings and how he came to have Robin as a partner. First up after Dick Grayson’s parents are killed Bruce Wayne doesn’t adopt or offer to take in Grayson, no no, Batman just kidnaps him. Literally throws him in the Batmobile and tells him to shut up. Does this sound ANYTHING like fucking Batman at all!? No, no it doesn’t. When Grayson asks Batman why he’s being kidnapped Batman slaps him and tells him again to shut up. Batman says over and over, in like six panels: “The boy is strong.” Batman sets fire to two cops who are trying to stop him from kidnapping a young boy. All of this is in the first ten pages. What was Frank Miller thinking, where in that once genius brain of his did he think this interpretation of Batman was a good idea. All Star Batman And Robin is a total and absolute mess, it has little to do with what Batman really is about. It bashes and destroys the nearly 70 year history of Batman, or just completely ignores it. This is tantamount to Frank Miller digging up the remains of Batman creator Bob Kane and pissing into the remains of his mouth. Then, after doing that Frank proudly goes “Look, I made it better.” Then he buries the poor violated Bob Kane back into the earth. THAT is what this series amounts to. This isn’t a Batman story, this is some badly written mess that brings to mind the fantasy of an overly horny picked on high school kid who thinks Eli Roth movies are cool. In one fell swoop Miller has erased all the good he did for Batman with The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One. All of that is just gone.

Instead what we are served up is eight issues of a comic series that just spirals deeper and deeper into the abyss of unreadable. I understand Miller’s need to re-invent but this is just badly done and in poor taste. Black Canary is a bartender in a titty bar until she snaps and beats everybody in the bar up? Wonder Woman stomps around pushing old men out of her way and saying “Out of the way sperm bank”? When the JLA meet to discuss how to deal with Batman being a kidnappers Wonder Woman says “We put his goddamn head on a stick and show everybody that the JLA polices their own.”? Wonder Woman insults and berates Superman until they start arguing and right when it seems like they are about to fight, they kiss. Meanwhile Batman runs from rooftop to rooftop comparing himself to a rain storm, having sex with his cowl on because it “Makes it better”. He’s consistently abusive to the newly ORPHANED Dick Grayson. One after the other Frank Miller just lines up these characters and shits in their mouth.


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All Star Batman and Robin: COMMENTS

by PlanBFromOuterSpace

Tuesday December 18, @19:50pm
I'm certainly no big fan of Liefeld's, but my main issue with him is the complete lack of improvement over the last 15-20 years. If you look at other early Image-style artists, many of which were relatively new when Liefeld and his Extreme crew were big, you'll see that the ones that are still around today either learned how to be more well-rounded or just changed their style completely. Jae Lee and Mike Deodato, Jr. are the best examples I can think of. Meanwhile, guys like Stephen Platt, who was the flavor of 1994-95, have seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth.

Moving back to the subject of All-Star Batman though, I like Jim Lee's art on just about anything, but it doesn't necessarily make it a must-buy. For me, that hinges more on the quality of the story. "Hush" was great, but I had to let "All-Star" go, and apparently I haven't missed much...

by PlanBFromOuterSpace

Tuesday December 18, @14:19pm
Oh, and on the teenage hero topic, I'm extremely pleased with what Marvel's done with Bucky, like how they've gone back and retroactively developed his character through flashback tales in their recent books. I'm not all that into the Wolverine: Origins title, but I DO like the most recent storyline that's delved more into Bucky's past. That, combined with the bits and pieces revealed about about him in the Cap title a couple years back before his return, have somehow turned him into the bad-ass that he never seemed to be before. After all, he was trained to BE Captain America, not just a Robin clone, so it all ends up making sense.

by LordComicGuy

Tuesday December 18, @14:17pm
ahHA! I knew you'd come back with the no-power aspect Dante! So I pull a quote from your earlier post in responce....."DC has built a comic empire on revitalizing the same 15 or so characters, and because of that we've got generations of the same hero, and that all starts from having a crop of teenaged sidekicks who would have been rendered useless had DC comics hit the scene just 15 years ago. DC didn't know how to let go of a bad idea, and now we see what we get when those ideas are allowed to flourish. There should have never been a Super Boy in the first place and so on and so on."
You damn your own "My issue isn't with teenaged super heroes, my problem is with teenaged heroes that aren't so super." with that mention of Super Boy!

And as for PlanB's observation about Mr. Liefield, let's just say he can't draw period. I'm, as I am writing this, flipping through my Cable and the New Mutants graphic novel and am laughing outloud over most of the artwork. Granted, he's wayyy better than me but, then again, so is my 7 year old daughter!

LONG LIVE ROBIN!!!!!!!!!!!
(and the old guys have to die off someday...lol. Just keep plugging away, Mr. Drake, and you shall be Batman one day!)

by PlanBFromOuterSpace

Tuesday December 18, @14:02pm
With the "All-Star" line (can you really call a handful of issues released over almost 3 years a "line" though?), I think we're seeing DC's failed attempt at just doing something different strictly for the sake of doing something different. Wasn't it sort of created as a response to Marvel's Ultimate line, a chance to strip away decades of baggage to tell new stories with somewhat tweaked versions of classic characters?

Instead, we're treated to a Batman that's gone off the rails, that will get a pass by some because of who's working on the title (or NOT working, judging by it's perpetual lateness), in a book that would have been better-suited as an ELseworlds tale. I'm not saying that that would make it GOOD, it just may have seemed BETTER and may have been a bit more acceptable.

I can't remember which issue it was, as I gave up on All Star Batman about 2 years (approximately 3 issues) ago, but there was a week a few months ago when All-Star Batman and the final issue of Ultimates 2 came out on the same day. In the comic store I used to work at, the day became known as "Hell Freezes Over" day. If WildCATS #2 would have been released too, I'm afraid that the universe would have ceased to exist.

To go off-topic a little bit, the "I’m kind of hoping they release a version with no words in the balloons" remark in the article reminded me of something funny that should be coming out shortly if it hasn't come out already. Apparently, there's a Youngblood hardcover collection coming out that features a new script or something. Sure, the story was shit, but it's not like the script was the only problem with THAT book. I still can't believe that it's been 15 years and Rob Liefeld still can't draw wrists, feet, or backgrounds. Anyway, I think there was an issue in that story where one of the characters had a gun to his head the entire issue, yet the gun was different in every panel it appeared in. At that rate, a new issue of Youngblood was coming out about as frequently as the Ultimates comes out now, so you think someone would've caught that...

by Dante Maddox

Tuesday December 18, @09:59am
Oh yes, I'm ready for round two Lord Comic Guy. Firstly The X-Men and Spider-Man and the lot of teenaged superheroes from Marvel all have one thing in common: They have super powers. Spidey has powers, the X-Men have powers, the runaways have powers etc. etc. If the X-Men had no powers running around it would be stupid. You speak of Legacy but fail to mention that only in the case of Barry Allen has as younger hero (with powers mind you) that took his mantle. Hal Jordan: Still Alive, Batman: Still alive, Superman: Still Alive, Wonder Woman: Still Alive, Green Arrow: Still Alive, The JSA: Still Alive. I could continue and you know it. So much for legacy considering all of those jerks refuse to kick the bucket. Because we can't just kill Hal Jordan there are five Lanterns on earth, a bunch of Flashes and Arrows and so on and so on. DC isn't about legacy, its about stuffing a bunch of guys into similar suits so they can appeal to a bunch of ages and what is sacrificed is the over all integrity of the books. My issue isn't with teenaged super heroes, my problem is with teenaged heroes that aren't so super.
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