Can someone explain to me why this regularly ranks in "best of batman" lists? Most I agree with but this was absolute trash.
>ugly art
>text text text
>retarded mutant/gay Nazi/bat disciple villains
>using bat-hax to beat superman
>barely explained Robin/Green Arrow involvement
The only high point was the Joker fight but even that wasn't all that satisfying . So why is this considered great again ?
>>81443580
>>ugly art
Stop reading here.
>>81443580
Nice bait.
It is hard to assume you are not trolling.
It is a beautiful work of some of the most exacting sequential work that exists in Superhero Comics and beyond.
>>81443580
>text text text
>>81443580
>>81443580
Anon please.
>>81443593
>>81443601
>>81443657
>>81443686
>>81443723
Honestly not trolling. Cherry picking an image but yeah super ugly. And those talking head pages were not interestin to read. Everyone was being stupid , the psychologist , the mayor or whatever , all the analysts gave me a headache
>>81443580
I didn't like the art either. The text wasn't too bad though. It's been a while since I've read it so I might give it another shot despite the fact that I didn't like it.
>>81443789
How can you call that ugly? It's portraying ugly shit, but the art itself is great. Were you raised on Jim Lee by any chance?
>>81443789
how does that look ugly. that panel alone made me switch to the Nazi Party
>>81443789
>And those talking head pages were not interestin to read.
The joke flew right over your head.
I remember not liking the art in Long Halloween, but honestly going back and looking at The Dark Knight Returns (which I professed to having loved when I first read it as a kid), I think I owe Tim Sale an apology.
If you think TDKR's art is bad though, nothing can prepare you for The Dark Knight Strikes Again. It looks like it was drawn by someone with Parkinson's.
>>81443789
You are the ultimate pleb dude. Congrats
>>81443920
TDKSA linework is fine, its coloring is whats garbage
>>81443580
Stop. You are going to trigger a storytime.
>>81443789
Cont.
And the stuff that really needed explaining was never explained. We assume the girl just becomes robin, arrow out of no where, who the heck is that egg looking henchman and that flying baby .
>>81443920
The writing for Long Halloween was strong enough for me to look over the art. I get that for most the art is the deal breaker, but honestly for superhero comics Im pretty forgiving.
I thought this was Dark Knight Strikes Again, even then I'd dismiss it as b8 cause that was god tier, too.
>>81443887
What was the joke?
>>81443971
Does it need to be explained beyond what was given? Green Arrow refused to retire, so Superman ripped his arm off, thus giving him a grudge that needed to be resolved. Carrie Kelley could move, and she had tons of guts, so she was a natural Robin. And the egg dude was just one of Joker's old henchman who could make robots, nothing more to it.
>>81443957
Activate it!
FUCK IT
Let us READ IT
One of the best of all time.
>>81444019
>The Dark Knight Strikes Again
>god-tier
What exactly do you consider "god-tier"?
>>81443998
>>81443920
I actually enjoyed the art in Halloween. So I guess I'm just destined to be a pleb
>>81444150
This book and its sequel are definitely up there for the best comics I have ever read.
>>81444166
How would that be pleb? The art in Long Halloween was great. Stylized, but great.
>>81443789
Good lord this is pleb
>Miller is one of the best fight artists of all time and it shows in this book, he also adds a grimey feel to his art here in comparison to something like DD because it gives Gotham a truly disgusting and repulsive feeling
>hurr dur the art is bad because the people are ugly sometimes comics are supposed to look like expert portraits and photorealism is god
>the talking heads allow Miller to add so much extra story with 16 panel pages that advance the plot in a believable way, a technique he invented in comics and no one else has been able to use as well aside from Dave Gibbons it give us an excellent feeling of being immersed in Gotham at that time with its portrayal of the climate of the city at Batman's return
>bud idss boooorrring
Just fuck off
Ronin was Miller working out his influences on the page
This book was all that crystallizing into a style that is all his own and one that still looms large over Comics.
That 16 panel overgrid that is both incredible claustrophobic but also allows for incredible moments of openess
>>81444218
Oh please, I wish Miller's style actually had the influence you claimed it did but the 90s style washed that away. No one even tries to use small panels or 4x4 layouts anymore unless the writers are really pushing it
>>81444290
It is true the 4x4 is too much for most people to attempt.
However to say that because people do not emulate it that means they are not influenced it is foolish.
Man, remember when Miller was good?
>>81444343
I didn't read DK3 because of all the other people on it but I loved his line on Holy Terror even if the story was hate filled garbage.
Superheroes as a form without an endpoint draw the most power from their Origins.
That is why we can never escape them.
>>81444343
It's a shame, really. The man could make some incredible stuff, back in the good old days before 9/11.
I've heard Dark Knight III is pretty good (not Born Again/Year One good, but good), but he's got like 8 other people working on that with him.
I haven't read this since seeing BvS but you can just see the individual panels he took for it.
>>81444199
Being good at action doesn't mean Miller isn't a fundamentally flawed artist who was only good when Klaus Janson was assisting him.
It's kind of weird seeing how much white they would leave between the panels back then. I suspect that it wasn't until printers became more sophisticated that they were able to have just thin black borders between panels, although I wonder how much of it, if anything was a stylistic choice. I didn't really notice how much white they would leave on the panels back then until I saw it on a computer screen.
>>81444363
>>81444393
Wait, there's DK3?
>>81444398
Alan Moore was right, Hollywood was a mistake.
The power of that 4x4
>>81444406
Wrong.
>>81444413
He and Varley had to get Ronin printed specially for all the Black in it to get it to come out right
>>81444424
Yeah, it's on its 4th or 5th issue I think.
There will never be a better "Superhero arrives on a city scene"
Than these next 6 pages.
>>81444440
>Like the wrath of God it's headed for Gotham
Dammit, that is my all time favorite line in comics.
>>81444450
Oh, so it's that recent. No wonder I've haven't heard of it.
Strikes Again was the natural follow up to this.
It actually reminds me of Nocenti and Romita following Miler on DD
He covered the grounded dirty city streets approach so completely in this, where do you go after that?
>>81444334
But it's not foolish, current layout influences are Jim Lee/Todd McFarlane/Bobby Liefeld or Neal Adams and Kubert School guys (not that Adams was Kubert school), angular and open rather than grids. Miller's fight style is more of an influence but this book has a unique fight style for him with the small panels and no motion lines, and there are very few artists who can draw good fights anyways.
Declan Shalvey and Michel Fiffe spring to mind as Miller-esque but his influence artistically is just not as big anymore. It's also because his name is dragged through the mud a bit now and he's not absolutely considered a master anymore.
This is still the best depiction of media in all of comics.
>>81444507
>where do you go after that?
I would have taken "nowhere" over Strikes Again.
>>81444507
Oh man, I love Nocenti/Romita run of DD.
>>81444536
That is flawed, you can't take away when someone was a Master because you don't like his newer work
What ever Cameron and Speilberg do for the next 10 years will never remove Terminator and Jaws
>>81444406
But he's also an incredible layout artist and background artist
Your complaint is literally "faces and figures are the most important part of comics", an absolutely false statement which means graphic art may not be for you.
This page is one of those that looms large.
Horizontal, Vertical that 4x4 really can do anything.
One of the things I was shown about this page and now can't unsee.
How many panels are on this page?
>>81444567
Oh I think Miller is a top 5 graphic artist and a complete master, I'm just saying modern artists don't consider him to be one and don't draw from him as much in turn
>>81444633
>One of the things I was shown about this page and now can't unsee.
What was it? Does it have something to do with the 5th panel?
>>81444663
I don't agree
No one draws a cityscape like this
>>81444581
I never made that complaint, I'm not the same guy.
>>81444716
So then what's your issue with Miller?
>>81444252
I love what frank does with Twoface's panels here, divided in half until his face is revealed next page.
Who do I gotta kill to get artists to start playing around with panels again?
>>81444681
No it is the way the Gunshots blow up panels 6 and 7 to create a bunch of smaller panels because they are drawn using the border.
>>81444585
I really, really love this page
Oh the Batman in the movie was too violent, they said.
"Twice as Big as you can Imagine"
Is a pretty good definition of this comic.
>>81444728
We need a return to writer/artists, or at least writers who are heavily influenced by writer artists so they know to write scripts that use the panels to fuck with the narrative
See Legionnaire this is the shit I'm talking about when I say Miller's influence has waned.
One of the best little sequences in the whole boom on this page
Those top 4 panels complete show the path he takes and a straight line right across the line of panels. Just good shit.
>>81444862
I can still find it.
Both in Writer/Artists and in Artists.
>>81444885
I'd say it remains strongest in splash pages actually
>>81443885
You're a kinda poop head
These two pages are the perfect distillation of Jim Gordon
That is all you need is 5 words.
>>81443580
>>81443789
It's a milestone story. Practically historical. At that point, Batman's biggest exposure was the Adam West show. Batman being portrayed in such a dark manner was a far cry from that, and still resonates with readers to this day.
>>81444539
>You don't suppose..
>redhead's slight smirk
Hey Robocop we see you taking stuff, we see you giving Miller work on the sequels too.
>>81445025
>I don't know who Dennis O'Neil and Neil Adams are
For fucks' sake Miller intentionally uses Adams' costume for the first half of the book
>>81445060
Yeah but this has a level of nihilism that those books did not go to.
>>81445025
Year One was before this. Also there was darker Batman stories in the 70s.
>>81445044
Terminator v Robocop is AMAZING
>>81444166
The Long Halloween has great art. It's everyone else who is a pleb.
>>81445082
This isn't true. About Year One I mean
>>81445095
Yup
>>81444742
Save it! It's all yours! :)
>Mithra: There are also many pages that have a ‘grid’ that Miller is famous for in Dark Knight. What do you think the two of you learned from each other about storytelling in comics when you worked together?
>Sienkiewicz: I love that grid. It’s incredibly effective because it becomes invisible, allowing the reader to really get into the story itself, which is the whole point. Frank told me that one of the things he got from me was to allow full pages to get a point across in a very specific way. For example, the page in Dark Knight where Batman holds the dead general’s body that is shrouded in the American flag is a direct result of my influence. Frank’s influence was all over Stray Toasters, and in nearly every other job I’ve pencilled or written. If I’m writing something, I try to imagine the most direct way of scripting it with regard to words and pictures. I try not to overwrite, and the times that I have, are when I didn’t pull back and ask myself how Frank might have approached it - in essence - less is more.
>>81445082
Year One wasn't dark though
>>81445117
Really? I was quite sure Year One was before Dark Knight.
>>81445134
From this: http://www.manwithoutfear.com/daredevil-interviews/Sienkiewicz
reminder
>>81445152
DKR is 86
Year One is 87
>>81444536
Which artists rank in your "very few" who draw good fights? Just wondering.
>>81444585
I still get chills from this page no matter how many times I read it
>>81445080
Oh of course, but I hate the meme of "Miller invented Dark Batman" because O'Neil/Adams Batman is so damn good and completely influential on TDKR, Miller and O'Neil were bros, it was O'Neil who fired the DD writer so Miller could take full control and I'm sure O'Neil's editorial influence on that book shaped Miller's writing.
>>81444430
Mazzucchelli made this panel better.
>>81445165
It is crazy that he so defined the Alpha and Omega of Batman in such a short amount of time.
>>81445149
It has darker tone reminisced of the 40s Batman stories compared the Pre-Crisis 80s Batman stories.
>>81445134
I love the story about Elektra Assassin where after Miller saw the art for the first issue he threw out all his scripts and rewrote them to try and stump/push Sienkiewicz. The book just them going back and forth trying to top each other
>liking Frank miller
The fact that he's republican and doesn't take shit from Muslims is probably why. That, and he has cancer. This doesn't mean people should suck his dick because they feel they need to like his work though.
He's overrated to the extreme and he hasn't been good since Daredevil.
>>81445165
Alright, I guess I'm a dum-dum then.
>>81445219
That is why it is one of the best, two insane people pushing each other past their limits.
>>81445181
Yea Mazz was one of the few artists working at that time better than Miller, that guy is a step above Miller where he is not only one of the greatest graphic artists of all time but just artists period/
It is funny with this page what it has been turned into seeing as he loses this fight.
>>81445249
>>81445224
>coming in this late with this
We already did this whole thing
>>81445193
I really think Miller had one of the greatest runs of anybody with his (roughly) 80s work. Like any one of his GOAT stuff would be another creators masterpiece
>>81445249
>>81445181
I disagree, I much prefer Miller and Janson to both the examples of Mazzucchelli on the same characters
>>81445224
>people who I like have to think like me
SJWs everybody.
>>81445224
I'm a liberal and I love Miller. Even some of his post 9/11 work.
>>81445269
My favorite image of Batman ever.
>>81445299
Drawing Beautiful images is something not limited by political beliefs and hatred.
>>81445292
Interesting, I think Born Again is the ultimate in aping another's style and adding your own touch, and Mazzuchelli just has far more range than Miller overall which is why I consider him a better artist and total master
>>81445292
I dunno, I liked the Mazz/O'Neil Daredevil better than the Miller/McKenzie, but that probably says some stuff about the writers lets be real
>>81445249
Half of Miller's artist collaborators and his influences are more interesting than Miller himself to me.
So I think Miller does a really good job at Portraying Clark in this comic and I think that is why people have a problem with it.
Did DKR The Last Crusade ever come out? I can't find it anywhere.
>>81445361
Which is an achievement because Miller is a beast
>>81445378
I don't really understand why people think Miller hates Superman due to this comic.
Its funny as much as people remember him for his art.
At this period he was also the best Writer in comics on Assassin.
>>81445510
Because they think framing him as a figure that upholds the Status Quo is an insult.
>>81444585
Sick reference bro.
>>81445352
>>81445356
I tend to go in deep for comics for Action and Motion and Structure and Paneling.
And those things I think Miller is unparalleled at on this side of the World.
>>81445582
Dave Sim is better than him at all of those things
Geoff Darrow too
>>81445224
>mfw I'm as commie as they come but Miller is on my top 5 artists
>along with Ditko
>>81445617
Cerebus is one of the blindspots I have actually.
>>81444085
I always thought supes heat visioned his arm off.
>>81445662
I do like that Murdock is also a lawyer in this universe
>>81445621
My nigger.
>>81445633
It's an undertaking, It took me probably 4 months of on and off reading to finish it and I skipped/really quickly skimmed a bunch of it towards the end. 1-215, 266-268 and 291-300 are pretty GOAT though
This is still pretty good but I feel like his DD is 10x better. Does anyone agree?
>>81444710
this is probably one of my favorite pages, just for how much it says about the batman joker dynamic (even if it's only this comic's interpretation)
>>81444710
Romita Jr.
>>81445224
I'm pretty fucking liberal but even I can appreciate his body of work. I have yet to read his Daredevil, but I've read Year One and TDKR and there's really nothing like them
Do you guys think Lex and Brainiac are already in charge at this point?
>>81445693
It is hard because it is all so good.
>>81445731
between his landscapes and stumpy members, JRJR is like a Miller-lite
>>81443971
Carrie is a gymnast we see her accolades all over her room, thus she makes a good robin
GA refused to play nice with Superman so he heat visioned his arm off, thus sided with Bats in the final fight (almost 100% sure they show you that Ollie is there too)
I've always liked that there is no real explanation of the flying robots because it's an embracing of the wilder side of DC and Batman that provides a nice contrast to the gritty noir stuff in the book
>>81445739
>I have yet to read his Daredevil
You're in for a treat.
>>81445693
Eh, it's different, a long run vs a short mini. I think this is better because the concise nature allowed for perfect crystaline crafting from Miller
>>81445621
Ditko is a great character writer, even if his view of the world is strangely simple.
>>81445687
>291-300 are pretty GOAT though
Cerebus trying to get out of bed is GOAT?
The problem with Miller is whenever I read one of the works I like it becomes my favorite until I reread something else again.
>>81445401
release got pushed to May 25 :/
>>81445816
His writing is just too preachy for me, I wouldn't appreciate it even if it was someone I agreed with, but his art is so unique and twisted, while his panelwork and page layouts are just out of this world
>>81445825
I was laughing my ass of at it, and comedy was always a goal of the comic, so yes.
>>81443580
I thought the art started really strong but it degraded through the series and towards the end it just looked lazy. Maybe it's just me.
>>81445497
>ywn be fucked by batdaddy
>>81445224
It is impossible to have a thread about Miller's work without triggering the tumblr shit heads infesting this board
>>81443971
>We assume the girl just becomes robin
....what the fuck are you talking about? They showed you every single step of Carrie's development into Robin.
>>81444585
>I'm Born Again
HO HO
Miller draws the most iconic Superman stuff
>>81446134
That's not Curt Swan or Neal Adams
>>81446147
Yes it is.
>>81445238
>Rubber Bullets
>Honest.
>>81445224
Wait. Miller has Cancer?
>>81444166
The art is what holds up the so-so writing of The Long Halloween. You have a lot of great individual moments, but the actual Holiday Killer overplot was mishandled all to shit.
>>81446239
I don't think Sale is that good at interiors and the Loeb plot in that book is a joke.
>>81446239
Is Dark Victory any good?
>>81443789
>Everyone was being stupid , the psychologist , the mayor or whatever , all the analysts gave me a headache.
That was the point.
>>81445293
>>81446063
I was saying that it's probably a reason. I like Dikto and Alan Moore's work but think they're absolutely wrong in almost every opinion they have. I was offering a possible reason as to why people still like him even after he went to shit and never recovered. Daredevil and Year One were Miller's top books but I've read almosy everything else he's done and was bored by all of it.
>>81445755
Oh absolutely
>>81446293
There isn't a problem with that but I disagree with most of it.
I think at the end of the day my favorite Miller is Ronin and Assassin
>>81445361
He has worked with some fucking giants.
Which reminds me, need to check the LCS if they've got some Martha Washington shit. DKR is a joy to read, but Martha Washington is my absolute favorite, it's amazing you never hear anything about it.
>>81446382
It is good for the Gibbons but I don't think that work succeeds and he reinforces that stuff in Sin City.
>>81445062
Did the mutant die?
>>81446433
I don't know anon, did he?
